He nodded. “That’s good progress, Ruby. We’ll stay to watch the fireworks. We can sit on the tailgate of my truck and get a good view of the show.”
“Sounds good.”
“Scorpio? Juliette?” Cap spoke up to get their attention. “We’re going to watch from the tailgate of my truck. Since you brought your bike, you’re welcome to join us if you want?”
Juliette smiled, answering for both her and Scorpio. “Sure.”
We cleared up what was left of the mess we’d made at the pavilion. People were sitting on the stands at the baseball field waiting for the fireworks to start, others were at the park sitting on the picnic tables, and some were sitting in the back of pickups just like us.
The moment felt intimate as the four of us sat in the bed of the truck. To the world, we would appear to be two couples on a double date. My stomach clenched at the thought. Guilt churned in my gut and ate away at my soul for even thinking that for a second. I bit my lip and gulped down the sudden flood of misery taking over, fighting back the whirlwind of emotions that were swirling in my chest.
I was so lost in my thoughts that I didn’t notice when the first firework went up, but when the world exploded and light flashed in my field of vision, I was taken back to the worst night of my life.
I didn’t know I was covering my ears and screaming. I didn’t know what was going on around me, I just saw the truck coming for us and the lights blinding me before the loud explosion of our car and it splintering apart in front of me.
“CHASE!” I screamed, seeing my husband crumpled up halfway through the windshield again. “CHASE!” I cried out his name again as I got trapped in the recurring nightmare of that night.
“Shhh, Ruby. You’re okay. You’re safe.”
I wasn’t aware of anything going on. I just heard the loud booms and bangs as the wreckage surrounded me. The strobing lights of the responders as they tried to rescue us. The sparks from the dented metal being cut away. There was no escaping the terror I felt again. My heart felt like it was going to pound right out of my chest, and I couldn’t catch my breath.
Vaguely, I felt arms grab me. I heard voices talking, but I couldn’t hear what they were saying. Nothing made sense to me.I was still having trouble catching my breath, but the sounds of explosions and the flashing lights faded out to help me start gaining some semblance of control.
Comfortable warmth surrounded me, slowly cutting through the terror and pain. Soft words of comfort and encouragement that meant nothing to me were calming me until my body completely spent and wrung out. Blackness started to take over as I finally sank into nothingness. Blissful nothingness.
Chapter Eleven
“I think she’s having a panic attack,” Juliette said with a gasp, watching as the fragile woman in my arms screamed and fell into that void of memories that quickly dragged her down that vicious rabbit hole, I barely had scrounged her out of.
“It’s more than that, Juliette, it’s PTSD.” I clutched Ruby like it was my only job, knowing that I needed to bring her out of this, but lacking the tools to do it. I sent both Scorpio and Juliette a pained look, and they immediately got up, walking over to Scorpio’s bike.
“Take her home, Cap. Get her away from this,” Scorpio encouraged. “Take care of her.”
“Always,” I mumbled, securing every flinch she made in my protective arms. It took everything I had to guide her from the bed of my truck into the passenger seat. She immediately curled into a fetal position, barely allowing me to click in her seatbelt as she mumbled her late husband’s name over and over again. At least she wasn’t screaming it anymore.
Damn… just when I get thirty steps ahead, we revert back to this. Am I ever going to get her out of her mental prison?
Tears spilled down her trembling cheeks as she fell back into that pit of despair she was in. I wanted to comfort her, but getting her home safe was my main goal in this moment. I didn’t stop until we were parked in her driveway.
My heart thrummed inside my chest violently, urging me to get her out of this groundhog cycle she was spinning in.
“Ruby,” I whispered, shaking her arms after I pulled open her door. “Ruby, we’re home.”
She was incoherent. Almost catatonic in a way. It was like I could see the movie playing behind the tears.Fuck.
Her body collapsed against me as I lifted her into my arms, my heart racing as I carried her to her door and fished a key from her purse. It wasn’t easy or logistically possible, but I somehow found a way despite all the odds against me. I carried her into her house, and kicked the door behind me, not stopping until I had her sitting on the couch.
“Ruby, please.” I shook her again, my voice getting louder. “You’re safe. Come on, girl, pull through this.”
Bleary eyes blinked away tears as she focused on my face, that catatonic look erasing like magic.
“Cap?”
“Shh, you’re safe now. I think you had a PTSD flashback… the fireworks they…”
She cut off my words with a painful sob. “They took me back to that night.”
The large blade ceiling fan whirled above our heads, and the whoosh of the air slicing through the stagnant room mirrored the strange pulse inside my chest. Her screams had pierced me right in the soul, and the second I heard them, I felt the strange heart squeeze violently behind my ribcage. I thought something was wrong, that my body was rejecting the foreign object Frankenstined inside of me. It could happen. I wasn’t completely out of the danger zone of that possibility… yet, but it wasn’t my heart failing on me.
