Page 46 of Ruined

I was wondering the same thing. "I'm guessing he has business here."

"Or he knows Reuben is in town," she said. The wheels in her mind seemed to be turning over, considering all the possibilities.

"Leon sent that message before Reuben decided we'd come here," I pointed out. "He wouldn't know that at the time." Even if he was listening in to all of our conversations, he couldn't have known what our plans were before we even made them.

"I suppose so," she said reluctantly. Her blue-green eyes were slightly glazed, her thoughts clearly dark and troubled.

I wished I could take every one of them out of her mind and give her back the sunshine she used to radiate. The carefree warmth.

"He won't go anywhere near you," I assured her. "If he so much as looks at you, I'll poke his eyes out. We don't need him to have eyes or fingers. Just a pulse. He needs to live long enough to experience the pain he put you through."

"I think to have a pulse, you need a heart," she said. "I don't think he has one of those."

I couldn't disagree with that. People with hearts didn't keep women prisoner. Unless they were the enemy. Reuben wasn't inclined to give leniency to anyone based on sex.

"Whatever he has in his chest to keep him alive," I said with a shrug. "It won't be doing it for much longer. Twenty-four hours and he'll be dead as a slab of bacon."

"Vegan bacon," Hunter said as he sat down on the other side of Mina. "Never with a beating heart, but still kinda dead."

"Don't ruin bacon for me," Parker complained.

"I think it's already ruined for me," Mina said. "Every time I see it, I'll think of him."

I squeezed her more firmly. "The way Terry cooks it, none of us will be able to resist eating it anyway. Even if it was vegan bacon. Is that actually a thing?"

"Absolutely it is," Hunter said. "Along with vegan cheese, vegan hamburgers and vegan leather. It's a growing industry. Literally." He grinned.

"Anyway, we should get going." I glanced over to see a red haired woman look at us before unlocking the gymnastics studio and disappearing inside. "We don't want to draw too much attention to ourselves, remember?"

"Before we go back home, I want to show Mina something," Gianni said.

I waited for cock jokes that didn't come, before helping her to her feet and following her and Gianni.

CHAPTER 18

MINA

"The 'don't touch anything' rule applies here too," Damon said to the twins.

They grinned and headed over to the drums in the corner of the music shop.

I looked at the drums wistfully. If Asher was here, he'd be right there with them, trying them out.

"I figured this would be a good time to get that guitar you talked about," Gianni said. He gestured towards a selection of instruments that hung on the wall.

In spite of the growing feeling that Kurt was going to pop out of thin air right in front of me, I let myself walk over and take a better look.

In the corner of my eye, I saw Damon appraising the saxophones. I had no trouble imagining him playing one. Which led to me remembering Gianni miming Reuben playing the bass guitar. A small smile crept onto my face.

"See any you like?" Gianni asked.

I returned my attention to the guitars before reaching for a black Fender Jazzmaster, and holding it carefully in my arms.

"I used to have one just like this." Where was it now? Had my siblings kept it after I left, and my parents died? Rose hadn't mentioned one, but it wasn't something we discussed when we stepped aside from everyone else. For all I knew, they'd thrown it away or sold it. If Dane went through our parents’ things, it was definitely gone. He wasn't known for being sentimental.

I plucked at the strings a couple of times before automatically tuning the instrument and plucking again. It felt so natural, like I'd never stopped. My ear was probably off, after all these years, but it sounded better than it had.

I played a couple of bars of Good Day Sunshine, one of the first songs I learned to play. Ironic now, but that was the song that came to me first.

---