Page 91 of Risky Game

“Believing in people doesn’t make you an idiot.”

“No, it makes me exactly like my mom. My stupid mom who always chose the worst men.”

Ouch. That hurt. She wasn’t talking about me, but she was, because if she made stupid choices with men, then what in the hell was I? We already knew this couldn’t go anywhere.

“Ruby…”

I trailed off. What was I supposed to say?

She rolled onto her back, out of my hold, and shoved her hands into my hair. I was already up on an elbow, leaning over her.

“I kicked him out as soon as I found out. I got suspicious, decided to do a background report on him. Found his marriage certificate, found his wife on Facebook. The day before I found her, she posted pictures, of her and her kids celebrating one of their birthdays.”

Tears ran down her cheeks and she swiped them away. The pain in my chest wouldn’t ease. For her pain, for what I feared she was implying with me. With us. She needed to end this. Stop making such shitty decisions with men. Find someone who could truly be there for her in all the ways.

She needed someone who wouldn’t keep her a secret.

Fucking hell.

“He stole all my money.” She choked on another cry. “That’s why I won’t take any from Jassen. He knows we broke up, but he doesn’t know all of it, and he doesn’t know that all the money he’d already given me to help, Paulie cleared out of my accounts the day I broke up with him. He wasn’t even upset, said he was only with me because of Jassen. I was stupid and rarely checked my accounts, but when he moved in, I gave him my sign-ins so he could take care of the rent and stuff, pay the bills for me, that kind of thing. He’d been slowly siphoning all of my savings out in the year he lived with me and the day he left, he took it all.”

“Fuck. I’m so sorry.”

“I’m such an idiot.” She sobbed then and moved to roll away with me. “So dumb.”

I reached for her before she could get far and pulled her to my chest. She was tense, ready to flee, and her cries tore at my soul deep inside of me. I wasn’t sure my chest hurt this much when Vanessa cried when she told me she wasn’t making the move out here with me.

That’d been almost inevitable.

This was pure pain.

“You’re not an idiot and you’re not stupid, Ruby. You were young and you trusted someone who played a part to get you to trust them. You can’t fault yourself for that. That’s Paulie’s fault, not yours.”

She cried then, hugging her pillow. I waited for the moment she realized, the moment she ended things.

The moment she said something like, “And here I am, doing it all again.”

It never came. Her cries quieted and her breathing slowed.

I clung to Ruby long after she fell asleep, knowing it might be the only night I got to hold her, and I wasn’t nearly ready to let her go.

Chapter 25

Ruby

I was an idiot. An absolute moron. As soon as I woke up, wrapped in Logan’s arm with his gentle breathing behind me, I couldn’t believe the things I’d admitted before I fell asleep. I blamed his comforting hold when he wrapped his arms around me, the fact he wanted me with him. I blamed the orgasms and the intensity of the night for scrambling my brain, loosening my lips before I could stop them.

I had never planned on telling Logan any of that. Jassen sure as hell was never going to learn how dumb his sister had been. And how would Logan look at me now? Now that he knew I made dumb choices when it came to my life and who to trust.

How could he trust me to take care of his own daughter when I’d made such a fool of my own life?

How could he want to be with me ever again, knowing I’d spent years sleeping with a married man with children and had been too naïve to pick up on the clues earlier.

God, they were all so clear now. The phone calls he’d ignore, the texting he’d do. The way he’d hide his phone, always keeping it in his pocket. Two years I ignored it. Ignored the fact that outside of the clothes he needed “for work,” he barely filled the drawers in our dresser.

Stupid. So damn stupid.

And I was making the same choices all over again. This was no longer sex with Logan. This wasn’t some heartless, sexual exploration.

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