Nod, Rubio thought. Nod your head and agree with whatever he says. If only Paulsen didn’t have the gun. If it was him and the creep, he could kill him with his fists and the sheer force of his rage. He’d kill him without a second thought, only for the terror Petra was feeling right now.
“Please let him go,” Petra begged. “It wasn’t him. It was me. I was the one who chased after him.” No, Petra! Bad girl! “I didn’t answer your letters because—”
“You didn’t answer my letters because he wouldn’t let you,” said Paulsen. “Tell the truth. He’s bad for you, Petra. I have to kill him.”
“You’ll get in trouble if you do that. You’ll go to jail.” Tears squeezed from her eyes. “Please, what do you want? Do you want me to come back to New York? Do you want to be with me?”
Paulsen’s face transformed at her words. “Yes. That’s what I want.”
“I’ll do that. But you have to let him go first. If you kill him...that...that will scare me too bad. I don’t know if I’d be able to love you after that.”
Ruby watched Paulsen as he thought this over. His fingers opened and closed on the handle of the gun. “Are you lying to me?” He shut his eyes a moment and opened them, blinking. Next time, thought Ruby. Next time he does that, I’ll take him. “Are you lying to me?” he asked again.
“I’m not lying.”
Paulsen turned and looked at Rubio like he was looking at something inanimate. A tree. A shoe rack. “If I don’t kill him, he’ll come after you.”
“He won’t. I told you, I’m the one who wanted him. I didn’t realize...” Her voice trailed off. “I didn’t realize until now how much you loved me. Now that I know, I want to be with you. Let’s go now. Let’s go to New York and be together. I can meet your friends and your family, and we can go out to dinner together, and go to shows and parties...”
“I don’t like to be around people,” Paulsen said grimly.
“Then we can stay home. There are so many things we can do together. At home. Alone.”
Ruby had to give her credit. She didn’t choke on the words. She said them softly, seductively. She was purposely keeping her eyes locked on his. He couldn’t imagine what this tense flirtation was costing her, but it was working. Paulsen was looking at Petra more than him. Please keep going. Keep it up, baby. Don’t stop.
“You said I was a psycho,” he said. “You screamed it at me.”
“I know. That was before I understood how strongly you felt about me.”
“But...” He worked his lips nervously. Ruby was almost certain his arms were getting tired. “How do you feel about me?”
Talk, little girl. Tell lies, one after the other. Keep talking as long as you can.
Petra took a soft, dramatic breath, like she was carefully considering her answer. “At first you scared me. You came on so strong. I never had anyone talk to me the way you talk to me. I’ve never had anyone try so hard to get close to me. Honestly, I didn’t understand what you wanted. I didn’t understand how deep your feelings were.”
“They’re deep, Petra. I promise you.”
“I know that now.”
“Say my name,” he said. “Say my name, the way I say yours.”
She took another breath. “Gary. Let’s go to New York, Gary. We’ll live together, just you and me. We’ll spend our days and nights doing whatever you want. Whatever you want,” she emphasized. “If you want to make love to me...” Her voice broke off. Come on, Petra, please. They’re just words. Keep talking. Make it filthy. Paulsen’s eyes were practically glazing over.
“I would love to make love to you,” she said. “All day and all night. There’s nothing I won’t do in the bedroom. Do you like sex, Gary?”
He stared at her. “Yes, I love sex.”
“Being a dancer and everything...” She bit her lip, a perfectly seductive affectation. “I can do all kinds of positions, and I have a lot of stamina. I could suck your cock for hours if you wanted me to. Whatever you like. I promise, I’ll make it so good for you.”
Paulsen had forgotten Rubio was even there. He had to act before he remembered again. Ruby launched himself forward, grabbing the hand holding the gun. With his other hand he slugged Paulsen full force in the face. The attack was part ballet grace, part pissed-off kid who’d been beaten up one too many times for being poor, and scruffy, and a faggot ballet dancer. Paulsen doubled over, blood streaming from his nose. Before Ruby could get the gun from him he was upright again. Ruby wrestled him sideways so the gun was pointed away from her, toward the window. “Go, Petra, run,” he shouted. “Go get help.”
Paulsen fired off a volley of shots. Bullet holes riddled the wide glass window. Cracks spread in concentric circles with a shattering sound. Another shot went wild, into the kitchen, then one into the sofa. Where was Petra?
“I’ll kill you,” screamed Paulsen, struggling to point the gun at him, but Rubio was stronger. The next bullet hit the center of the window and the entire glass wall of his loft shattered with a deafening crash. He heard Petra’s scream and another gunshot, a dead click. The gun was out of bullets. Paulsen flung it away and grasped Ruby by the shoulders, pushing him down and dragging him toward the maw of the shattered window. Ruby dug in his feet but his shoes slid across the glass littering the floor.
“No! Stop!” Petra shrieked, pulling at Ruby from behind. She tried to wrench Paulsen off him, but Ruby pushed her back. He was large enough to fight Paulsen, but the guy could fling Petra from the window like a rag doll.
“Stay away,” he yelled at her. “Stay away from the window.”
She was screaming, screeching curses and prayers and intermittently crying out “Help!” but Rubio was silent, focused on the jagged-glass line that separated his loft floor from the open air and the eight-story drop to the street below. It was one thing to struggle with Paulsen’s fat bulk on his feet, but another to grapple with the man on a glass-strewn floor. He bit Paulsen and got kicked in the face for it. They wrestled, each of them struggling for the upper hand. The edge was five feet away. Four.
“Ruby! Ruby, oh God.” Petra’s hysterical screams might alert a neighbor, but what would they do? Come over to the edge and try to help him? And by the time the police came...
He fought harder against Paulsen’s lunatic energy, his grasping fists. He tried to kick him in the balls but missed. Each strike, each kick was a precarious loss of control.
“Push him,” Paulsen barked. “Help me push him out, Petra. Then he’ll leave us alone. Then you’ll love me.”
“I’ll never love you,” she shrieked. “I hate you. I’ll always hate you. Let him go.”
“Help me throw him out,” he pleaded, ignoring her words. “You’ll never be safe as long as he’s around.”
Ruby’s fist connected with his face, but Paulsen trapped his hand and latched onto it with brutal force.
“Stop it.” Petra surged forward, kicking at Paulsen’s head. Rubio wanted to scream at her for putting her own safety at risk, but he was using all his waning energy just to survive. Rubio was strong, but he was a sleek, streamlined dancer. Paulsen was a brute lump. Petra kicked Paulsen hard in his doughy stomach. He jerked back, drawing both of them closer to the edge.
“Petra.” Ruby found some adrenalized pocket of strength to shout at her. “Go get help, damn you.” He didn’t really expect her to find help in time. He just wanted her out of danger. If he had to go out the window, he didn’t want to see her falling down after him. He didn’t want that to be his last vision before he died. “Go, Petra,” he begged. “Please go.”
“No, I’m not leaving you.”
He groaned as a shard of glass dug into his side. Bad, bad girl. He’d never been one for training obedience into his subs. Too late now. He felt Petra’s weight on his back, as if she could sit on him and hold him, but then the weight was gone. She was gone. Thank God. Petra, go. Please stay safe. He wasn’t sure he was going to survive this. All in all, he’d had a good life. But Petra...he re
gretted leaving Petra. He loved her so, so much.
In the midst of his maudlin thoughts, a Plexiglas cane whistled past his eyes and slashed full force into Paulsen’s face. The man screamed, covering the bleeding weal across his eyes. She hit him again across the cheek and he reared back, pulling Ruby with him. Rubio braced with everything he had inside, braced against the bitter edge of life and death and fought to escape him.
“Hit his hand, baby,” Ruby whispered, because he didn’t have the energy to yell. “Hit it hard.”
She struck Paulsen’s wrist with vicious force and his fingers jerked open. Ruby was free, scooting away from the window’s edge. He shoved Petra toward the couch, back to safety, then picked up the cane. When Paulsen came at him, he slashed him across the chest with all his strength. Paulsen reeled back with a wail of pain and tilted over the edge. He grabbed for Ruby, but this time he couldn’t reach him. He clawed at thin air, once, twice, with his great grasping hands, and then he was gone.
There was a moment of shock, and silence. “Petra.” Ruby spun around and tried to stand up, but he couldn’t. His side ached with a dull pain. “Petra, where are you?”
She flew to him, dragging him away from the window, as far away as she could. Now that the life-or-death struggle was over, he realized he was bleeding everywhere, from a thousand large and small cuts, but he was more worried about her. “Are you okay?” He touched her arms, her legs. She wasn’t hurt. She was alive. He held her face in his hands, leaving trails of blood everywhere. “I’m sorry,” he said, looking at his shredded palms. “I’m a mess.”
“Oh, God. You need a hospital.” She ran for her phone and dialed, shaking from head to toe. She was crying so hard she had to keep repeating herself to the person on the line. Ruby stared at the clear cane lying on the floor near the kitchen. He didn’t think he could bring himself to use it ever again. All the roses from the performance were still scattered over by the door.
“He went out the window,” she sobbed into the phone. It jolted Ruby. No, not him, Paulsen. Paulsen had gone out the window. “I think he’s dead, and my partner is hurt.” Her voice rose in panic. “There’s so much blood. Please hurry.”
“It’s okay, baby,” he said when she hung up. “Everything’s going to be okay.” He wanted to get up and hold her, and comfort her, but he was having a really hard time finding the energy to move. The world went hazy as she hurried over to him. “Don’t cry, Petra. He’s gone now. He can’t scare you anymore.” He patted her hair to soothe her as she sobbed into his chest.
“You scared me,” she cried. “You scared me so bad.”
“And you didn’t listen to me,” he reminded her in a reproachful whisper. “Bad girl, when you don’t listen. Even if you saved my life.”
*** *** ***
Petra sat beside Mem on the couch in the private hospital room. Rubio slept in the bed, though he seemed far too large for the narrow, institutional mattress. They’d sedated him because he was so agitated, and because he had so many cuts, so many splinters of glass embedded in his skin. Each had to be picked out one by one, each wound covered in antibiotic cream and bandages. The only really deep cut was a gash on his side that took sixty stitches.
As for Petra, she had no physical injuries except a bruise on her leg, probably from the last time Ruby shoved her back. Emotionally, she was a lot worse off. She couldn’t stop shaking, couldn’t stop thinking about Paulsen and his grisly death. It might have been Ruby’s death, she thought over and over. Or yours. The entire episode was burned in her brain, Paulsen’s flailing arms, his fury, the look on his face as he lurched backward…
She’d texted Mem and Liam on the way to the hospital, and Mem had arrived first, holding her in the waiting room until her volcanic shudders eased. Liam came later, when Ashleigh and baby Alanna were settled and sleeping a few floors above them. He looked exhausted, his features tense with concern.
“Petra, how are you? Are you all right?” He crossed the room in two strides and pulled her into a smothering embrace. “I can’t believe this happened. I can’t believe that fucking lunatic got to you after all.”
“It’s not your fault,” she said to calm him. “And I’m fine. Mostly fine. There’s just…stuff I saw that I wish I could forget.” She shivered, burying her face against his shoulder. “He put a gun against Ruby’s head and I was so afraid he’d shoot him. I couldn’t breathe. He—he tried to push Ruby out the window. He almost did.”
“I’m so sorry.” Liam rubbed her back as she trembled against him. “I’m so sorry about what happened. But everything will be okay. Ruby will be okay. And Paulsen…”
Is dead. Splattered on the sidewalk. She closed her mind to that thought as Liam released her and crossed to Ruby’s bed, taking in his bandaged arms and hands.
“He’s all cut up,” she said in a quavery voice.
“Ruby will be fine. He’ll be running around annoying everyone again within a week or two. He’s a tough guy.”
Liam’s words triggered more flashbacks: Ruby grunting and grappling with Paulsen mere feet from the window, from the eight-story drop.
“Pictures. I need baby pictures,” she begged. “Distract me, please. Show me your little girl.”
They sat near the bed while Liam flicked through about a hundred photos he’d taken since Alanna’s birth just before midnight. “Look at her hair,” he said, the epitome of the proud father. “She’s so beautiful. Her eyes look like Ashleigh’s. She’s so soft, like a...a cotton ball. A beautiful, sweet little cotton ball.”
Petra glanced over at Mem, who stifled a smile. “She’s even prettier than a cotton ball,” she said. “And I love her name.”
“It’s Irish. God, she’s just...oh, look at this one. It almost looks like she’s smiling.”
“It’s good luck for a newborn to smile,” said Mem. “She will surely be a blessed child.”
Liam chuckled. “You can say it. She’ll be a spoiled child. But that’s okay.”
The man was ecstatic, glowing from the inside. So much for Ashleigh’s worries about a father’s love. Petra felt a pang of sadness, that her father had never taken a hundred pictures of her, or called her a sweet little cotton ball. She had to make peace with it. She had to accept that she was fatherless and move on. At least she’d had her mother’s love, which was more than some kids had. She had Rubio’s love too, and she’d taken it for granted.
She swallowed down a choking sob. “No, I’m okay,” she said quickly at Liam and Mem’s concerned glances. “I just keep remembering how close...how close I came to losing him tonight.”
Not just tonight. Forever. She’d almost given him up, the man who loved her more than life itself. He would have gone out that window to save her, she was sure of it. When she thought of how she’d treated him, how she’d pushed him away, the tears started up again, even harder than before.
Liam hugged her while Mem went for more tissues. “It’s okay,” Liam murmured. “Ruby’s okay. I mean, he’s gonna wake up a little cranky, but everything’s going to be fine.”
“No, I was awful to him,” she sobbed. “I’ve been awful and cold from the start because of my stupid fears.”
“Fears are never stupid,” said Mem. “But they are sometimes unfounded.”
“I’ll never be able to make it up to him. All this stuff he went through since he met me... He almost died.”
Liam made a soft sound. “He never lived before he met you. So, I don’t know. Is almost dying as bad as never living in the first place?”
“Mamãe?” Rubio stirred, coming to wakefulness. “Mamãe, você tá chorando?”
The three of them hurried over to the bed. Ruby tried to turn over and groaned. “Don’t move,” Liam said, pushing him back. “You have a shitload of stitches.”
“Where is Petra? Petra fell down?” His face twisted into a haggard mask of torment. “Oh God, I tried to save her.”
“I’m here,” she said, leaning close to him. “I’m right here. I’
m okay.”
“I think he’s still sleeping,” said Liam. “The sedatives.”
“Don’t wake him,” advised Mem.
“He’s half-awake though. He’s scared.” Liam touched his arm. “Petra’s okay, Ruby. I promise, she’s fine.”
He shook his head. “She left me. She left me, Liam. She’s gone.”
“No, she’s right here. She’s the one touching your hair.”
“Oh.” He closed his eyes again and went still. “I thought it was my mother.”
Petra pressed her lips to his cheek. “You can call your mom in a while. I’m here and I’m fine. It’s okay to sleep now.”
He seemed to do that for a few precious seconds, but then he came awake again, caught between consciousness and lingering sedation. “I don’t want to sleep. Paulsen—”
“Is at the city morgue,” said Liam. “He’s not going to bother either of you anymore.” He eased Ruby’s head back on the pillow. “Relax so you don’t hurt yourself.”
“I think he stabbed me. Filho da puta. I have very bad pain in my side.”
Petra covered her mouth, torn between crying and laughter. Rubio was most certainly alive, and his usual belligerent self. At the sound of her laughter his eyes finally focused on her. He blinked and reached out to touch her cheek. “Petra. Thank God. You didn’t fall out the window?”
She shook her head, swallowing back tears. “I didn’t fall out, no. I’m totally fine. How are you?”
“My side hurts. I’m not sure I can dance tonight. I’ll try.”
“You’re not dancing tonight. You’re going to need a break, but it’s okay. Edward knows the part.”
“Edward?” Ruby looked at Liam, his eyes clouding with confusion. “Why are you here? Everything’s okay?”
The sedation seemed to be wreaking havoc on his ability to have a focused conversation. Liam soothed his friend. “Everything’s fine. I’m here because Ash had the baby. They’re sleeping upstairs.”
Fever Dream Page 24
