My grandmother's voice, still present after five years. Still showing up exactly when I need it.
*You can do this, baby girl. You've done harder things.*
"Okay," I tell my reflection. "Okay."
The casino floor is already moving when I start my shift at two, the afternoon crowd a different animal from the Thursday night crew. More retirees, more tourists on a budget, the steady rhythm of people feeding money into slot machines with the particular zen of those who've made peace with losing.
I find my section, twelve through twenty-four, and I get moving. Take orders, deliver drinks, collect empties, smile, repeat. The rhythm comes easier today than yesterday, the geography of my section already more familiar. I remember that table fifteen likes their drinks delivered from the left because the guy in seat A ismissing peripheral vision on his right. I remember that Miguel goes faster if you call your orders in groups of two.
I'm delivering a round to table nineteen—three beers and a vodka tonic when it happens.
Not a dramatic entrance. Not a statement. Just a voice, low and close, coming from directly behind me.
"Ruby."
I finish setting down the last beer before I turn, because my hands are full and I refuse to spill again, and because the extra three seconds give me the opportunity to rearrange my face into something that doesn't betray the fact that my heart just launched itself into my throat.
Havoc is standing a foot behind me, and he looks… He looks like he hasn't slept either. Which shouldn't make me feel better but somehow does. There are shadows under his gray eyes, a tension around his jaw that suggests a night spent in his own head. He's in his usual uniform—black t-shirt, jeans, his cut over the top, and he's watching me with an expression that's trying very hard to be neutral.
He's not quite pulling it off.
"I need to talk to you," he says, low enough that the players at table nineteen can't hear. "In private."
I stare at him. "Are you serious right now?"
"Yeah."
"It's my second day." I keep my voice equally quiet, equally controlled, very proud of myself for both. "And after yesterday—" I stop, because I'm not airing what happened yesterday on the casino floor. "I can't just disappear. I'm working."
"I know." Something moves across his face. Not quite discomfort, but close. "I'm sorry. About last night. That's what I need to… I need to talk to you about it."
"You apologized last night," I say. "Several times. Very efficiently, actually, right before you left."
The faintest wince. "Ruby—"
"I really can't just wander off in the middle of my shift, Havoc. I need this job. This is my second day, and I need it to go well, and I can't be the girl who disappears with the—" I stop again.
"With the enforcer?" His voice is dry.
"I was going to say with a club member."
"If anyone says anything, I'll tell them I needed you for something." The way he says it, like this is a completely reasonable thing to say, makes me want to laugh and also throw something at him. "Nobody will question it."
"That's a little arrogant, don't you think?"
"It's accurate," he says, and then, before I can respond to that, his voice drops lower and loses its defensive edge entirely. "Please, Ruby. Ten minutes. That's all I'm asking."
The please undoes me. Not because it's a magic word, not because I'm a pushover, but because I don't think Havoc says please very often. I don't think he asks for things very often. He handles and protects and enforces, but asking, actually asking for something that seems like a different language for him entirely.
I think about last night. His hands shaking when we were in the bathroom, something he probably didn't realize I noticed. The way he looked at Marcus sleeping.
I think about how safe I felt on the back of his bike with my arms around his waist and the city blurring past us. I've had so little of that feeling in my life that I've almost forgotten what it is. Safety. If there's a chance, even a small, probably stupid, likely complicated chance, that I can sit with that feeling for ten more minutes, then I'm going to take it. Because I'm tired of denying myself the small things out of fear. I'm tired of flinching away from anything that might be good.
Besides, he ran last night but came back today; that has to mean something.
"Ten minutes," I say.
"Thank you," he says, and that's the second sentence that doesn't come easily for him today.
