Winning Ruby Heart

by Jennifer Lohmann

  Ruby was on solid ground again. She hugged his disdain close to her heart, squeezing tighter and tighter until her anger popped and the noise brought tears to her eyes. “Halfway isn’t my style any more than it is yours,” she said to the window.

  “I’m trying to do the right thing here. I’m trying to give you an out.” His fingers curled slowly around the leather wheel cover, the tendons on the backs of his hands standing out in full relief until his fists were clenched and his knuckles stole the show. The pressure of the joints turned his skin white as they threatened to burst through. “Ruby, I care about what happens to you. I don’t want to see you get hurt, and I certainly don’t want to be a part of anything that puts you in harm’s way.”

  “Is this about a concern for my safety or the fact that you don’t want to feel guilty when I get more nasty comments?”

  “Dammit, Ruby!” Micah hit the steering wheel again, and the blow rang through Ruby’s bones. “I am not your parents or your coach and I’m not trying to control your life for my ends.”

  She scoffed. “You could have fooled me. First you say this series will help me. Then you say it will hurt me. I know that NSN is putting out the money because they think this is going to be a ratings bonanza. You think it’s going to catapult your career to another level, like your first interview with me did. Not just the first paraplegic sports reporter, but the first paraplegic anchor on SportsDaily. I’ll bet that promotion comes with a window office.”

  When Micah stopped at the light, the tendons on his neck were popping out enough that Ruby wondered if hitting the steering wheel with his hand wouldn’t be enough next time. He looked ready to bang his head on it. But then he took a deep breath and turned to face her. “You’re right. You said no to an interview in Iowa and I followed you to Indiana because I knew that the Ruby Heart comeback show would give me the type of ratings most reporters can only dream about. And you know what would be even better for my ratings?”

  She shrugged, trying to pretend the intensity on his face wasn’t scarier than his anger.

  “If something tragic happened to you, and, honestly, a debilitating injury would be better than death—something so tragic people could tsk and tell themselves how much kinder it would have been if you’d died.”

  The pain in his words pressed against her skin. She had vague memories of his accident and had probably expressed the very same sentiment to her friends at one time. Cruel and stupid and with a complete lack of understanding of what made life worth living. How many people had said that to his face and how many more had expressed it with their eyes?

  “The executive producers at NSN would chew me up and spit me out, wheelchair and all, if this series got canceled. I was told to get you to agree, and I’m pretty sure they’ll turn a blind eye to any tactic I use.”

  She was opening her mouth to argue with him, to accuse him of using the kiss as part of his tactics, when he continued in soft voice that wrapped around her insecurities like a wool blanket, “If you want to go through with this, I will, but I want to make sure you know the risks.”

  She put her hand on his thigh and spent several seconds waiting for him to react before she realized her mistake. When she moved her hand to his shoulder, his muscles tightened. “I know the risks. While it’s been a long time since anyone cared enough about me to do more than sabotage my Wikipedia page, I know the procedure, and the police have certainly explained to me what they can and cannot do to help.”

  Micah took his hand off the wheel and rested it on hers for a brief second that she would tuck in her memory and pull out later. “You’re fighting, Ruby Heart, and I’ve always admired a fighter. If you don’t know anything else, know that.”

  By the time he’d pulled up in front of her house, Ruby’s world was upside down. She didn’t quite know what to make of Micah. Ascribing selfishness to his motivations made them easier for her to swallow, but it didn’t taste right. He might actually have her best interests at heart, putting him in a category previously only Josh and Haley had occupied in her life. And unlike Josh and Haley, Micah had no blood ties to justify his concern.

  Once, he had hated her.

  They sat in his car at her curb, silence booming all around them. Since that kiss, she’d hopped out of his car and run into her house, splitting the awkwardness in two if not actually alleviating it. She put her hand on his shoulder again, hoping he would turn to face her. He flinched, but his gaze remained fixed firmly ahead. The time in her life when she’d be willing to beg had passed. She slipped her hand from his shoulder.

  The energy in the car relaxed. All he said as she eased her tired muscles out of the vehicle was “I’ll be in touch,” in a flat, emotionless voice.

  Dotty greeted her when she walked into the house, following her to the bedroom and lying on the floor with a huff. Ruby tossed her gym bag onto the bed, but she couldn’t throw her sadness away as easily. Her gym clothes felt like lead as she pulled them out of the bag, and her body was so fatigued that she missed the hamper when she tossed them.

  She sighed and walked over to the hamper to pick up her mess, Dotty’s eyes following her with curiosity. When she picked up her pants, her phone fell to the floor with a clunk. The message light was blinking. A Google alert, which she knew she shouldn’t read but did anyway. Apparently someone hated her enough to post a GIF on Tumblr. The picture was an old one, Ruby Heart at her prime with textbook-perfect running form. The sentiment expressed wasn’t a new one. “Ruby Heart runs like a girl. I’ll teach her to fuck like a woman.”

  She’d clicked the link and now the stranger had invaded her bedroom. She took slow steps backward until her legs hit the bed and she could sit down. She didn’t know how long she sat on the bed fighting the negative images beating at the edges of her mind, but Dotty was whimpering for attention when Ruby finally surfaced, her decision made.

  She would train smarter and better than she ever had before. When she won a race, the man who’d made this GIF would learn how fast and hard a girl could run.

  * * *

  BACK ON THE NSN campus, Micah watched the video from this morning, tracking and logging information for the script later and for Amir. They would have to edit out the crowds that had formed around Amir as Ruby had shown off, a move he should have expected from her. Ruby Heart had been a spectacle at the Olympics, and it hadn’t just been her flashy clothes and her bright red lips. She’d been supremely confident in her body, and her present anxiety and indecision still rested on a bedrock of confidence.

  Derrick came into the editing room in time to catch the best moment of the morning. When Ruby had finished her squats, she’d taken a long drink of her water, then rubbed her hands together. Amir had caught every motion on camera as she’d bent her knees and, in a flash, leaped up to grab hold of the rack bar above her. She’d hung from the bar for a moment before bending at the waist and lifting her legs up in an arc until her toes touched her hands. Then she lowered her legs, neither slowing nor speeding up as her legs went down, down, down. Without even a blink, she repeated the process.

  “And she’s not doing steroids now? You’re sure of that, right?”

  Micah couldn’t pull his eyes away from her athleticism and grace to look at his boss. “It was blood doping, but yes, this is all Ruby Heart.” Including the showmanship.

  “No weights on her ankles, though.”

  “This isn’t about strength.” Ruby was on her third lift. “This is about control. Not letting her body decide when to stop. Pushing through any fatigue and pain for one more lift.”

  Together Derrick and Micah watched Ruby do seven more lifts, all with the same amount of control, even as her face scrunched up in fatigue and her muscles shook. Ruby Heart, America’s Darling Ruby Heart, hadn’t had the maturity not to let her body rush her movements. The feat they were watching on the screen was more than strength and athletici
sm; it was a full understanding of what it meant to lower your head to the wind blowing in the other direction and power through to the next day.

  Her feet hanging under her, Ruby looked up at her hands, pulled herself into a pull-up—one last final show—then dropped to the mat below her.

  “That was amazing,” Derrick said, leaving the room.

  Micah continued watching the tape.

  Amir had caught more than Ruby’s control on camera. He’d caught Eric rushing over to tell her how cool she was and Amir’s own words, said out of the corner of his mouth. “Jealous?”

  “Of whom?” Micah’s reply was muffled but understandable.

  “Ruby.”

  Even though he was removed from that moment by several hours, Amir’s comment still burned. Everyone thought the disabled man would be jealous of Ruby. Not even Amir, who Micah had worked closely with for three years, considered that Micah might be jealous of Eric, the man who could touch Ruby’s shoulder muscles in amazement without worrying that his longing would show on his face.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  RUBY SAT IN her house, staring at the article on becoming a personal trainer on the database the librarian had shown her. The article didn’t really tell her anything she didn’t already know, though it did provide a link to a personal trainer program and an application form. Once she’d finished reading the rest of the article, she switched to the website on dog training.

  The summer continued the routine she and Micah had set earlier. She met Eric three times a week for his training. She and Dotty did their runs at the shelter. And unless he was out of town on a story, Micah picked her up three times a week and they went to the gym together. A simple life scheduled around two training calendars—hers and Eric’s—and occasional dinners with her family and lunches with Haley.

  Dotty rested her hand on Ruby’s knee, moaning a little when Ruby scratched behind her ear, though never taking her large black eyes off the treats on the desk. Without the dog, Ruby might have considered moving back into her parents’ house as soon as the euphoria of living on her own had worn off and reality had set in. The silence of the car rides with Micah had made her old weight room especially tempting.

  The argument between her and Micah about her dropping out of the NSN series had been the last time they’d had an “intimate” conversation. And he’d been the one to run away. Since then Micah seemed to have canned answers for every topic she came up with. And no matter what she talked about or what questions she asked, he turned the conversation back to her. One-sided conversations were interviews. Every car ride had started to feel more like Micah was interested in what might make a good story line for his series. Anything else was off the table.

  So she stopped talking.

  When he pulled up in twenty minutes, he would be so close that she could smell his aftershave and yet far enough away that she would miss him.

  Ruby pushed her chair away from the computer, snatched up the pile of dog treats and headed for the living room, Dotty dogging her heels. Jodie had thought Dotty was trained, but it turned out the dog only knew how to sit and heel. Working with her on other tricks had given Ruby something to concentrate on besides her looming need for a job and the Google alerts she had stopped clicking on.

  Dotty knew the training drill and sat on the rug before Ruby had to ask her to. Today, they were practicing waiting. Ruby put a treat on the dog’s nose, gave the dog the command and then put her hands behind her back, trying desperately not to laugh when Dotty’s eyes crossed on the treat. Dotty’s desperate whine echoed Ruby’s feelings about the change in her friendship with Micah. He hadn’t just kissed her, he’d said he cared about her. And then pulled away. The tease.

  “Go,” she said. Dotty lowered her nose and snapped up the treat from the rug. Then the dog sat and held her snout steady for the next torture session. Gluttons for punishment, both of them. She set the next treat on Dotty’s nose and told her to wait. Then they stared each other down.

  “Go,” she said again to Dotty. The treat didn’t have time to hit the rug before her dog snapped it up. Maybe Dotty could learn how to catch a Frisbee, even if she’d shown no interest in fetch so far. Or dog-agility competitions. Those looked like fun, and Dotty definitely had the stamina for it.

  She commanded Dotty to lie down, and Ruby set the treat on the rug, beyond the reach of her dog’s shiny black nose. “Wait,” she said again. Dotty whined, but she waited.

  Fun though it might be, dog-agility training was a distraction from filling out the personal training program application. Self-destruction, a Ruby Heart specialty.

  Micah might be using her to further his career, but he was also right. She liked physical activity. She liked thinking about training programs and muscle building and nutrition. And from coaching Eric, she’d learned that she liked seeing someone push themselves until they learned they were faster and stronger than they had imagined. Refusing to try it simply because it had been Micah’s idea was stupid.

  Movement on the rug hauled Ruby’s mind back to Dotty, who was still lying on the rug, innocence radiating off her face. The treat was missing. Not even a crumb. Ruby hadn’t heard a crunch, which meant Dotty had swallowed the cookie whole—probably before she had a chance to taste it.

  Ruby huffed. Dotty blinked more innocence.

  At least Ruby could cross professional dog trainer off her list of career options, which wasn’t all that helpful. She had only ever been certain about running and she needed to get comfortable with the rest of her life being, well, the rest of her life.

  At the blow of a car horn, Ruby patted Dotty on the head, grabbed her gym bag and headed out the door. Micah sat, smiling at her, good-looking, confident and in her life for all the wrong reasons. She got in the car wishing she were less confused about him.

  * * *

  THE SILENCE OF the weekly car rides only tightened the knots in Micah’s neck and shoulders. Stretching his neck by holding an ear to his shoulder didn’t do anything for the tension in his back.

  Throughout his football days, Micah had always been insistent that his teammates take responsibility both for their successes and their slipups. And he had always been strict with himself when assigning blame. Only fair to expect out of yourself what you expected out of your team.

  And Micah was responsible for the silence pounding between them.

  All of which made the car rides to and from the gym more painful. Ruby’s confusion about the change in tone of their car rides was obvious. In every question she asked, he could feel her try to steer their relationship back to the intimate tone it had previously enjoyed. He would open his mouth to respond and then he’d remember their bargain.

  That bargain was the only thing keeping him on the correct side of a professional relationship, and each time she slipped her tight butt into his passenger seat, Micah’s professionalism tried to slip out the door. Again, dammit. He’d already slipped up majorly once.

  The kiss, the way he worried about her, the way he felt her presence in the car and, worse, the way he had to stop himself from leaving his apartment early so he’d be near her sooner... All of it was conflict of interest rearing its ugly head. Temptation to put his relationship with her above the truth of her story hung in front of his eyes, a perfectly formed piece of fruit ripe for the picking.

  The devil riding his shoulder cackled in his ear that someone else might pick her if Micah didn’t.

  But as he already knew, he had to push all thoughts of Ruby that weren’t professional out of his head. Besides, she had already expressed her contempt for his concern. In trying to trap and cage her, he was no different than her parents, she’d said. Trying to control her and manipulate her talents for himself, with little regard for what she wanted.

  He’d call her out for that piece of revisionist history, except Micah didn’t think Ruby w
as pushing all the responsibility for her successes and her failures onto her parents because she blamed them and only them for her past. He was pretty certain that Ruby Heart didn’t know what to make of her own competitive nature and found it easier to pretend it didn’t and had never existed than to accept she might want to compete—to win—again.

  She needed to accept and embrace her own nature before the fifty-mile race scheduled for October. A top finish by her would be better for his ratings, sure, but he wanted her to want a top-five finish for herself, as well. And he wanted to be there with her when she broke free of her past. Even if he was there as the reporter and not as the friend.

  He missed Ruby the friend. Whether the distance he’d put between them was for his own good or hers was irrelevant. He missed sharing with her. And all the blame for the break in their relationship fell squarely on his shoulders. Fine. He could take it.

  “How’s Eric’s training going?” he asked, desperate to fill the silence in the car. He took the opportunity to enjoy the pert upturn of her nose as she stared out the passenger window.

  “Good. The Chicago marathon is in a couple weeks and he’ll do much better than his time last year.” She twisted to look at him and he turned his attention back to the road. “Well, you know when it is—you’re racing in it.”

  “I am.”

  The silence stretched back into uncomfortable until Ruby finally looked back out the window and started talking again. “Do you do anything to celebrate?”

  Whether for his own benefit or hers, Micah let her see a little deeper into his life. Just this once. “My dad comes into town. We’ll probably go out to dinner.”

  “Nice. Haley’s going to come out and watch the race with me. So are Josh and Christine. Eric has some friends who will come out, too. This will be my fourth year down by U.S. Cellular Field, cheering.”

  “You went during your suspension?” Reason number one he didn’t want their conversations to get personal. The image of Ruby Heart on the sidelines of the Chicago marathon, banned from the very sport she was watching, not only made for good television, it also made him more interested in her as a person. Dangerous territory.