“I saw you race,” she said, and he remembered what she’d said in the hotel room in Iowa.
If he’d known at the time that she was on the sidelines and cheering him on, it would have made him angry. Now he was only angry with himself for caring.
“I used to stay to the bitter end, but Eric apparently has a tradition of going to this place on the South Side for Polish buffet afterward, and I don’t want to miss the celebration. Someone else will have to stay and cheer on the stragglers, I guess.”
All he could think of to say in response was a lame “I guess.” Reporters were probably not wanted at the dinner. Micah’s jealousy was his own damn fault—not that he had a right to any such feeling in regards to Ruby.
“The night before we’re doing my tradition—dinner and a game of some sort. You and your dad are both welcome.” She gave a pleased little shrug, an oddly feminine move for her. “I always told myself that the games primed my competitive spirit.” She laughed. “Which must be true because I hate losing, even at board games. The first time I ever beat Josh at a race was right after he bankrupted me at Monopoly. I think my humiliation at his razzing added boosters to my feet.”
The memory danced lightly in her voice; her past seemed to pull her down more than push her up. Every time Micah felt he had the new Ruby pegged, she did something unexpected like laugh or shrug. He could spend decades getting to know her.
“Eric would love to have you there, either before or after the race. I have never heard him talk about a network other than NSN. He even listens to NSN Radio while running.”
Jealousy pinged at his brain again. Much like regret, it was an emotion that existed outside himself and, as such, was useless.
As Ruby talked about how she would find the sports radio exhausting to listen to while running, Micah wondered if Eric was interested in having an NSN reporter at his celebration dinner or having the disabled NSN reporter at his dinner? Normally he didn’t care about a person’s motivations because he made what he wanted out of his life, but this was Ruby, and she’d messed with his expectations since the moment he’d met her.
Micah braked at a light, and suddenly the question he’d had since their dinner together in Indiana gurgled up in his throat, and he wasn’t able to swallow before it came out. “Why do you never ask about my paraplegia?” He’d spent ten years trying to get the rest of the world to see a person in a wheelchair rather than just a wheelchair. Ruby had gone the opposite way and not said anything at all. At first it had been refreshing. But after driving to and from the gym together all summer, it had become strange.
He’d interrupted her midsentence and she stared at him openmouthed for several seconds. Only after shutting her lips and several seconds of blinking did she answer his question. “I get the sense you don’t like talking about it.”
“I’ve got no problem talking about it. I don’t like it when it’s the only thing people notice about me. In your case, it seems to be the only thing you don’t notice about me.”
“I notice it about you. If you’ll remember, I stupidly commented on it after that first interview.”
“I haven’t forgotten.” Her comparison had been stupid, but also probably smarter than she’d realized. Everyone was defined by their bodies and the ways in which their bodies both enabled and failed them. The difference, of course, was that she could put on jeans and a T-shirt, say her name was Diana and disappear from Ruby Heart and all its associated baggage. Removed from his wheelchair, Micah was a grown man crawling through trash other people stepped over. He could change his name, change his job and go about his life as any other dude gettin’ by and he’d still be known first as the paraplegic instead of being just another guy.
“Of course, I want to know all about your body—its limits and how you find a way around them—but I don’t want to be intrusive. So I’ve not said anything. Especially since you’ve closed yourself off from me.”
“So it’s my job to make you comfortable with my disability?”
She blinked. “When you put it like that, no. It’s my job to be comfortable with it. With you. But you scare me. Less now than you used to, but...”
Her comment didn’t surprise him. He scared lots of people. He’d hoped for better out of Ruby. “Does the whimsy of fate scare you?”
She flinched. “Your disability doesn’t scare me. It’s a body, just different from mine. The power people have to wound comes first from their minds, not their limbs.” Even with his eyes on the road, he felt her gaze on his neck and shoulder. His muscles tightened even more. “You defeated me. On national television. I wasn’t used to having my ass handed to me, and I guess I’m still not. I worry what will happen when I slip up.” Out of the corner of his eye, he saw her shrug. “But I recovered and got smarter from that defeat, so I guess I can do it again.”
He stopped at the light before he turned to face her. “What am I to you?”
Her brows crossed and a little wrinkle appeared above her nose. The shadows of the sunlight shining through the car window deepened the wrinkle. Suddenly she looked older. “Is this a test?”
Her question prickled his skin. “If you love me you’ll...” had been the mantra of his childhood. His grandmama had been the queen of conditional love, only it wasn’t so much how she proved she loved him, but how Micah would prove he loved her. Succeeding wasn’t enough. He had to follow her every whim to prove he loved her.
No matter how much he loved his grandmama, she could never fully love him. The final straw that had broken their relationship had been in the rehabilitation hospital when he’d realized he could either be a cross for her to bear, as he’d been during his childhood, or he could move on with his life. When he’d declined her support, he’d failed her test and she’d never forgiven him for that. He’d never forgiven her for asking.
“I don’t think of it as a test.”
“Is there a right answer?”
“There’s a wrong answer.”
“Sounds like a test to me.”
Micah pulled into the parking spot at the gym and twisted the key to turn the car off. His movements were jerky and, if he wasn’t careful, he would let his irritation get the better of his body and break something. Maybe himself.
Out of the corner of his eye, he saw her reach for his leg. Then her hand stilled inches above his skin as she reconsidered. Finally she rested her palm on his arm, her fingers curling around and singeing his biceps. “I think your first instinct, the one to keep our relationship purely professional, was the right one.”
Micah’s heart sank deep into no-man’s-land when she removed her hand. Her fingers floated away from him, the side-angle view making them look detached from the rest of her body.
She left him alone in the car with his righteous anger, though he couldn’t figure out if she’d passed or failed. Which meant she was right; it had been a test. And suddenly it felt like he was the one who’d failed.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
MICAH MET HIS dad in the hotel lobby. His father, dressed in a suit and tie for their traditional dinner out at one of Chicago’s best restaurants the night before the marathon, raised an eyebrow at Micah’s jeans. “Do I need to change?”
“Not if you don’t want to.” Micah hadn’t told his dad about the change in plans, because he hadn’t been certain he would go to Ruby’s until he’d passed over the suits in his closet for a button-down that flattered his eyes. “We’re going to Ruby Heart’s for dinner and a board game tonight.”
Pretending not to notice the shock on his dad’s face wasn’t easy, but Micah did so anyway. Finally his dad nodded. “I guess I’ll get changed.” Then he gestured to the bank of elevators. As the doors closed on them, Micah stared at the ceiling while his father stared at him.
“So Ruby Heart, huh.”
“Yup.”
“I s
aw the interview. It was good.” His father waited for Micah to respond. Micah lowered his gaze from the mirrored ceiling to the mirrored doors and their stares ricocheted around the tight space. “It’s nice that you’re getting to know her better.”
The elevator dinged to a stop, a grating sound that made Micah’s back teeth hurt. “Dad, NSN is doing a series on ultramarathons, featuring Ruby. That’s all.”
His father was silent for the trip from the elevator to his hotel room, a courtesy that didn’t last past the closed door. “It’s just that, for example, you’ve never brought me over to a Blackhawk player’s house for board games.”
Despite the differences between his father’s four-star hotel room and the dumpy, roadside hotel Ruby had been staying in in Indiana, memories of her flooded his mind as he looked around his father’s room. The sagging elastic of her gym shorts that had tantalized him with the smooth skin of her stomach when she lifted her arms. The sight of her rumpled, unmade and probably uncomfortable hotel bed. The enchilada sauce at the corner of her mouth and the way he’d had to grip the table to keep from licking it off her.
“Maybe I should.” No one would suspect him of a sexual attraction to a hockey player. Though, maybe he was giving his bosses too much credit. They might suspect him of being able to be sexually attracted to Ruby, but they might also not believe Ruby could be sexually attracted to him.
But Micah hadn’t mistaken the heat in Ruby’s eyes when she looked at him. And if she thought she was being subtle when she checked him out at the gym, she was fooling herself.
His dad tossed his suit coat on the bed, followed by his tie, before rummaging around in his suitcase for a change of clothes. “Have you crossed a line?”
“No. At least not one I haven’t been able to repair.” If the silence of their drives to and from the gym was considered a repair.
“Repair for your career or for your relationship?”
“My relationship with Ruby is about my career.” And if he said it enough times, he would believe it.
“Well, this is the first girl since college you’ve brought me to meet, which has to mean something. I spent all of your childhood pretending work was a substitute for meaningful relationships. Don’t repeat my mistakes.”
“Work is all I’ve got right now.”
His dad tossed his slacks onto the bed and pulled on a pair of jeans. “No, your job is all you’ve allowed yourself. Hell, even in college I think you only surrounded yourself with pretty women because it was expected for your image as a college football star.”
Micah rolled over to the window and looked at the many lights still on in buildings around the Loop. All those other people putting their careers before their personal life. “I can keep any feelings I have for Ruby separate from my job.”
His dad placed a hand on his shoulder and they looked out over the city together. “I didn’t say you didn’t have the ability. I questioned whether or not you should. If you care about her, you’ll have to choose eventually, or figure out how to have both.”
Micah looked at his dad’s hand. The skin was old and dry, and he had put on a different watch and changed his shirt. All this effort to meet Ruby, even though Micah said she was only a job.
His father was hoping for too much. Work may be the reason his father was meeting Ruby, but it had also been the reason his father hadn’t met any previous girlfriends. By the time Micah had felt serious enough to introduce them to his family, the women had been irritated enough with his work schedule that they’d moved on.
“Well, I’m still curious. The only things I know about Ruby Heart are what I’ve read in the papers, and that was all stuff from five years ago.”
“She’s not what I expected.” His father seemed to understand—correctly—that what Micah meant was that none of this was what he expected.
* * *
THEY APPROACHED THE house together, Micah’s trepidations and his father’s curiosity as bright as the porch light. The barest sounds of laughter floated from the house. His father rang the bell.
The laughter stopped and Dotty barked. Enjoyment reverberated through Ruby’s face as she opened the door, brightening her eyes and flushing her skin, making her look radiant and joyful, much like she looked when running. “Micah! Oh, and Micah’s father.” She stuck out her hand in greeting. “I, um...well, welcome to dinner.”
His father looked at him out of the corner of his eyes, which Micah ignored in favor of pretending to contemplate the single step into the house. By the raise of his father’s brow, Micah knew he hadn’t fooled the man. At least his father didn’t make a face as Micah popped a wheelie to get his front wheels onto the stoop, grasped the doorjamb and propelled himself the rest of the way into the house. The three place settings were a dead giveaway that they hadn’t been expected. Uncharacteristically, Micah had acknowledged receipt of her emailed invitation but had not responded yes or no. Rude, but true. Jealousy had driven him here, and the presence of Eric’s girlfriend, Taylor, confirmed jealousy as a stupid thing to base any decision on.
“I was just setting another place at the table,” Ruby lied. No one bought it, but no one argued with her, either.
Micah looked up at his father, who greeted Eric and Taylor with an enthusiastic handshake to cover up how irritated his father was to have been put in the situation of uninvited guest. How much worse to explain that they were invited but that Micah had been stupid enough not to confirm that they were coming? Helping to set the table wasn’t quite enough to make up for his lack of RSVP.
When Eric and Taylor went into the kitchen to help Ruby get dinner, Micah’s father asked, “Is there a reason she didn’t expect us?” There was a tight scowl in his voice, and he placed a hand on Dotty’s head.
“A relationship with her could cost me my job.”
“Being achievement driven helped you in college and, later, to figure out what to do with your life after the accident. But a woman who puts you so far off your game only comes along once in a lifetime.”
“For most people, a chance to be an anchor at NSN doesn’t even come along once.”
“Either figure out how to have both, or pick one. Refusing to make up your mind is disrespectful to you both.”
No punch could have hurt worse.
* * *
AFTER THE INITIAL discomfort of Micah and his father’s surprise appearance, dinner relaxed into slurped spaghetti and conversation they could all chew on. Ruby had bought and prepared enough food for five people, continuing to hope until the last minute that Micah would say he was coming.
After everyone helped clear the table, Micah stayed in the kitchen with Ruby while she packed the leftovers and put away the dishes. If he was expecting questions, he was going to get them. “Why didn’t you tell me you were coming?”
He shrugged, his lush bottom lip chastened and downcast. “I guess I didn’t know myself.”
“Why are you here?”
The longing on his face when he looked at her shocked her, echoing the feelings in her heart when she thought about him. “You know we can’t have any relationship past my story.”
“That doesn’t answer why you’re here.” She rinsed the plates and handed them to him.
He looked from the plate to the dishwasher, the remnants of his gaze still sending shivers down her spine. “You know why I’m here.”
“To torture us both? The three days a week we spend at the gym together isn’t enough?”
“Is it enough for you?”
“I’m not the one putting barriers between us. I’d give up the series in a heartbeat if you asked.”
The plate she held out dripped onto the others already loaded into the dishwasher, the drops seeming to echo throughout the kitchen. Any conversation seeping in from the living room was drowned out.
“The series matters
to me. My career matters to me.”
Ruby remembered what it was like to want something so badly that you were willing to sell your soul to get it. She also knew that nothing was worth the cost. Of course, she thought, as Micah rolled out of the kitchen and back to the rest of her guests, maybe she was ascribing more to their mutual longing than she should.
She was glad she was only serving as cheerleader tomorrow, because she wouldn’t get much sleep tonight.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
“OKAY,” RUBY SAID, rubbing her hands as the five of them sat around the dinner table. She looked tired, Micah thought, or at least not as excited as she should be for her precompetition tradition. “The goal is to get points by building medieval France. Everyone has meeples—those are these little people-shaped things—and there’s a stack of tiles. Whether your meeple is a knight, a farmer, a monk or a thief depends on whether you put her on a road, in a castle or in a monastery, and all those plays are worth different points. Are we good so far?”
“Can we play a practice round?” Taylor, Eric’s girlfriend, asked.
“We won’t need one. Plus, the boys need to get to bed early tonight so they’ll be ready for tomorrow. With five people, the game will go quickly. It’s fun. And it’s easy.”
Micah watched Ruby finish explaining the rules. She might be tired and she might be keyed up from their discussion in the kitchen, but the more she talked about the game, the brighter her eyes got.
“Now, before I flip the starter tile over, everyone has to pick a team name.”
“But one person doesn’t make up a team,” Eric argued.
“You and your meeples are the team. And you’ve got to give them a name to rally around.” With her fists clenched, she made a rousing, aggressive gesture seen on TV screens during any huddle. Dotty barked.
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