Page 103 of Almost Ours

“I know Ruby never would have wandered off with a creep like you.”

“That bitch was crazy.”

“Call her crazy or a bitch again. I fucking dare you.”

The sirens get louder and I can see blue light flickering through the trees, and my grip loosens a fraction. Ruby is back there with Oscar having to talk to strangers about what happened while I’m out here making things worse. She asked me not to come after them. I heard her shouting my name as I ran and ignored her anyway, and now the police are here, my knuckles are split open and I’ve got a man pinned against a tree.

Cam drags the other guy towards me, one fist twisted into the back of his jacket while the bloke swears and tries to wrench free. He takes one look at me, then at the blood across my hand, and jerks his chin back towards The Shed. “We need to get them over there.”

I nod and shove the one I’m holding away from the tree, catching his arm before he can bolt, wrenching it behind his back until he folds forwards with a curse.

“Walk,” I bark at him.

“Fuck off.” He tries to slam his feet into the ground, so I drive him forwards hard enough that he has to move, falling into step beside Cam as we force both towards The Shed.

I need to get back to Ruby, and the closer we get to The Shed, the more the noise around us starts to build. The man in front of me starts dragging his feet the second the entrance comes into view, twisting his wrist against my grip and muttering that I’m hurting him, which is rich enough that I nearly laugh, but I’m past caring what comes out of his mouth.

Someone near the entrance shouts, “That’s them!” and the girl Ruby helped recoils into the person holding her, crying harder as soon as she sees the men coming back.

My attention snags on Ruby with Oscar, she is pressed against him with one hand twisted in his shirt, shoulders shaking while he keeps an arm around her and his head bent close to hers.

I wanted to hurt these men. I wanted them frightened and bleeding and helpless in the same way they made her feel, but dragging them back doesn’t fix a fucking thing.

Ruby is crying and I left her there to go after them.

Her head lifts as the crowd gets louder and her eyes find mine, travelling down to the man I’m holding before dropping to my hands. I follow her gaze and notice the blood and split skin across my knuckles.

Two police officers come towards us and one tells me to let the man go, but the prick starts shouting before I even move, saying I attacked him and chased him down, and I almost lose my temper all over again. The prick thinks he’s the victim here?

“Release him,” the officer commands me.

I do as I’m told and throw him towards the officer, not watching what they do with him and turning towards Ruby.

She’s out of Oscar’s hold and marching towards me. Her eye is swollen almost half shut, the bruising spreading from beneath it in thick purple and blue patches across her cheekbone and down towards her jaw, with angry red bursting through the white of her eye and a raw scrape in the middle of it.

It looks fucking brutal beneath the lights outside The Shed, far worse than it did when I first came out and saw her from a distance, and the sight of it makes my jaw clamp so hard pain shoots through my teeth.

Somebody did that to her.

Somebody put enough force behind their body to leave half of Ruby’s face looking like this, and even after what I just did to him, even with blood drying across my knuckles and my hand throbbing every time I flex my fingers, it doesn’t feel remotely close to what he deserved.

“What the fuck were you thinking?” she demands when she reaches me, voice shredded from crying as she shoves both palms into my chest. “I told you not to go and you just fucking ran off anyway.”

“Ruby,” I start, not knowing how to finish. She needed me and I ran off but those creeps had to be caught too.

“You could have got hurt!” She shoves me again, harder, and I let her. “You could have got stabbed, you could have been knocked out, they could have had three more friends around the corner and then what the fuck was I supposed to do? What do you think that would do to me?” She shoves me again. “Huh? How do you think that would make me feel?”

“I wasn’t thinking.” I hold both hands up between us. “I’m sorry, Rubes. I wasn’t thinking at all.”

“Yeah, fucking obviously, Josh.”

“I just—” I drag a hand through my hair and tug hard at the back of it. I can feel myself getting worked up again. There is no way to explain what happened in my head without sounding like a fucking lunatic. “I lost my head.”

“You scared me!” Her voice breaks and she slams both hands against my chest again. “What if you had got hurt too? What if you didn’t come back?”

I catch her wrists before she can hit me again, not restraining her, only holding them between us while I stare at her bruised face and try to make her understand something I barely understand myself. “I know, alright? I’m sorry.”

“No, you don’t know!” she screams, wrenching one hand free and thumping it against my chest. “Do you have any idea what that felt like?”