Page 19 of Dare to Dance
“Later,” Dillon said to me. He shook hands with Tommy as though they were meeting for the first time.
Tommy acknowledged me with a flick of his head. I’d met him once before when Dillon had tried to collect his money, only to find that Tommy couldn’t pay him. Dillon had seemed too patient about the matter in my book, but his business was none of mine.
“I got your money,” Tommy said to Dillon.
I squatted down opposite Norma, who had tears in her eyes. I pressed my fingers against Ruby’s neck as I examined her face. Blood painted the area around her nostrils. Her eyes were beginning to swell, one more than the other. A cut on her eyebrow was bloody but didn’t appear to need stitches. Aside from that, she was definitely the girl who’d rocked my world back in the tenth grade—the very same one with a dark birthmark high on her left cheek, buried in the sea of freckles smattered around her nose. Fuck, it gutted me to see her in this condition.
Her pulse beat against my fingers. “I’m sure she’ll be fine. But to be safe, she should go to the hospital. She might have a concussion.”
Norma was fixated on me as though she was seeing a ghost.
I waved my hand in front of her face. “Hello?”
“She’ll be fine?” Norma’s voice cracked.
Tommy chuckled. “They don’t hit each other hard enough to kill.”
Dillon glared at him and so did I. Underground fights could be lethal. It didn’t matter how soft or hard a person punched. The right blow in the right spot could kill a fighter, as could one fall.
He returned a dirty look to Dillon. “What? You’ve been here enough to know they don’t.”
“Where did you find her?” I asked Tommy. There was no sense debating the safety of underground fights.
Tommy raised his hands shoulder height. “She found me. I don’t pick girls off the street, anyway. They always find their way down here.”
Dillon pointed to Ruby. “Is her name Ruby Lewis?”
“No,” Norma blurted out. “She just used the name Ruby for the fight.”
Tommy knitted his eyebrows.
I knew she was lying, but I would play along. The last thing I wanted to do was scare Norma or Ruby when she woke up. “Look,” I said to Norma, who reminded me of a cute little pixie. “I’m searching for someone who looks just like Ruby.” I pushed to my feet. “Tommy, you got some ice and a first-aid kit?”
“I’ll be back.” He headed into a room on the far side of the basement.
“Bring my money when you come back.” Dillon raised his voice then turned to me. “Well, man? Is that Ruby?”
I swung my attention to Norma. “We’re not here to hurt anyone. I want to help. I know your friend is Ruby Lewis.”
She puffed out her cheeks as she grabbed Ruby’s hand. “Then why did you ask?”
Tommy came back with a first-aid kit and a bowl of ice. I made quick work of getting the necessary bandages and antibiotic cream out. I took a gauze pad and dipped it in the small amount of water in the ice bowl. I was about to clean the blood off Ruby’s face when her eyelids flew open. She zeroed in on me, horror flashing in her blue-green eyes. She scrambled away as though I had just come back from the dead. Maybe I had. Maybe I was dead to her. Or maybe she was disoriented.
Norma ran to Ruby, who tried to stand but wobbled. Ruby said something in the blonde’s ear.
“Man, I thought you Maxwell brothers got all the girls, not scared them away,” Dillon said low.
“Not the time, dude,” I said as I went over to Ruby. “I’m sorry I startled you. I wasn’t planning on everything going like this. I just want to clean up your cuts.” If I started with “where is my kid,” she would take off for sure.
She jumped to her feet. “Let’s go, Norma.”
“He wants to help,” she said softly. “At least let him fix you up.”
Ruby grabbed Norma’s hand and tugged her to the stairs. Norma gave me a sorry look as she went willingly. Ruby was acting as if I was the devil on fire and had come to take her to Hell.
A pain stabbed my gut. I probably deserved whatever she wanted to throw my way, but she wasn’t leaving until I got answers. Sure, I couldn’t keep her there against her will, and I wouldn’t. But I had to find a way to make sure she didn’t leave.
She wants nothing to do with you,my subconscious niggled. Even if she wouldn’t talk to me, Dillon had a way with women. Maybe she would at least let someone who she wasn’t frightened of or pissed at tend to her wounds.
