Page 59 of Lucky Shot
“Nice to meet you, Ruby,” Penn says.
“You too.”
The men all say their goodbyes. Conrad and Danny wave to me as they start for the stairs. Travis pulls me into a hug that makes my bones creak.
“Later, Ruby-Doo.” He shoots a smirk at Nick on his way out. Mike trails after him, leaving me with Nick.
I help him put the poker chips away. The room is quiet with only our movements proving noise. Aidan’s asleep on the couch, cuddling with his guitar.
“Thanks for letting me join in,” I say. “It was fun.”
“You say that like you didn’t expect it to be.”
“I expected you to glower at me all night for invading your guys’ night.”
He lifts that brow. The man has expressive eyebrows that make up for his mouth rarely moving.
“I don’t glower at you,” he says in a grumpy tone accompanied by said glower.
A laugh bubbles up in my chest. I pull my phone out of my pocket and hold it up to snap a photo.
“What are you doing?” he asks, after blinking several times.
“Proving that you glower at me.” I walk over and show him the screen of my phone. He studies it for a few moments and then his gaze slowly flicks to me.
“No comment?” I ask as I pocket my phone again with smug satisfaction.
“That’s just my face,” he mumbles. “I was trying to save you from hanging out with a bunch of dudes who want to ogle you.”
“They were not ogling me. If anything, they felt sorry for me.”
He huffs a sound that I think is his disagreement. I glance down at my outfit. “I’m wearing an old tube top that belonged to my mother when she was my age, and these shorts are from a secondhand store.”
They were already worn in and soft, but there’s an ink stain on the crotch that has always perplexed me. It’s only visible to me so it’s not a big deal, but how does one get ink in that particular spot?
He continues to look at me like he’s unable to comprehend my words. I lift my brows in silent question.
He sighs like I’m the most annoying person he’s ever met. I’ve never had someone dislike me so much. In fact, I’d say people generally like me very much. I spent most of my twenties saying or doing little to make waves. I was too busy writing and working toward my dreams to be controversial. No one knew me. If they didn’t like me, it was based on what they thought they knew and not the person I was.
But with Nick, I have been unapologetically myself. I’m not sure why. Perhaps I’m too tired to put on any pretense or maybe there’s something about him that makes me want to push back.
Whatever it is, I like this version of me.
“You’re beautiful.” He says it so dispassionately that I wonder if I heard him correctly.
“Excuse me?”
“They don’t care about your clothes. You’re a beautiful woman and they were drooling all over you.”
My cheeks flush despite the way he seems to not care that I am, as he put it, beautiful. Like, oh Ruby? She’s beautiful but meh, I’m not into beautiful girls. Which only makes me wonder what kind of woman is Nick into?
“No, they weren’t,” I insist once I’ve recovered.
I get another gruff noise of disagreement.
“They weren’t,” I say again.
He shakes his head. “If I’d begged off with an excuse that I was going to clean, no one would have tried to changemymind.”
