by J. S. Scott
“Don’t ever let go of your dreams, Ruby,” he warned.
“There are dreams, and then there’s reality. My real life was way too far away from my dreams to even consider starting my own business after my parents died. I just wanted to get a job. Any job. But when you’re dirty, homeless, and have absolutely no skills, nobody is going to take a chance on somebody like that.”
“I’m willing,” he shot back.
“Yeah,” I agreed. “Sometimes I have to wonder if your brain is completely functional.”
“I have an IQ of 155, so I’m technically a genius,” he said with mock defensiveness. “And I double majored in business and cybersecurity in college, but I was already a damn good hacker even before I went to school.”
“Okay, so maybe there’s just one tiny portion of your brain that’s dysfunctional,” I answered as I smiled.
I’d already known that Jett was gifted. He carried around a lot more useless facts in his head than I did.
“Not true,” he insisted. “I guess you just need to understand that you deserve every dream you’ve ever imagined.”
His words made me mute. I’d never believed that I was worth much of anything. I’d never felt worthy of being pulled out of homelessness and poverty. Probably because my self-esteem had always been bad.
“Thank you,” I finally said in a quiet but sincere tone.
“For what?”
“For being you,” I replied simply.
What else could I say? There was no way to really explain how special Jett was.
“I’m not all that great,” he muttered humbly.
Fun fact: Jett knew how to encourage and look after other people, but he didn’t think it was a big deal or that he was special in any way.
“You are pretty great,” I answered sleepily. “You just don’t see it.”
I closed my eyes, and fell back to sleep to the sounds of the ocean.
Maybe it was the knowledge that Jett was so close that kept any and all bad dreams away for the rest of the night.
Ruby
“You know what happened to you wasn’t normal, right?”
I fidgeted on the couch I had planted my ass on when I’d entered the psychologist’s office.
Dr. Annette Romain was a pleasant and insightful therapist as far as I could tell. But she asked probing questions that weren’t all that easy to talk about. Somehow, she’d seemed to wring things from my soul that had been so deeply buried that I thought they would never rise to the surface.
But as all of my emotions reemerged, so did my sense of hopelessness and sorrow.
I’d already spilled everything about my uncle, things that I’d never told anyone, not even Jett.
After Jett had discovered my history, or what he knew about it, he’d booked an appointment with a counselor for me today. Logically, I knew I had issues from my past, but I didn’t necessarily want to face them or have them brought out. I would have preferred to just forget.
I looked up at the blonde woman sitting in a chair across from my position on the couch.
Did I know that my life hadn’t been normal? “It was all I knew,” I finally answered honestly.
She nodded. “When it’s the only life you’ve known, it’s easy to start thinking it’s normal, or at least it’s your normal, even when you know the majority of young people your age have an entirely different reality.”
“Sometimes I feel like I did something to deserve it,” I confessed quietly.
“You didn’t,” Dr. Romain said firmly. “You were a child. The issues were your uncle’s and never yours. You were an innocent victim who developed coping skills that you aren’t going to need anymore.”
“Like my trust issues?” I asked. “I don’t trust anyone. I’m not sure I ever can.”
“A certain amount of caution is a good thing, but not trusting somebody who has never given you reason not to have faith in them can be detrimental, Ruby.”
“I’m afraid to trust Jett,” I blurted out. “Even after all he’s done to help me, I’m just waiting for the next bad thing to happen to me. I’m waiting for the bomb to drop on this whole Cinderella fantasy I’m living right now. Maybe that’s not fair, but I can’t control those fears.”
“Ruby, you need to be patient and give yourself some time. You’re anxious, and that’s common for anybody who has gone through the kind of trauma that you’ve experienced. But I want to help you sort out what’s reasonable fear, and what isn’t. And I want you to really understand that none of your past was ever your fault. Nor was your homelessness.”
Unshed tears were blurring my vision and I blinked them away as I said, “I’d like that. I don’t want to live my whole life being afraid.”
“You’re brave, Ruby. I know you don’t see that right now, but I hope that you will eventually. You survived five years on the streets with no resources except your intelligence. The fact that you came out of that relatively unscathed is pretty extraordinary. You used the resources available to you as best you could to get through having no stable place to live.”
I sighed. “I don’t feel smart. I feel like a loser.”
“Is it logical for you to feel that way? You had no other choices.”
“I guess I’m finding out that my feelings and logic don’t really jive together all that well.”
Dr. Romain sent me an empathetic smile. “Many times, they don’t. Especially when you come from a highly dysfunctional and abusive background. Your reality is different.”
My reality had always been all about survival. “I don’t know anything else except how to stay alive anymore,” I admitted hesitantly.
“Of course you don’t,” Dr. Romain said gently. “But now that you’re safe, those instincts that served you well before will hamper you as you try to build a life for yourself.”
I knew she was right. If I was always fearful about when the next bomb was going to drop, it was going to be hard to concentrate on anything else. Jett had given me opportunity, and a home. I didn’t want to blow my chance at a new life because of old baggage.
“I don’t want to be afraid anymore,” I told her as the tears continued to threaten. “And I want to be able to trust Jett. He’s helped me so much, and I don’t think he has a single ulterior motive in giving me a hand up. But that’s hard for me to accept. Who does that? Who helps someone they don’t even know?”
“Ruby, some people do that. Good people. Plenty of them do exist. For what it’s worth, Mr. Lawson is worried about you. I talked to him at length when he contacted me to make an appointment for you. He grilled me about everything from my methods of counseling to my education.”
“He talked to you about me?” I asked with surprise.
“Just the basics of your situation, and I won’t be speaking to him again. Now that I’ve seen you as a patient, anything you tell me will always be confidential. But he wanted to make sure I was the right counselor for you.”
“See, I don’t understand that. Why does he care about me? I’m nobody to him.”
Dr. Romain held out a box of tissues. I took them, but didn’t remove any from the box. I wasn’t crying, and I didn’t plan on crying. But my voice was cracking with emotion.
“Some people do care, Ruby. You just haven’t experienced that side of humanity very much. But it does exist. Your parents sound like they were very good people, but they didn’t have anything to give. They were focused on you and the survival of your family. Does the fact that Jett cares scare you?”
“Yes. But I’m grateful that he does.”
“You deserve it, and you should have had somebody who cared that you were homeless long before now,” Dr. Romain said firmly. “We just need to get you to the point where you know that you’re worthy of taking a hand up.”
“Then you have a lot of work to do,” I mumbled.
>
“Are you afraid of Jett?” she probed.
I shook my head. “No. I’m not afraid of him. I’m just scared that I’ll disappoint him.”
“So you like him?” she asked. “Sometimes it’s hard to get close to a man after you’ve been abused by one.”
“He’d never abuse me,” I said emphatically. “I can’t say I completely understand what he’s doing, but I know he wants to help me. I just don’t understand why.”
“Then he’s probably the first person you could learn to trust,” Dr. Romain told me.
“I’m attracted to him,” I blurted out, telling my counselor the one thing that was really eating at me. “I know it’s weird because I hardly know him, but I’ve been drawn to him from the beginning. And I’ve actually never felt this way before.”
“Sexually attracted?” she asked to clarify.
I nodded. “Yes. But it’s more than just that. I feel like we understand each other even though we come from completely different worlds. He’s been hurt, both physically and emotionally. I guess that’s why I connect with him. We’ve both known pain, but in different ways.”
Dr. Romain sighed. “I have to caution you about getting involved with anybody on a sexual level. Until you can trust, I don’t think it’s a good idea. You need time to heal, Ruby. But you can deepen your friendship and learn to be okay with him helping you.”
I rolled my eyes. “Like he’d ever want me anyway? I find it highly unlikely. But feeling attracted to him isn’t comfortable for me.”
“Why wouldn’t he want you, Ruby?” she asked softly.
“Because I’m a nobody, and he’s a successful guy. Why would he want a homeless woman who never even finished high school?”
“You can get your GED very easily,” she argued gently. “And then continue on with college if that’s what you want. You’re very well spoken, and intelligent.”
“Too much time cooling off in the library,” I said flatly. “I spent many of my days in the library, and I read a lot. I always have, even as a kid.”
“That’s good,” she said. “I’m going to send you home with a workbook that has exercises for you to do between our sessions.”
“I’ll do them,” I said in a rush. I’d do almost anything to get over my anxiety and fears.
She nodded. “Are you ready to talk about your uncle and life growing up?”
I wanted to because it would probably help to get my past out in the open between us, but I finally shook my head. “Not yet. Not him.”
It’d been hard enough for me to cough up the basic information. I wasn’t ready to go in-depth about every occurrence.
“That’s perfectly okay,” she replied. “We don’t have to discuss it to get you going on cognitive therapy. But I hope you’ll be comfortable enough eventually, and if you want, to file charges in Ohio.”
Honestly, I wasn’t sure I’d ever be okay with talking about my uncle, but ever since Jett had mentioned the fact that this could happen to somebody else, I knew I was going to have to talk. There had already been too much time for him to find another victim.
“I just can’t talk about him right now,” I admitted. I got nauseous every time I even thought about my uncle.
“Then maybe you can tell me why, after all we’ve discussed, you refuse to cry?”
Oh, no. I really didn’t want to go there. “Because my uncle loved to make me cry,” I answered simply.
She nodded. “Tell me more about your relationship with your parents?” Dr. Romain suggested, changing the subject. “Did you love them?”
I nodded. “Yes. I loved my grandmother, too. When they died, I had nobody.”
“Yet you managed to survive. You should be proud of that instead of being ashamed. Most people will never know that kind of hardship, Ruby.”
I thought for a moment and let everything she’d just said really sink into my brain.
I could at least consider the possibility that nothing that happened was my fault. But it was hard to let go of a lifetime of blaming myself for everything.
“Jett is giving me a chance to make my own future,” I said, thinking aloud. “It’s my turn to choose.”
“Take the help he’s giving. You’re entitled to a chance to make your own life now,” she suggested.
“I’ve always felt guilty,” I said softly. “I’m not sure I can get away from that.”
“We’re going to work on changing those feelings, Ruby,” Dr. Romain said reassuringly.
“I’m ready,” I told her.
Judging by this first session, counseling was going to be agonizingly painful, but I hoped with Dr. Romain’s help, I’d come out of it feeling a lot more confident and ready to take on the world from a way different position than I’d been in before I’d met Jett.
I didn’t ever want to feel helpless and hopeless again.
Ruby
“Did you know that Seattle was the home of the first gas station in the world when it was built in 1907?” I asked Jett as I got ready to put a pan of lasagna in the oven.
He’d mentioned that the Italian dish was one of his favorites, and had asked if we could hit a restaurant that served it. I’d insisted on getting the groceries and making it myself now that my foot was completely healed. If nothing else, I could at least feed Jett since I had the skills.
I’d been through four sessions of counseling with Dr. Romain, and I’d been doing my homework every single night. I couldn’t say I’d seen a ton of improvement, but I was slowly losing my fear of something bad happening. Slowly, I was just allowing myself to enjoy the time I spent with Jett without questioning it.
He looked up from the laptop he was using at the kitchen table. “Exactly how many facts do you have in that head of yours?” he joked.
“About seventeen years of them,” I answered. “I started going to our local library in Ohio when I was five, and I never stopped.”
“I live in Seattle, but I had no idea the first gas station was built there,” he answered.
“But you didn’t grow up there, right?” I asked curiously as I turned my back to him while I put the final layer of cheese on top of the mountain of meat, pasta, and cheese I’d prepared.
“I grew up in Rocky Springs, Colorado,” he verified.
“What’s it like in Colorado?”
He chuckled. “Rocky Springs is quiet. Pretty much a night and day difference between Seattle and Rocky Springs.”
“Why did you leave?” I asked curiously.
“When my parents died, I guess all of us wanted to get away, and my company was getting too big to stay away from a big tech city.”
“But Harper and Dani are there now,” I mentioned.
“Both of them were wanderers. Harper is an architect, and she moved around building homeless shelters. And Dani was a foreign correspondent who was covering mostly the Middle East. So they never really made a home for themselves anywhere else.”
“So you knew the Colter family from childhood?”
I was aware of the Colter family, even though I didn’t exactly follow the news of the super-rich. I recognized the Colter name because Blake Colter was a senator, and he was vocal about his opinions.
“Yep,” he affirmed. “I was friends with all of them, and my parents were friends with their mom. But I mostly stayed in contact with Marcus, and then we were even tighter once he formed PRO.”
I put the lasagna in the oven and grabbed a couple of sodas from the fridge, setting one in front of Jett before I sat in the chair across the table from him. “Do you ever regret it because of your accident?” I asked. “Do you wish you’d never gotten involved in PRO?”
“Never,” he said as he closed his laptop. “We saved a lot of lives, many of them women and kids. If I had the choice, I’d do it all over again. I lived through the accident, and they would ha
ve died if Marcus hadn’t formed PRO.”
“Wouldn’t somebody else just have taken your place?” I popped the top on my soda and took a sip.
He shrugged. “Maybe. But they wouldn’t have been as good as I am, and they may not have been successful at locating those women and kids. Marcus asked my brother Carter to sign up, too, but it wasn’t his thing. I did fine solo.”
I thought it was interesting how Jett brushed off most compliments, but he was pretty damn cocky when it came to his technical skills. He always claimed to be the world’s best hacker.
Since he was gifted, he was probably right.
I leaned back in the chair and crossed my arms. “So you’re the best? There’s nobody better than you are?”
Jett and I had recently fallen into a pattern of challenging each other, and joking around about little things.
He shot me a mischievous grin. “Without a doubt. I’ve never met a system that I couldn’t breech. Which is why I’m so good at designing systems to protect from a cyberattack.”
I felt his brash smile way down to my toes, and everywhere in between. My heart skittered, and I tried to ignore the flutter in my stomach as I looked at him.
Jett was still an enigma to me. He was unlike any guy I’d ever met.
“When are you going to start teaching me about what you do? I’d like to get familiar with your company if I’m going to help you.”
“We’ll wait until we get back to Seattle,” he said.
“I started researching some basic programming on the computer. Maybe if I can learn some of the basics, it will help.” Computers weren’t exactly one of my strong areas since I’d had very little time to work on them as an adult. But I already knew the basics, and I could learn.
“Ruby, I want you to do whatever you want to do. Once you get a GED, you’ll be able to go to college if that’s what you want, and that should come first,” he grumbled as he popped the top on his soda and took a gulp.
