Framed

by Amber Lynn Natusch

  “Possibilities for what?” I asked, not liking where I thought he was going.

  “We need a Healer, Ruby. We've always had one,” Sean said quietly. “Peyta is our best option.”

  “NO!” I snapped, before catching myself and lowering my voice. I didn't want to disturb Ronnie or upset Peyta any further. “That is completely out of the question. That girl has been through more in the last couple of months than anyone should endure in a lifetime, and you're suggesting we continue to expose her to this life of madness? Totally unacceptable, Sean. No fucking way I'm going to let it happen.”

  I couldn't recall the exact point that I jumped off the counter to stand nose to nose with him, but I felt the heat our proximity created as soon as I finished my rant. Judging by the flare of his eyes, he'd felt it too.

  “We would keep her sa—”

  “No, Sean. No,” I repeated flatly. “Ronnie will never allow such a thing, and neither will I.”

  “You don't need to freak out about it...it's a non-issue for now anyway,” Jay said, trying to hose down the fire. “The Elders have to approve of the Healer before she is bonded to the PC.”

  His last few words echoed through my mind. Bonded to the PC made my heart fall into the boots I'd reclaimed from Peyta's room. Sean chose the Healer. Sean bonded her to the PC—he'd said as much himself.

  “You can't have her,” I threatened, my voice a low growl.

  “We will have her, Ruby. It's only a question of time,” Sean sighed, allowing his exhaustion to show.

  I stood gobsmacked, mouth open, unable to form words. I felt tears pooling behind my eyes, just threatening to expose my emotions, when a tiny voice spoke from the far side of the room.

  “Ruby?” Peyta called, sounding shaky and tired. “Is everything okay?”

  We all turned to see Peyta hovering in the doorway, looking young and frightened. I softened my face to try and reassure her as I walked over to give her a hug. As I passed Jay, the tenderness he felt for Peyta was plain.

  “Sorry, Peyta. We're all just a little high strung and discussing things that we should probably leave alone for now,” I said, flashing fiery eyes at Sean. “How's your mom?”

  “No change. I'm hoping she does better tomorrow, but I'm worried, Ruby. What if she doesn't?”

  “Is she sleeping?”

  “She's in and out of it. She wakes up looking panicked, and I try to get her to go back to sleep. She keeps mumbling something about not letting him take me...that he can't have me. She's not making any sense," she said, her concern for her mother's mental status plain on her face. "I should probably go back up there. I don't want her to wake up alone. She'll totally freak out if I'm not there.”

  “Do you want me to come with you?” I asked.

  “No, it's OK,” she sighed. “You've had a long night too. I don't know all the details yet, but when you're naked and covered with blood there’s got to be one hell of a story that accompanies it. You have plenty of time to fill me in later, though I'm starting to think I don't really want to know.”

  She managed a wan smile before turning to leave.

  “I'll dish once your mom is doing better,” I said as she slowly walked back out of the room.

  “Yeah you will,” she yawned, giving a tiny wave over her shoulder as her sign off for the night. I knew sleep would not be in the cards for her.

  “Maybe we should head out,” Cooper said, looking at me directly. “We can take Ronnie's car.”

  “I will stay here,” Sean said icily.

  “I can stay if you want,” Jay offered. “You've had a rough night too. I'll call you if anything changes.”

  “Fine,” he replied, “but even the slightest hint of something off and you call. Don't disappoint me, Jay. And don't forget what she is slated to become. Peyta is our first concern, and her safety is paramount. If her mother must die to ensure that, then so be it.”

  Jay swallowed hard before nodding once, “Understood.”

  “And be aware that the Rev may not have gone far,” Sean reminded him, alluding to the fact that he hadn't accomplished his mission yet and may be back for another stab at it. I cringed at the thought.

  As Sean and Jay continued their discussion, I was plagued by a choice I hoped I wouldn't have to make. Two cars. Two men. One me.

  I wanted to go home to my bed and the comfort that Cooper could always bring after the most traumatic of situations, but I didn't want to muddy those waters any more than I already had that night. Death hadn't saved me from dealing with the situation, and I didn't want to make it worse before I could make it better. I knew that Sean was hurting deep below his business exterior, but I also knew he'd never ask me directly to go with him. It seemed awkward for me to ask him if he wanted me to, but somehow I knew it was the right thing to do. As I mulled over the potential implications of either choice, Cooper looked at me strangely as though he knew I was doing relationship calculus in my mind.

  “You keep thinking that hard and you'll blow a fuse out in that head of yours,” he said jokingly. “You ready?”

  “I...uh, yeah," I stuttered, hesitating momentarily. "Yeah, I'm ready to leave.”

  He smiled wide and hopped off the counter, grabbing the keys to the car off a hook on the wall next to the phone.

  “Then let's leave.”

  Sean stood in the kitchen, expressionless, before following Cooper's lead. He walked past me, making a conscious effort not to touch me at all. I looked to Jay who only shrugged in response to my silent call for help. Feeling hopeless, I too turned and walked out of the kitchen, creating a well spaced, single-file line—Cooper in the lead and me in dead last.

  Once outside, Sean walked over to the SUV and got in without a word. He fired it up and put it slowly in reverse, having to back out of the lengthy driveway. I looked to Cooper quickly, my face telling him all he needed to know, my desperation and indecision plain.

  “I have to,” I said, before sprinting down the gravel path.

  I crashed into the passenger side of the Jeep just as Sean was putting it in gear on the road, and yanked the door open.

  “Do you need me?” I asked, breathing heavily. It was a really, really long driveway.

  “What?” he asked, sounding confused.

  “Look...I'm not very good at this, Sean, but I want to be there for you if you need me to,” I explained, feeling terribly vulnerable and slightly embarrassed. “So do you?”

  He looked at me strangely, the light of the stars and the dash casting beautiful shadows along the planes of his face. He said nothing, and, after a moment or two, my pride got the best of me.

  “I guess you don't,” I said, slamming the door before I made my way toward the headlights coming down the driveway.

  “Ruby,” he called from behind me. “Wait. Please wait.”

  Against my better judgment, I did.

  “I do,” he said simply.

  “Do what?”

  “Need you,” he replied. “You surprised me just now with what you said. It took a minute to process. Does the offer still stand?”

  “I don't like being made to feel stupid, Sean,” I whispered, anger in my tone.

  “I know that, Ruby...I know you. I didn't mean for it to come off that way.”

  Cooper honked the horn at us, his not-so-subtle way of making it known that I needed to shit or get off the pot. I'm sure he wasn't happy with the situation in general.

  “OK,” I told Sean, making my way back to the Jeep.

  I had a strange but distinct feeling of frustration coursing through my body, and I needed to figure out why. It seemed that Sean and I were always a frequency apart, like a radio station we just couldn't quite dial into. In the beginning, I'd always felt a step or ten behind; Sean had all the information and I had none. But somehow his friendly charm and playful ways wooed me—sucked me in—and I fell hard.

  After the Sophie fiasco, things changed, and it seemed that, no matter how hard either of us tried, we just couldn't get
back on track. With the doors of opportunity opening again for us, I wondered if the fates would ever allow for us to be on the same page at the same time.

  I'd learned a lot over that previous year of life. One of those things was that there were myriad types of love. The love that burns hard and fast, then extinguishes, unable to spark again. The love that sneaks up on you slowly over time, making you wonder how you'd never seen it in the first place.

  And love that's doomed from the start.

  I had the sneaking suspicion that I'd experienced all three, and, regardless of how I tried to talk myself out of it, I knew it was true. I was in a pickle.

  “Cooper was right," Sean said sarcastically. "You are going to burn a fuse out in that head of yours,”

  “Cooper is surprisingly right about a lot of things,” I replied, still staring off into the distance.

  “Such as?”

  “Can we drop it, please?”

  He said nothing in response, and the silence between us permeated once again. I felt like I was going to go insane without some sort of distraction, so I leaned over to turn on the radio. I was greeted by a sobering tune, the lyrics of which proved to be more than apropos.

  They were all about love and need and the knowledge that relationships were so often better in the beginning. It was the road you traveled together that wore things down, taking something that once seemed so wonderful and welcome, and eroding it slowly—methodically—until all that was left was a fraction of what had once been there. If only it was possible to go back to that place in time.

  Maybe it was.

  “A do over,” I whispered to myself. That was what we needed.

  “For what?” he asked, confused yet again.

  “Nothing, never mind.”

  What he and I needed was to get back to that time and place of shameless flirting, comedic run-ins, and friendship. We needed to polish the tarnish off of our relationship and make it shiny and new again for it to have any shot at working. The question was how.

  The question was apparently exhausting because I found myself barely able to keep my eyes open. At some point in the short drive, I succumbed to sleep. When I awoke, I found myself in a strange, dark, and unfamiliar room. Fight or flight kicked in automatically, and I shot up off of the couch I had been laying on, looking for the nearest exit.

  “Relax, Ruby,” Sean said calmly. “It's okay. You're at my place.”

  He wandered toward me from deep within the house, stopping in a band of light that shone in from windows high above the floor. I was trying to control my breathing and convince Scarlet that her services were not needed in that moment.

  “Your place?” I wheezed between breaths. “I didn't think you actually had one. I thought you were a nomad.”

  “When it suits, I am,” he said with the faintest of smiles.

  “How long was I out for?”

  “Not long. I didn't want to wake you, so I carried you up. I knew you would have protested being put in my bed, so the couch was the next best option. It happens to be the only other option.”

  “Glad to see you chose wisely,” I chuckled, pushing up off of the sofa.

  I looked around at his home once my eyes adapted enough to the darkness that permeated it. The place was enormous, but sparse. It appeared to be an old factory building with soaring ceilings and exposed duct work; there was brick on the interior walls. In that vast space, there was little furniture. One couch and one table defined the living room.

  As I peered into the darker areas not touched by the light the moon provided, I saw little else. The kitchen was modern but small, with a single wall of cabinets and tiny island. The only non-original walls in the entire apartment belonged to the bathroom that divided the kitchen from the bedroom—if a bed was all that was necessary to constitute a bedroom. Wandering towards it, I saw that there were no personal effects anywhere in the space other than clothing. There were no pictures, no artwork, or anything else that made his home his. It looked a little like high end squatting.

  As much as I wanted to know more about his mysterious apartment, I really had to pee.

  "Do you mind if I use your bathroom?" I asked, heading in that direction.

  "I prefer it to the alternative," he said with deadpan delivery. Only the slightest twinkle in his eye gave him away.

  "I am housebroken, thank you very much," I replied jokingly. "I'm not so sure about Scarlet though..."

  I quickly closed the bathroom door on whatever response he had conjured up.

  It's rude to talk about someone when they're not around, you know.

  "But you are always around," I whispered, not wanting Sean to overhear.

  I suppose I am...you say that like it's a bad thing, but it's proven rather convenient for you recently, has it not?

  "I would say so."

  You would? You should. I would also think a thank you is in order...

  "I am thankful for what you did for Ronnie," I said softly. "I didn't know what you were going to do when the Rev took off like that. I thought you were going to hunt him down."

  Oh, Ruby...I am going to hunt him down. But that's not what I was getting at. You owe me an entirely different thank you.

  "For what?" I asked, thoroughly confused.

  Saving your ass yet again, of course.

  "You almost got us killed."

  Don't be so melodramatic. I did no such thing. In fact, I'm the one who put all the pieces of the puzzle together and bought us a way out of that little predicament.

  "How did you know she did it?" I asked, having wondered that on the rooftop. It made complete sense after she settled into her interrogation, but I never would have seen that one coming.

  I had my suspicions of her all along, as did you, but I chose to not give her the benefit of the doubt. Sophie is as ruthless as I am, she's just better at hiding it. I know my own kind when I see them, Ruby. While you felt her sorrow and desperation, I smelled motive. I tucked that tidbit away for later.

  "Fine, but thinking she was up to something is a far cry from labeling her the mastermind behind the grand scheme."

  You can actually thank Ares for that one. He put that piece of the puzzle together for me when he blathered on about women being the cause of war, destruction—whatever it he was grandstanding about. He was right...just not about the woman. Sex will make a man do just about anything. Especially a desperate man.

  "So you didn't really know that you were right—it was a Hail Mary of sorts?”

  Not exactly. But a good bluff relies heavily on the details, Ruby...something I pay great attention to. You tend to miss them, spending all your time worrying about situations that are never going to occur.

  "Like what?"

  Like resigning yourself to a death that was never going to occur. Do you think I was just going to sit back and let you walk into their crosshairs? You were never going to be executed. I would never have let that happen. You seem to constantly forget that your fate is intertwined with mine, and I have no intention of handing myself over to anyone to suffer their agenda.

  "Are you telling me that you let me spend the last few days settling up with the idea that my ass was grass and never once thought to mention that you had a plan?"

  It was hard to whisper and yell at the same time, but in all my creativity I found a way to do it.

  Ruby. I have so little in the form of entertainment these days. I decided that watching you fall apart about the whole thing only to put you back together again was far too entertaining to pass up. The estate planning was really the tops though. Even I would never have thought you capable of such grace under pressure.

  I was speechless. I stood in front of the bathroom mirror, staring at myself blankly, wishing the woman in the mirror was the red eyed sadist inhabiting my body. I wanted to punch her in the face.

  "You are un-fucking-believable. What the fuck is wrong with you, exactly?"

  She laughed.

  There is positively nothing wrong with me Ru
by. You are the one who can't seem to deal with your feelings—be who you are. I am, and always have been, exactly what I am—your darker half. If you don't like it, you'd better learn to live with it because I'm not going anywhere, and, whether you can see it or not, that's in your best interest.

  "How was letting me suffer emotionally for days, worrying myself sick about the ones I love, in my best interest?" I asked the slovenly looking blonde before me.

  It's simple, Ruby. It's called growth. You now have a much clearer picture of your boundaries, your priorities, and your relationships. Maybe next time life throws you a curveball, you won't be so ready to duck and hide from it. Maybe you'll fight.

  "I've always fought! I fought in Utah...I fought Gregory!"

  And you rolled over this time without any of that fight. Consider this your reminder to never do that again. Ronnie was right—it's never out of your hands Ruby...because your hands are mine, and I will never let them fail us. Don't fail me by giving up. Resignation isn't noble, it's for the weak. You are not weak.

  I said nothing, only stared at myself in the mirror. Had Scarlet just taught me a lesson that nobody else could? Had she complimented me—backhandedly, of course—but still given me some strange nod of approval? It was almost more than my head could wrap around.

  You are, however, becoming quite the drama queen. I swear, your flair for the dramatic is nearly as flamboyant as Cooper's. I think he's become a bad influence on you in that department.

  I laughed—perhaps a little too hard. Had Scarlet just become the voice of reason in our duo? The implications were mind-blowing.

  "Maybe you're right...," I sighed quietly as I washed my hands.

  Of course, I'm right. And speaking of that, what in the hell have you got us wearing? I looked better naked and bloody...

  Unfortunately for me, she had a point. Peyta's clothes were far too small for me, and I did look a tad ridiculous in her skin tight sweat pants that were far too short and a tee shirt that looked like it had been painted on. The crowning glory was clearly my cognac colored riding boots. It just perfected the look.

  "I don't think removing them is really an option at the moment," I chuckled. Somehow she'd gone from being a horrid bitch to my morbid sidekick in an instant.