“Is he friendly or are we going to die tonight?”
“He’s a beaut.” Rubi stopped frowning at the veritable heap of crap I’d brought home. “Look.”
He clicked his teeth.
The cat stared. Then he chirruped and pushed past the TV, knocking his face into Rubi’s outstretched hand, purring up a storm.
I tried my luck.
He sniffed my hand and purred for me too, and that was it. He lived with us now and that was that.
Rubi fed her. I went upstairs to change into clothes that actually belonged to me.
I came back to him growling a voice note. “Shutting the fuck up is gluten free, Nashie. Make yourself a sandwich.”
“What does that even mean?”
Rubi was on the rug, an unlit zoot dangling from his lips, his shirt discarded in a pile our giant cat had decided made a better bed than the one I’d bought. He tossed his phone. “It means he can stop sending me crazy cat-lady memes. I know who I’m gonna turn into and I don’t give a dragon’s ball bag.”
“And why’s that?”
He flashed his teeth, tickling Bruno’s chin. “Cos I’m happy.”
“Are you?”
Rubi gave me his full attention, a tiny frown threatening the chill he was bringing to the living room floor. “What’s the matter?”
“Nothing. I just...” Fuck. Just what?Iwas happy too. I’dbeen happyfor a long time now, so why did it feel like we’d barely started?
Rubi sat up.
I advanced on him and straddled his chest, forcing him back down while the cat watched me, his flicking tail clinking the empty Appletiser bottles I’d left on the floor last night. “All this time, have you ever thought about what comes next?”
Rubi slid his inked hands over my hips and up my flanks, hisbighands, his warm fingers spanning my whole lower back. “After what?”
“After all the wars. The fights. The mess. All these years, the endgame was to not fucking die, but then what?”
“What’s the context? You mean the club, or as people?”
“I mean us, boo.”
Rubi’s gaze flickered to mine, the low light from the lamps making his hazel orbs shine as gold as the stripes on Bruno’s fur coat. “That’s a complex question there, mister.”
“How so?”
“I always knew we’d either end up right here, or I’d be dead. Nothing in between, and... maybe nothing after, so I was always too scared to want more than this.”
Guilt tossed my gut.My fault.I’d pushed him away—I’dlefthim, and the five years we’d lost scarred my fucking soul. “I’m sorry.”
Rubi’s frown dug in. “For what? You didn’t choose this life, Riv. And you walked away to save me, I know you did. I was just too fucking dense to see it at the time.”
“You haven’t had a lot of choices either.”
“Yeah, well. I choose to love you. How about them apples?”
Rubi pinched me until I laughed and shoved him away. But I wasn’t done, and for the first time since that madness had taken hold of me last year, what I wanted to say—what Ineededto say—manifested as actual fucking words. “I want to marry you.”
Rubi opened his mouth.