Page 111 of Almost Ours

I nod, tracing the edge of the scar on his stomach. “I’m sorry you had to save me again.”

Josh’s chest rises beneath my cheek with a quiet breath. “You saved yourself tonight, Ruby.”

I don’t answer.

I don’t think I can.

So I stay curled against him, listening to his heart while his fingers move through my hair, and when sleep starts dragging me under, the last thing I register is his mouth brushing softly against the top of my head and a whispered, “Night, Ruby.”

I think I mumble, “Night, Josh.”

Chapter Twenty-Five

Saturday

November 14th 2015

Joshua:

I wake with a violent jolt, my whole body jerking beneath the duvet and my heart going fucking mental while the image of Ruby dead in my arms stays burned into the front of my mind. I can see her there, limp against me, still hear myself begging her to wake up, and before I’ve even properly worked out where I am, I’m looking down at her because I need to see that she’s breathing.

Ruby is curled against my side beneath the duvet, one arm tucked between us and her hair spread messily across my chest. I realise she’s awake too, blinking up at me through the only eye she can fully open. The relief is brutal enough to leave me feeling weak, but it barely has time to settle before I really take in her face in the morning light and realise the bruising has got worse overnight. Her right eye is swollen so badly it’s nearly closed, dark purple and blue spreading from beneath her lashes and over the curve of her cheekbone before fading towards her temple and down along her jaw, while the white of the eye itself is streaked with red where tiny blood vessels have burst. The scrape through the centre of the bruising has dried rough and angry, the skin around it inflamed, and there are darker marks along her arms too, fingerprints coming up where those fucking men grabbed her hard enough to leave them behind.

Every new bruise feels like another detail I somehow missed last night. My head keeps trying to fill in the gaps, putting her against that tree, putting somebody’s hands on her again, and I have to shut it down before I lose my fucking mind. She’s here. She’s breathing. Her cheek is warm against my chest, and her fingers are moving lazily over the duvet, and that’s what I make myself look at instead.

“Are you okay?” she asks.

I let out a hollow laugh. “I think I should be asking you that.”

“You’re shivering, Josh.”

“Am I?” I respond, trying for casual even as I notice the tremor running through my arms.

“Yeah.” She snakes one bruised arm upwards and cups my cheek, forcing me to meet her eyes. “Open up to me, please. Just a little bit. Let me inside your head.”

I look at her, fully intending to tell her about the nightmare and nothing else. I can say I dreamed something bad happened to her. I can say it shook me up. I can probably even say I’m being a fucking idiot about it and make her laugh, but instead my mouth opens and something completely different comes flying out.

“I have a dead twin.”

Her good eye widens and her thumb pauses against my cheekbone, going so still beneath me she might be holding her breath.

What the fuck was that?

I stare at her, genuinely confused by my own mouth, then look away and scrub a hand down my face. “Sorry. I don’t know why I just said that.”

“Josh…”

“No, seriously, I wasn’t about to tell you that.” I let out a shaky breath and stare at the ceiling. “You asked what was in my head and apparently that was in there. Fuck.”

Her hand stays against my cheek. “You have a twin?”

My head is scrambled. “Had.”

Ruby doesn’t move her hand and she doesn’t start asking me a million questions either, which makes it harder to retreat.

“His name was James,” I mutter. “We were sixteen.”

“You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to.”