Page 30 of Cursed by Death (Ruby Jane #1)
L ater that day Fox and I were in my living room watching television.
I couldn’t remember when the last time I had actually even been in this room was, but I had picked being in here over sitting in awkward silence in the kitchen. Well, it hadn’t seemed to be an awkward silence for Fox but it had certainly been awkward for me.
When I first moved in here there had been extremely fancy looking furniture in the living room. It looked like something you were only ever allowed to look at and never actually touch or sit on or you’d get into trouble. I had gotten rid of it all without hesitation and replaced it.
There was now a huge sectional couch and two overstuffed chairs that were so big two people could fit on them comfortably. I’d had a large flat screen television mounted over the fireplace and there were tables in the appropriate places.
Like most of the rest of the house though it lacked personality and was very bland. Looking around the room now with Fox being in it it bothered me and it had never bothered me before. Probably because I had never actually used the room before.
Maybe it was time to start making my house a home, my home. It was probably well past time. The last time I’d had a home, a real home, my mother had been alive. This might have been my safe space, and I appreciated that, but it was almost like a ghost lived here and it was time to change that.
I hoped he didn’t think of me as some kind of fragile flower now because I had some kind of mental breakdown in front of him.
I gave Fox the remote to the television and told him to make himself at home.
And he did exactly that, much to my amusement.
He let himself into my refrigerator. He got himself a can of coke and made himself two very large sandwiches. He used two different kinds of lunch meat, two different kinds of cheese, lettuce, tomatoes, and potato chips. They were stacked and I would have never thought to put potato chips on a sandwich but I just might try it next time.
Then he kicked back on my couch with his feet up on my coffee table while eating with one hand and using the remote control to the television with his other hand to flick through movies on Netflix.
I wanted to be annoyed with him for making himself so comfortable in my home but I couldn’t be mad at him. He was just doing what I had told him to do and I couldn't fault him for that.
I didn’t want him to starve while he was at my house and I honestly didn’t care that he helped himself to what was in my fridge. I wasn’t going to eat it all anyways and had gotten a little carried away when I was ordering food for Ginger and the guest house. I never had that much food in my fridge and Fox was only saving me from later having to throw it out when it eventually went bad.
Fox picked a show called Alone . It was about these survivalists (at least that’s what I was going to call them) that were all dropped off in the wilderness with a backpack full of stuff and nothing else. They had to build their own shelter and find their own food or they’d freeze to death and starve.
Whoever made it the longest without tapping out, or being removed for medical reasons, won a bunch of money at the end.
It didn’t look like a good time to me and I didn’t think any amount of money would ever make me want to do that in winter, or at all. Then again, I wasn’t the outdoorsy type of girl and I had never even so much as gone camping before.
Fox, who had been silent most of the time I had spent with him thus far, talked to the people on tv like they could hear him and they were old friends or something. If I had been paying attention to the show his commentary might have gotten on my nerves but I wasn’t interested in what was on the screen.
I had my phone out and I was shopping online, buying things for my living room. Like a rug and pillows. And I found a really cute blanket that looked warm and fuzzy, something you might want to snuggle up on the couch with in front of the fire.
I ordered a second one for the basement in a different color. I figured I’d get more use out of that one because I spent far more time on the couch in the basement than I thought I ever would in here.
Fox was on the third episode and he’d gotten himself a bag of potato chips. I’d moved on to shopping for clothes and had ended up with a cart full of things I thought might look good on Rally. I’d had to guess at the sizes. I figured I could just start putting them in my closet for him and when he spent the night again he’d have something to wear the next day.
The doorbell went and Fox paused his show. He looked at me with a frown on his face. “Are we expecting company?”
We? I shook my head. “Nope. But I’ll check the cameras to see who it is before you get the door.”
“You have cameras?” he asked. “How did I not know this?”
I thought everyone knew that now. “Only outside,” I told him as I pulled up the cameras on my phone. “It’s Ginger. She has the baby with her.”
Fox immediately got up and left the room. He came back with Ginger following behind him. She had the baby in her arms.
“We’re moving in today,” she chirped excitedly as she sat down on the couch. “Hunter got some of his friends to come over and move my boxes and stuff for me that I’m keeping. One of them has a truck so they loaded it up and I didn’t even have to carry a single box. I’ve got to get over there so I can tell them where to put everything but I just wanted to come over here and let you know that today’s the day. We’re moving in!”
She bounced a little on her seat and I fancied if she had both hands free she would have clapped excitedly like a cheerleader.
It was the most animated I had ever seen her since I’d met her. She was excited, happy even, and it showed big time. It looked like a weight had been lifted off of her shoulders. She looked younger and I realized that the dark circles that had been under her eyes when I’d just seen her at the funeral were almost nonexistent today. The dark cloud that always hung around her seemed to have been lifted.
I wasn’t naive enough to think the change was permanent. Grief didn’t just disappear overnight. It took time. But this was the beginning for her. She was healing and she’d have her bad days but life would get better for Ginger, and it started for her today, with this move.
I smiled at her. “Well, you better get over there so you can boss Hunter and those boys around. You don’t want them to put all your stuff in the wrong places.”
She grinned at me, all big, bright, and beautiful. “Right! They definitely need a woman to tell them what to do. Not that they listen all the time.”
She giggled and I hoped I wasn’t looking at her like I had never seen her before, because that’s exactly how I felt.
Who was this woman and what had she done with Ginger?
“If it’s alright with you, Ruby, I’ll go offer to help them,” Fox told me.
“Of course. You don’t have to ask. You can do whatever you want, I'm not your keeper.”
He grunted in response. It was a lot better than having him argue with me and it was almost a relief to have him return to being the strong, silent type.
Ginger followed Fox out and I was left alone. My mind immediately began running, plotting my next move.
I knew one thing for sure and it was that there was no way in hell I was going to be able to go anywhere without Fox insisting on going with me. And I was also certain that I did not want to take him with me. He’d phone Rally immediately and there was no way that Rally wouldn’t show up.
I couldn’t take the wolf Prince to the underground and then get him into the shit. That would be bad. Very, very bad.
So that had both Fox and Rally being out. In fact, all of the wolves were out.
I absolutely couldn’t bring Detective Rowans down there with me. Though, I knew without a shadow of a doubt that he wouldn’t hesitate to go with me. After what I’d learned about his sister I would never ask him to go there with me and I wished I hadn’t texted him that first time I’d gone there and he’d shown up.
I didn’t have any other friends. That was it.
But I did know two people who might go with me. I remembered Rally telling me that hunters did not go to the underground, but I wondered if I had shared with them what I found out at the scene of the crime today if they’d be interested in going down there. Technically, they’d found their demon that they’d been looking for. Did it matter to them that he was dead or would they be interested in finding his murderer?
Was I really, seriously, considering getting ahold of Bane and Roan and asking them if they’d go to the underground with me? Had I lost my goddamn mind?