FRACTURED (18 page)

She smiled up at me with watery eyes.

“Well...thanks, Ruby,” she said, giving me a hug around my waist,

“but it looks like Daddy Warbucks beat you to the task. I could use a car though.”

“Get in line,” I joked. “Cooper's been singing that tune for a while now, though I did manage to snag him a car from Sean. It seems to have placated him for the time being.”

“Fine,” she grumbled in true teenager fashion. “I had to try.”

“Of course you did. Now how about you go out front and earn your keep around here. I have trinkets to make.”

*

The store was remarkably busy, so I got little done in the back. I’d forgotten that the holiday season was approaching and people would be getting a head start so as to avoid the Thanksgiving through Christmas shopping melee. I wasn't about to complain; business was business, and
always
welcome.

We worked straight through our normal lunch break, and, as the town courthouse's bell chimed three o’clock, I realized just how hungry I was. Judging by the lack of animation in Peyta's face, she was dragging too.

“Do you want to shut down for thirty minutes? We could go grab something upstairs.”

“Yes, but we need to do it quickly or you'll be carrying me up there.

I'm starving.”

Not wanting to have to piggyback her up the stairs fireman-style, I shut down the shop and left a note on the door stating we'd be back by 3:30. We hurried upstairs, making our way into the apartment and directly to the kitchen where Peyta quickly found a bag of chips to nibble on while I ransacked the fridge for anything edible. The boys had a showing just outside of town at a little after three, so I knew the coast would be clear long enough for us to eat and run.

“Okay,” I started, knowing our food situation was looking grim, “we have pickles, cheese, cranberry juice, and something in a Tupperware container towards the back. I think we might wanna leave that one alone actually. It looks fuzzy.”

“How about soup?” Peyta suggested, pulling two family-sized cans from the pantry.

“Fabulous!” I cried, starting to rummage through the drawers for the can opener. It was nowhere to be found, and I quickly remembered why. “Um...P, I have to run upstairs for a sec. I'll be right back.”

“Why?” she asked, looking at me strangely. It was a look I got fairly often.

“I need to go grab something to open those things. Just sit tight and eat your chips. I'll be right down.”

“You left your can opener upstairs?”

“Yeah,” I replied weakly. “I get hungry when I dance sometimes. I must have forgotten it. I just need to run up and grab it.”

“Why are you acting so weird?” she continued, hot on my heels.

“I'm not.”

“You are.”

“Peyta, seriously. I'll be right back.”

“Why don't you want me to come?” she asked with her mother's seasoned detective glint in her eyes.

“Because I just about had to carry you up the stairs, remember? Sit.

Eat chips. The longer you keep badgering me about this, the longer it's going to take to actually have lunch. We have customers to serve, don't we...?”

“Fine,” she grumbled in response. We were two skinny girls who really needed our blood sugar to stay above a certain level to maintain civility.

Without any further protestations from Peyta, I sped up the stairs to the third floor, praying curiosity wouldn't get the best of her. I didn't have an excuse prepared for why it looked like I had people squatting in my studio. Actually, I did, but I wasn't going to tell her that.

Once I entered the space, I took in the mess. Thankfully, it was relatively well-corralled at the far end of the room, but it was still a bit of a disaster. Clothes were strewn about, twisted up in the sheets, blankets, and pillows that they were using for their temporary beds. Topping it all off was a large green trash bag, stuffed to nearly overflowing. Those boys liked to eat, and one in particular. Alistair had a canned pineapple infatuation. Maybe they didn't have it across the pond, or maybe he was just odd, but he was definitely the reason why I found myself on the hunt for a can opener.

With my pressing need to hurry, I attacked the chaotic pile, throwing things around at will, doing my best to track down the missing kitchen utensil. It became abundantly clear in my search that it was time for those runaways to do some laundry. Even if I had found the opener in that pile, I wouldn't have used it.

Coming up empty-handed, I sighed aloud, pressing my hands on my hips as I scanned the rest of the relatively vacant room for my missing item. Then I spotted it, sitting benignly on top of the stereo that I adored―the one that had been dormant for weeks. I ran over and snatched it up, turning quickly to head downstairs.

I slammed right into Peyta. That girl was sneaky―for an almost-human.

“Jesus!” I screamed, clutching my chest. “You scared the crap out of me, P!”

“Um, Ruby?” she asked, looking at the mess I'd scattered about.

“Do we need to have an intervention or something? Leaving your room a complete disaster is one thing, but when it spills over onto an entirely different floor of your home, I think it's time to get some help.” She pried her eyes from the boys' stuff to meet mine. “Should I see if my therapist has any buddies who specialize in some kind of hoarding-like disorder?”

I laughed nervously, trying to usher her out of the room.

“Nope. I just need to hire a cleaner, that's all. Let's go eat.”

“Wait a minute,” she said, grinding to a halt when she saw a pair of stray boxers that had landed near the exit. “Why do you have
men’s
underwear up here? This isn't your stuff, is it?”

“Well, no. Not exactly.” I cringed as she went over to investigate further, praying for a distraction of any kind to derail her from her mission. She was like a dog on a trail; she wasn't going to let up easily.

In a rare act of kindness from heaven above, I got what I asked for.

“Ruby?” a male voice called from behind Peyta and me.

Matty...

17

When I turned to see him, he grinned shyly, making him look younger than the last time I saw him. His expression tightened slightly when he saw Peyta come up behind me, but she soon put him at ease. She was all apologies.

“Matty...the other day,” she started as she nervously avoided eye contact. “I may have overreacted. I didn't realize that you weren't
yourself
when everything happened.”His face was blank while he stood still, staring at Peyta as she muddled her way through her explanation. “I know who made you; you didn't stand a chance. Ruby told me that you―the
old
you―would never have done those things. I was so upset about Jay...about Ruby too. I took it out on you, and that may not have been entirely fair.”

She was beyond uncomfortable; I could feel the erratic vibrations humming around her body.

“I'm sorry too, Peyta,” he said softly in response. “I wish you could have known me before.”

I felt the tears start to sting the back of my eyes. In that moment I wanted nothing more than to have him back―for Peyta to have the chance to get to know him. But it would never be. Matty couldn't stay.

I walked away as the first tear fell. Bracing myself against the cabinet that held the stereo, I hunched forward, doing my best to contain everything that threatened to escape me. Then he was right behind me.

“Don't cry, blue eyes.” His hand brushed my cheek lightly, and I lifted it up toward him. “You'll force me to do something embarrassing to cheer you up.”

He reached around me to turn the stereo on. I watched, completely infatuated, as he pressed the power button on and cued up one of the many playlists. Peyta's powers allowed Matty, like Gregory, to make contact with objects and people around him. It implied that Matty was a pretty powerful wolf as well, but I was already more than aware of that.

He expertly scrolled through it until he found what he was looking for. When he did, he laughed. Drake's “Take Care” came blaring through the speakers at an uncomfortable volume, the bass violently shaking the floor. It felt amazing.

Just as he had on so many occasions in dance class, Matty started clowning around in a grand effort to cheer me up. It always worked. He'd picked a hip-hop piece that was done by a guest choreographer for our company. Hip-hop was
not
my forte, and he knew it. He'd shown me up that class, but I never let him know it. He was mocking me in true Matty fashion, and I totally took the bait.

Hook, line, and sinker.

“Remember this?” he goaded, easily breaking out the choreography we'd learned months earlier. “I believe the term 'hot mess' was thrown around during that class. It was aimed at you, was it not?”

“I got better at it while you were in LA,” I retorted.

“Well, let's see it then, white girl.”

“Who are you calling white, Italian boy?” I snipped, taking a long and dramatic slide in his direction before I busted out the steps to that section of the song. He was in total sync with me in seconds.

I saw Peyta snicker in the mirror while she watched us go head to head in a dance-off of epic proportion. Dancing with a ghost easily qualified as epic, regardless of how ridiculous we appeared doing it.

“Looking better this time around, Ruby,” he mocked, sliding in behind me as we both watched the other in the mirror.

“Ha! I look good all the time,” I retorted. “You just haven't noticed.”

He stopped suddenly, catching my arm. His touch felt strange the longer he held on, like it was leaching me, draining me slightly.

“I always noticed, Ruby,” he said, leaning into my ear. “You just didn't notice me noticing.”

My heart sank.

I pulled away to look at him and assess the expression on his face.

Unfortunately, I never got the chance.

I felt them enter the room before a word was said. Before their bodies were visible to me. Anger crashed into my back as I spared one glance over at Peyta's blank expression. I knew the jig was up―big time.

I wanted to hide, but knew that was an impossibility, so instead I turned to face the music―or the alphas, as the case seemed to be. Facing an angry Cooper would have been bad enough, but with Sean at his side, forming a wall of hostility, it was just about more than I could take.

Before I could even get a word out in my defense, Cooper started in.

“What. The. Fuck.” It wasn't really a question, more an acknowledgment of how, once again, I'd managed to not let him in on crucial information.

“Cooper,” I protested. “I can explain.”

When I started to move toward their collective boiling rage, Matty stepped between us. He thought
I
was the one that needed protecting.

I looked at them beseechingly, but when my hopeless stare turned to Sean, all I saw was a wild, fearsome look in his pitch black eyes. His energy crashed with violent waves in our direction, and I feared we were seconds away from his war cry that would threaten to shatter the windows as well as any hope that I could salvage the situation.

Cooper started in on me again, but Sean silenced him with the slightest of hand gestures. His eyes never left Matty, glaring at him with emotions bubbling under the surface that I couldn't even place. He wouldn't look at me as I slinked around from behind Matty. He didn't speak to me either.

I watched his hateful stare pierce Matty and wished that I'd just told him that his ghost had returned when I had the chance. My body was failing me, hovering between the two of them as though somehow I alone could keep the shitstorm that was brewing at bay. The one thing I knew about Sean was that there was no stopping him. Ever. He would have some form of revenge, and I wondered just how big the cost would be for him to get it.

Suddenly, his arm drifted up slowly, extended toward me. His eyes wouldn't meet mine, but his body would. Knowing that he was affording me the choice to go to him, I did my best not to falter, and I laid my hand in his softly, half expecting to be yanked toward him before a brawl broke out. Instead, he led me gently over to him and Cooper.

“Sean,” I whispered, knowing he'd hear me anyway. “This is what I was trying to tell you about the other day. I wanted you to know that Matty was back; I just didn't know
how
. And then you had to go...”

“I don't want to see you ever again,” he rumbled, and my heart plummeted. My pleading eyes shot up to his face to find that, once again, his were pinned to Matty. “This ends
now,
” he threatened. “If it doesn't, you won't enjoy the outcome.”

Matty scoffed.

“I'm already dead,” he replied, splaying his arms wide, displaying his ever so slightly translucent form. “What exactly do you think you're going to do that trumps that?”

Sean's face gave nothing away, but I felt a surge from him, a rush of some sort, and I knew that he was barely keeping himself composed. He'd secretly prayed that Matty would come around again so he could show him just what was worse than death.

“A wise man wouldn't ask such a question for fear of finding out the answer.”

Every hair on my body stood at attention while he purred those words.

“Cooper,” he growled, his voice so low it was hard to hear over top of the music that raged on around us. “Take Peyta somewhere far away and safe.
Now.
”

I watched as Cooper hesitated. I wasn't sure if he didn't want to appear weak, or if he didn't want to leave me alone with Sean. Eventually, he walked over to her, wrapping his long arm around her petite frame and ushered her to the door. That's when I first noticed that the boys were there. The three of them were crammed together in the doorway, watching curiously as everything unfolded. Cooper snarled at them slightly when he approached, signaling for them to make way.

Peyta was asking questions before they even left the room. The one she repeated the most was, “Who are they?” Cooper was going to have some serious explaining to do on the drive to her house.

The farther away Peyta got, the more Matty faded, but his bravado never wavered. He stood his ground against Sean in their silent battle until he was almost gone.