Page 188 of Show Me

I step closer before I can stop myself. “She doesn’t deserve to get dragged into this.”

Lindsey lets out a short laugh. “Women always think they’ll be the exception.”

Something ugly twists low in my chest. “Don’t.”

“What?” she asks lightly. “You said what you always say. Don’t blame me because she finally listened.”

The words punch straight through my chest. Because the worst part? She’s not wrong.

Her car is gone. The street is empty. A sick feeling settles low in my stomach. Not because Ruby heard me. Because I know exactly what she heard.

Not – I don’t care about you. But – I care about you while keeping one foot outside the door. I care about you if no one else is looking. Until it’s no longer fun.

And I see how exhausting that must’ve been for her.

Lindsey transfers her weight from one foot to the other. “So what now?”

I look at her for a long second. Then step back. “We’ll finish the project today.” Her expression tightens. “But after that,” I say flatly, “call somebody else.”

For once, I don’t care if I do a good job. The only thing that matters is getting out of here and trying to salvage something that I don’t deserve to save.

“You’re seriously cutting ties over this?”

“I’m done having this conversation.” Which is true. Because Lindsey isn’t the problem anymore, I already know where the real problem is. Me.

The walls I built. The rules I kept repeating long after they no longer matched reality. The fact that Ruby stood there, listening, while I described our relationship in the same language I used for every other woman since Claire.

I turn and walk back toward the crew.

“Everything good?” one of the guys asks while holding a drill silently in his hand.

“Yeah.” Lie.

I grab the nail gun and fire a nail into the railing harder than necessary. The sound cracks through the yard. But it doesn’t drown out the image stuck in my head.

Ruby standing there, too still. Too calm. Looking at me, like she’d stopped trying to convince herself this arrangement didn’t hurt her.

And for the first time since this started, a thought hits me hard enough to knock the breath from my lungs. She’s not pulling away to punish me.

She’s pulling away because she’s done trying to survive on the scraps, I kept insisting should’ve been enough, and I’ve got to figure out a way to fix it.

Chapter Ninety-Nine

Ruby

I stare at the same invoice for nearly five minutes before realizing I haven’t typed a single thing. It feels like my heart has been stabbed, knife twisted and yanked back out.

My fingers hover uselessly over the keyboard. Every time I try to focus, my brain drifts back to the job site. Lindsey’s voice. Xavier’s words.

She’s a friend. My stomach twists again. Part nausea. Part disgust. At myself.

Of course that’s what this always was. That’s what he told me from the beginning. No labels. Nothing serious. No expectations.

I was the one who started pretending those rules didn’t apply to us anymore. The worst part wasn’t even Lindsey. It was how easy the words came out of Xavier’s mouth. How honest and unwavering he was.

I press my palm against my stomach as another wave of nausea rolls through me. “Seriously?” I mutter under my breath while trying to force my attention back to the screen one more time. Numbers blur together.

The office door snaps open a second later and I stifle a gasp. Shit. My heart thumps against my ribs as Xavier’s dad steps inside carrying a clipboard.