Page 14 of Swerve (Boosted Hearts 1)

I should never have followed her up to her place.

Christ. I never should have kissed her.

Because now I knew, what it felt like to have her tight little body squirming against mine, the sounds she made when I slid my tongue deeper. It beat my fantasies and then some.

I wanted more of her, but that couldn’t happen. If I gave into it, this thing between us, eventually she’d see what a truly dark bastard I was, the anger inside me that I could barely contain, and she’d leave. She’d have every right to.

I’d sworn to protect her when we were kids, and that also meant from me.

So, I’d walked away from her.

Jesus, the way she’d looked at me when she realized that cop had given me her number. Yeah, I’d taken it, but I hadn’t planned to use it. Another thing I didn’t want to analyze too closely. Lately, casual hook-ups weren’t doing it for me. Maybe that was my problem, why Ruby was never out of my damn mind. I needed to fuck. I needed to screw someone else, anyone else, until I’d pounded and sweated Ruby’s face right out of my damn head.

Being celibate for a woman who I would never allow myself to have was fucked up.

I turned and looked at my mother. She was staring out the window, humming one of her favorite Keith Urban songs, and my gut knotted.

My mom hadn’t always been like this. But we’d hit hard times, and everything had fallen to shit. Rent was due and we had no money. Our landlord gave her a choice, give him the money, or pay on her back. My mom would have done anything to keep me safe, to keep us off the streets. I remembered that night vividly, like a fucking horror movie. That’s how it all started, the moment that sent her on a downward spiral, had set the nightmare of her childhood, that she’d managed to keep locked down, free. She started drinking not long after that.

Once she’d been carefree. She’d laughed all the time, had been a little wild, but there’d been this innocence about her, something that just seemed to draw people.

Hope. She’d had this unwavering sense of hope and excitement that had been infectious.

A lot like Ruby.

Then men just like me, with blackened hearts and marks on their souls, had used her and treated her like garbage. Men that had done unforgivable things. Men that weren’t worthy of even looking at her let alone putting their filthy hands on her.

My mom stopped humming and climbed to her feet, this time a little steadier after food and a coffee. Shuffling over to the counter, she picked up a yellow container that had pink flowers on it, and walked over, handing it to me.

“Take this, baby.”

I knew who it belonged to instantly.

My mom’s eyes lit up. “Give it back to my girl, would you? She brought me some of those brownies with the nuts and chunks of chocolate I like so much.” She patted my arm. “She’s such a sweetheart.”

Her girl.

Ruby.

She’d called Ruby that since she was six years old.

“She do that often, Mom?”

“Oh yeah, all the time, you know that.”

I knew she used to, but I hadn’t asked Ruby lately if she’d been by, and she hadn’t offered up the information. Ruby did a lot of shit like that. She cared about people; most importantly, she cared about my mother. Ruby showed tolerance and affection to a woman who had been known in this street as a whore, who drank at least a bottle of vodka a day. Had never once judged her for it.

She’d been there for me during the toughest time of my life. I knew Ruby thought I’d saved her back then. But she’d saved me, too. I don’t know what I would have done without her in my life. Giving me something else to fight for when things had felt so hopeless.

Ruby had a soft heart. A kind one.

And I refused to break it, to taint it. And that’s exactly what would happen if we ever gave into the banked fire between us.

* * *

Ruby

“You want another drink?” Scott yelled in my ear over the music.