“Is that what you want? Do you want me to leave?” she asks, her voice low.
“Of course not, but I will never be good enough for you, Avalee. Don’t you see that?”
She rolls her eyes to the ceiling and sets her jaw. “You are good, Ruin. I don’t care what my father says. I don’t care what society says. I definitely don’t care what the community says. I know you, Ruin. The real you. You are a kind and compassionate man.”
Avalee crosses the room to me, her cool hand touching my cheek again. “You are good. Do you hear me?”
I pull her in for a kiss and lose myself to her. Our hands frantically scramble to remove each other’s clothes as we fall back onto the couch, where we make love again. It’s harder this time, faster. I want it to last longer, but when she climaxes, I am sent over the edge with her. The atmosphere in the house is tense afterward, neither of us ready to face our earlier concerns.
Nighttime comes, and Avalee falls fast asleep in my bed wearing one of my button-down shirts and nothing else. She snores softly on her side, but I can’t seem to sleep. My mind replays the conversation from earlier, and I wonder how I might have said things differently. I pick up my phone, its notification light flashing, and I see I have a missed call from the PI and a new voice mail.
Hitting play, I listen in disbelief to the report.
“Hey, Ruin. It’s Jack Diamond. I finally traced Yury Letov’s last known whereabouts. You are not going to believe it. Dude died two years ago in prison. Apparently, when he was in lockup, another inmate heard what he’d done to all of those girls, and… Well, it didn’t end well for Yury. Looks like he got what was coming to him after all. As for my fee, you can drop a check in the mail or even Venmo—” he rattles on, but my mind drifts off and I hang up.
While I’m happy that Yury is dead, I regret not being the one to do it. If that isn’t enough proof that I am just as bad as my family, I don’t know what is. Avalee thinks I’m good, but I was ready to kill a man for what he did to her years ago.Am I really good enough for her? Can I really be right for her, when our lives are so opposite in every way possible?She grew up in a family, though overbearing, that cared for her. My mother bailed when things got too rough, and my father hated me for it, never hiding what he truly thought of me. Avalee was middle class and then upper middle class, while I was below the classification lines. She made good grades, was smart, and was set for all kinds of scholarships. I’m sure she continued that track in Mississippi. Tenn-U has some pretty strict standards for admissions; they don’t let just anyone enroll at their prestigious institution, and yet she was accepted. I worked hard for my C’s and B’s. It’s silly to add academic achievement to the comparisons, but I’m starting to run out of things to compare us against. So much time has been lost between us. I’m convinced I’ll never be enough to rightfully stand next to her, but I’m still going to try. I squeeze my eyes with my hand, lids suddenly heavy and hard to keep open, and I drift off with Avalee safely tucked in beside me.
Twenty-Five
Ruin
I smell them before I hear them. Stormy is going nuts, jumping from the bed to the floor, growling with his hackles up. He’s still too little to be much of a threat, but he’s trying. I feel for Avalee next to me, and I find her sitting up in the bed, eyes wide and staring ahead.
I follow that gaze to a sneering Snake and River in the doorway.So that’s the sour garbage smell. How the fuck did they get in here?
“What the hell are you two doing in my house?” I growl, jumping out of the bed and holding up a hand to Avalee, hoping she’ll just stay where she is. She’s clutching the sheets to her throat, hiding herself from them with a look of pure terror on her pale face. I’ve never seen her this scared before, and it only fuels my rage further.
“We told you we had a job that we needed your help with, little brother,” Snake says around his sneer. He licks his lips, eyes set on Avalee.
My stomach lurches, and a new rage ignites within me. If he doesn’t take his eyes off her soon, I’m going to pluck them right out of his ugly, needlelike skull. The guy might resemble our father in many ways, but drugs and who-knows-what-else have left him emaciated and sickly. River, on the other hand, looks like he just polished off five Big Macs without batting an eye, his hairy gut sagging below the hem of his oversized shirt.
“Hello, again.” Snake waves to Avalee.
“Don’t fucking talk to her. You are here for me. Leave her alone,” I say, not hiding the threat in my voice. River shifts, his arms uncrossing from his chest as he leers at me, begging for me to try something.Don’t worry, you big idiot. I will kick your ass too if you try anything.
Snake tsks with his teeth, sucking in air as he pinches his lips together. “Now, now, baby brother. We do have some manners. Don’t worry. We won’t touch your little piece of ass. Yet,” he says, cocking a brow.
I push down the bile and stalk toward them, waving my arms for them to move out of the doorway and into the other room. “Out. If you want to talk to me, fine. But like I said, leave her alone.”
Snake snickers, and River stares with those empty eyes, unblinking, as if waiting for Snake’s command. Before closing the door, I glance at Avalee, who still hasn’t budged from her spot under the sheets. With just my eyes, I indicate the window, hoping she understands what I’m trying to say. She follows my gaze, gives a slight knowing nod, and starts to slip out from under the sheet. I close the door and stand before it, not about to let these goons out of my sight or anywhere near her again. It’s bad enough that they found my house and broke in without me knowing. Add that to my long list of what needs to be improved in order to protect Avalee around here.
“We haven’t heard from you since the restaurant, little brother. So, we had to track you down. Make you hold up your end of the deal,” Snake says.
“I didn’t agree to any deal. Not really.”
Snake’s eyes narrow, and his mouth opens wide. “Oh, you did. Remember, you help us, or we go give that pretty little piece of yours a taste of what a real Lautner man has to offer.”
I swing at Snake’s nose, making contact. The loud, satisfying crunch is a telltale sign he will have a crooked sniffer for the rest of his life. Maybe it will keep him off the powder for a while. Probably not. River lunges forward, and I bring my knee to his gut, knocking the wind from him. He heaves and falls back, bracing his sensitive midsection.
“You little shit!” Snake shouts, clutching his nose as streams of red pour through his fingers and down his chin. He groans and snaps at River, who comes at me again.
I sidestep and kick out his legs from underneath him, sending him sprawling into my coffee table, which breaks under his weight. Stormy is losing his shit from the bedroom, but I’m hoping Avalee is making her way to the window with him.
“That’s it,” Snake says, and a click sounds from his direction. I glance his way to see a switchblade in his hand. He tosses it from his left hand to his right.
My phone is charging in the bedroom, so I can’t call the police, but maybe Avalee has already. I look through the French doors leading out to the patio and see her peek around the corner, but I quickly look back at Snake, not wanting to give her away. River groans from the floor but doesn’t stand back up. Part of the table has skewered one of his legs. Any movement and he might tear his femoral artery, so it’s probably for the best that he doesn’t move. I already have Snake’s blood staining my house, no need to have River’s corpse added to it.
“You know what,” Snake says, that mocking tone I remember so well lacing his every word. “I have never told you about what really happened the night we found good ol’ daddy-o. It’s quite the doozy, really.”
