Beautiful Secret

  But that was the problem, wasn’t it? I was stuck thinking Ruby was just a little too fun, a little too pretty, a little too adventurous for the likes of me. I had a picture of what I thought I deserved, who might like me, and it wasn’t ever someone like Ruby.

  If she’d been able to hear this thought, I’m quite certain she would have ripped the phone out of the wall and hurled it at me.

  I listened, watching as she ordered, confirmed our selection, and then hung up. All of this was so commonplace, so easy, so comfortable; my shoulders unknotted, stomach settled.

  She patted the bed, lifting her eyebrows and giving me a seductive little smile. “We have approximately forty minutes for mischief.”

  “Ruby . . .” I began.

  Her smile slipped a little before she picked it up again. “Why are you so afraid of being on a bed with me?” she said, and I could hear the embarrassment just beneath her laugh. “I’m not going to steal your virtue, I promise.”

  “It’s nothing about being afraid. I—” I stopped, pulling my tie from the collar of my shirt and draping it over the desk chair. Whenever I wanted to explain myself, say something important—something personal—the words in my mind scattered into disarray. It’s why, with Portia, I’d long since given up.

  I knew I needed to stop comparing everything to my marriage. Ruby was trying to help me find who I was again, and I needed to let her.

  New relationship. New pattern.

  “Tell me.”

  I closed my eyes, putting together the sentence before I said anything more. “I feel like I’ve barely processed the idea of being with you and what that entails, and yet here we are, in a room with a bed. Although there is no ‘normally’ to be found in my dating experience, I like to think that ‘normally’ I would take you out to dinner a few times, kiss you at your doorstep, be far more measured in my interactions. At least that’s what eighteen-year-old me would have done all those years ago,” I said with a quiet, sheepish laugh. “Yet, here we are in a hotel room, I put my fingers inside you earlier, and all I want to do now is join you and relieve the ache I’ve felt all day long. I suppose it surprises me that my body and my heart are so far ahead of my brain here.”

  Ruby rose up on her knees so she could crawl to the foot of the bed. Reaching out, she slid her finger through my belt loop and pulled me closer. “Why do people act like the heart and body aren’t part of the brain?”

  She worked the top button of my shirt free and moved to the next. And the next. Her fingertips tickled as they brushed over my breastbone.

  “When you want me?” she began. “That’s your brain. When you like being around me? Hey guess what?” She looked up at me, sweet tongue-trapped smile in place. “Also because of your brain.”

  “Do you know what I mean, though?” I asked in a whisper. Our faces were only inches apart; I’d need to only duck down to kiss her. “I worry you’re young. That I’m neurotic. How can it work away from all of this?”

  “In fact,” she said, pulling her brows together in mock seriousness, “I would think it would be easier for you to do this with me back home. In your space, with your routines. I would think what’s hardest about this for you is that you’re away from all of that, and I’m just another piece of chaos thrown in the mix.”

  Her words eased my mind, massaged away the growing wave of anxiety. “Are you sure you aren’t really a sixty-year-old bird with a fantastic plastic surgeon? You seem remarkably wise.”

  “I am definitely sure,” she said, smiling prettily up at me. “But I’m also sure that you don’t have to do a single thing you don’t want to, Niall. You’re allowed to not want this.”

  I looked down to her pulse point, wondering what it would feel like beating against my lips. “I’m quite sure . . . What I mean is . . .” I sighed, frustrated by my own thoughts. “I do want this,” I said finally.

  Ruby giggled, falling backward onto the bed and pulling me down over her. We landed softly, bouncing off the mattress, and I easily rolled beside her, shrugging out of my dress shirt. Almost as if we’d planned it—or had been doing it for decades—she bent her knees, lifting her legs over mine and tucking her feet down behind my thighs as I curled on my side into her.

  I stared down at our position, speechless.

  “We fit,” Ruby observed quietly. “And look. I got you on the bed with me this time.” She reached up to smooth away the lines that had formed on my forehead. “To be clear, I want to spend time with you, and cuddle while we talk,” she assured me. “We don’t have to get naked before dinner. Or after.”

  I smiled, reaching forward and running a palm over her stomach to her opposite hip. “Tell me about your family?”

  “Let’s see . . .” Her hand reached up to run along my neck and into my hair. “I have one brother, my twin—”

  “You have a twin brother?” I asked. How could I have kissed her, watched her bring herself to orgasm, given her another one with my hand earlier and spent the last five days with her without knowing such basic information?

  “Yeah, he’s in med school at UCLA. His name is Crain.”

  “Crain? That’s not a name you hear every day.”

  “Well, everyone calls him by our last name, Miller, but yeah.” She ran her fingers over my scalp, lost in thought. “He’s good people.”

  “And your parents?”

  “Are married,” she said, meeting my eyes. “They live in Carlsbad, which is just north of San Diego. I think I mentioned they’re both psychologists.”

  I pulled back to study her. “How is it possible both of your parents are psychologists and you seem so . . . normal?”

  Laughing, she pretended to shove my chest. “That is such a stupid stereotype. One would think if the parents were both very good shrinks, their children would be better adjusted, not worse.”

  “One would think.” I felt my lips press together in an amused smile. She . . . she was unbelievable. “So you grew up in Carlsbad before attending UCSD?”

  “Mmmhmm,” she said, focusing on where she drew her finger back and forth across my collarbones. “Happy childhood. Cool parents. Twin brother who only occasionally dated my friends . . .” She seemed distracted, and confirmed it when she stretched up, kissing my throat. “I’m a lucky girl.”

  “No demons, then?” I murmured.

  Ruby pulled back slowly, her eyes clouding for a heartbeat. “No demons.”

  I studied her face, sliding my hand up to her ribs before telling her very quietly, “That wasn’t very convincing.” I had no idea why I’d asked that, but now I needed to know. My chest grew tight with this feeling of diving deeper, of making this into more than flirtation, kissing, groping. This here was what I needed but was also most terrified to seek: intimacy in words before action.

  “Fine,” she said, smiling a little. “But you first.”

  I blinked, surprised. Despite having asked her this, I hadn’t really expected the question to be turned back on me. “Well, I suppose my childhood was fairly happy as well. Looking back I realize we were rather poor, but children don’t often notice things like money shortages when they have everything they need. My marriage, as I may have mentioned, was rather . . . quiet. Especially compared with a childhood filled with rowdy brothers and sisters. We didn’t argue much, we didn’t laugh much. There wasn’t much left holding us together at the end.”

  She brought her hand to my jaw, following the shape of it with her fingertip as she listened.

  “I suppose my demons are my reserve, and how I fear I spent the better part of my teens and all of my twenties with a woman I probably won’t know for the rest of my life. It feels like a bit of a waste.”

  “Your reserve?” she repeated quietly.

  Nodding, I murmured, “I always wonder if I come across the way I mean to with people.”

  “How do you mean to come across?”

  “Friendly. Interested,” I told her. “Responsible.”

  “You come off as responsible.?
?? Her lips tweaked into a smirk. “Maybe a little aloof.”

  Laughing, I admitted, “That’s fair. I’ve always been the quiet one, a bit awkward. Max and Rebecca, who are closest to me in age, were the clowns. I’ve been the contained one, but it also meant I got away with things they didn’t.”

  “This sounds like a story I need to hear . . .”

  Shaking my head, I bent to kiss her jaw, speaking into her skin, “Your turn.”

  When I pulled back, she looked at my chin, her finger drawing lazy circles at the hollow of my throat.

  “Ruby?”

  Blinking up to meet my eyes, I watched as she took a deep breath. “I had a bad boyfriend my freshman year,” she said, simply. The words were just vague enough that I wasn’t sure how she meant it. Was he violent? Fickle?

  “What do you mean—”

  “Maybe calling him a boyfriend isn’t exactly right,” she said, tilting her head on the pillow as she considered her words. “We went out a few times and he wanted sex before I did. He got his way.”

  When I understood what she was telling me, my heart seemed to try to claw its way up my throat, so my words came out strangled. “He hurt you?” As I looked down at her thin frame, her delicate jaw, full lips, and wide, honest eyes, a fire-red tempo took over inside my chest; I was consumed by a rush of anger and vengeance I’d never experienced.

  She shrugged. “A little. It wasn’t very dramatic or violent, just unpleasant. It wasn’t my first time, but . . .”

  My brow lifted in understanding. “It hurt anyway.”

  She nodded, focusing her attention on my chin again. “Yeah. So, you asked about demons. I guess that’s mine.”

  I was at a loss. I felt my mouth open, and close again. I wanted to punch a wall, wrap her up in my arms, and cover her body with mine. And then I pulled my hand back from her ribs, instinctively worried.

  “Stop,” she said through an uncomfortable laugh. “That’s why I don’t like talking about it. It was a bad night, but one of the many benefits of having good psychologists for parents is that you learn to talk about things, which helped me out with this.”

  Ruby seemed so wholly healthy, so composed, weathering my fits and starts easily. That said, it was all well and good to embrace the idea of being adventurous sexually with someone, but it made me regard her a bit more earnestly as someone with good and bad experiences, who not only wanted to handle me carefully, but also required careful handling of her own.

  “Just ask me,” she said, correctly reading my expression. “If we’re going to do this”—she gestured between us—“then you need to know these things about me.”

  “You’re not . . .” I began, feeling awkward, like I was trying on a child’s glove. I swallowed, and then swallowed again, coughing.

  “Niall,” she said, stretching to kiss me, letting her lips linger at the corner of my mouth. “Ask.”

  “Sex . . . isn’t an issue for you.” It wasn’t a question, and I wanted to close my eyes and vanish when I felt the hot flush of embarrassment rise over my skin. She was just so open, so comfortable being sexual.

  She didn’t seem to notice, and didn’t even seem bothered by my blunt words. “It was at first,” she began. “I mean, maybe it still is sometimes. For the first year or so after I was a little . . . freaked-out. I slept with a bunch of guys, almost like, ‘Hey, universe, I choose to do this. And this, and this.’ But my therapist helped. What Paul did wasn’t really about sex. He was a mess. The times I’ve been with guys after him weren’t anything like that. I don’t feel like he broke me, but he did show me that some people are just . . . bad.”

  “Do you think of it often?”

  She smiled up at me and touching my lips with her index finger in a gesture that was at once sweet and maddeningly seductive. “I guess. It depends on what’s going on in my life, really.”

  I felt myself instinctively pulling back.

  “But especially times like now, where I’m worried it’s going to make you careful with me, or hesitant to let go . . .” Her eyes searched mine, pleading. “Promise me you won’t be.”

  I wanted to promise her this, but what she’d told me simply reinforced my desire to take this slowly. “I—”

  We were interrupted by a knock at the door: our food had arrived. I stood, slipping on and buttoning my shirt to let a man with a rolling food-laden table into the room. He placed it beside the bed as I signed the ticket. The room ticked in the silence; the remnants of our conversation seemed to dissolve out of the air.

  Ruby sat on the mattress, curling her legs beneath her as she lifted the silver domes off our plates. The door closed behind the waiter, and I sat beside her at the table.

  “Hungry?”

  “Starving,” she mumbled, pouring ketchup on her plate. She leaned over, kissing my cheek. She was relentlessly right-minded. “Thanks for dinner, hottie.”

  And as she tucked into her meal, it was clear that, for the time being, our conversation had moved on.

  * * *

  Ruby fell back against the mattress with a satisfied groan. “Whatever happens tonight, just know you’re in competition with that cheeseburger for best in show.”

  “I fear Burger Joint has a bit more experience with cheeseburgers than I do.”

  “Then bring your mad seduction skills, Mr. Stella,” she teased.

  Dinner had been good, but I hadn’t paid much attention, moving mostly on autopilot. I knew without a doubt that I didn’t want to move too fast, and given her honesty with me tonight, I wanted to be particularly careful with her emotions, too.

  I moved the table away from the side of the bed and returned to her, maneuvering so that I lay beside her, hovering above.

  “Good start,” she whispered, hands moving to begin unbuttoning my dress shirt. Again.

  My fingers played with the button at the top of her silk shirt.

  “Are you having second thoughts?” she asked, perhaps after I lingered too long on my action.

  I shook my head, thinking. Her green eyes scanned my face, patient but intense.

  “I suppose I just want it to be clear what we’re doing tonight,” I admitted at length. “I’m a bit thrown by what you’ve told me.”

  Her forehead relaxed in understanding and she pushed her head back into the pillow a bit to see me better. “About Paul.”

  “And your reaction after of running headlong into sexual relationships.”

  A flash of hurt crossed her face but she hid it away quickly. “I haven’t done that in a long time.”

  I smiled at this. She was twenty-three. A long time was such a relative thing. “I’m not trying to judge you, Ruby. Perhaps it’s a good reminder for me, as well, to take this slow.”

  “No sex, you mean.”

  Looking into her eyes, I nodded. “I’m old-fashioned, I realize, but that’s something I do want to do only when I’m in love.”

  Her face registered some unrecognizable emotion and she looked like she was going to say something but instead, she simply nodded.

  I wanted to clarify my words, knowing how she may have interpreted them—that ours wasn’t that kind of relationship, that we weren’t headed in that direction—but how was I to know whether or not we would? In my lucid moments near her, it occurred to me that all of this seemed so impossibly easy. I wanted to enjoy her for whatever this was, and not expect too much. My default always seemed to be so bloody sincere about it all. Maybe this was just meant to be something lovely, and easy but, ultimately, primarily sexual.

  And temporary.

  Most people had several relationships in their lives; I liked the idea that Ruby could be something more permanent, but I’d known her just two weeks.

  “I can practically hear you thinking,” she whispered, pulling my head down so she could kiss me once, sweetly. “Why does being alone with me in this hotel trip your panic button? No one is labeling this.” It was as if she read my thoughts. “I like you. I want to be close to you, whatever that mea
ns right now.”

  Whatever that means right now.

  The words liberated me, and I leaned into her touch, relishing the feel of her hands sliding up my neck and into my hair. I loved the tugging, the nails scratching. I loved the signs of passion that had always been absent from my romantic life.

  Ruby’s lips were full, and warm, tasting of Sprite and the little chocolate mint that had been placed beside our dinner plates. Her mouth opened, tongue sliding out across her lips to mine, dipping into my mouth and letting me feel the small, sweet vibrations of her moan.

  I was thinking too much; I was always thinking too bloody much. I slid my hand up her ribs, over her breasts, and back to the button that had made my entire brain hit pause.

  I slipped the first one free, and then the next, and the next, until Ruby was shrugging out of her shirt and lying beneath me in a pale yellow bra.

  Sweet Lord, I could lay my face on that skin and never need for anything more.

  “You have the most perfect breasts I’ve ever laid eyes on.”

  She stilled beneath me and then brought her hands to her face, hiding.

  I stared down at her. What had I said? That she had perfect breasts? Were we meant to do this without comment?

  “Ruby?”

  “I’m having a moment, just give me a second,” she said, her voice muffled by her palms.

  “Was I too forward?”

  “No,” she said, dropping her hands and looking up at me with these crazy, beautiful eyes. “I just had an out-of-body experience. Niall Stella just took off my shirt and admired my chest.”

  “Do you need to text someone?” I said, stifling a laugh.

  “I just need to remember to add it to my spreadsheet of Niall Stella Moments,” she joked, and reached for my head again, pulling me down.

  I traced the straight line of her collarbone, across to the middle and over to the other shoulder.

  She arched beneath me. “Niall.”

  I made a faint tsking sound before saying, “Patience.”

  Her bra strap was silky and thin, a wisp of fabric holding up such plump, perfect breasts. I almost didn’t want to reveal them; the anticipation was too sublime.