Hotel Ruby (23 page)

“I have to go to the ballroom,” I say. “I have to talk to my brother and father.” I turn to leave, but Elias's arm shoots out to stop me. I gasp in a breath and turn to him. His cheeks are flaming red, his chest rising and falling.

“No,” he says definitively. “You're not going to the party. I won't let you.”

“Why not? I have an invitation.”

“Because that party's not for you, that's why,” he says. Despite his harsh tone, Elias's fingers press gently into my skin and draw me closer. “I know you love your family, but this is about you. You don't belong there,” he murmurs.

“People keep telling me I don't belong,” I say like it's a rejection. “But I belonged with you. You understood me.” Even now my desire for him is overwhelming, madness twinged with desperation. “But we can't be together,” I say, wanting to cry at the truth in it. “And you always knew that.”

“You're breaking my heart,” he responds immediately. His other hand slides over my waist, and when he looks down at me, my legs go weak. I don't want to leave him. Even though I have to.

I wrap my arms around his neck, and then our lips crash together, our mouths hot and frenzied. I get on my tiptoes to be closer, and the buttons on Catherine's shirt pull open. Elias backs me into the wall, kissing my neck, murmuring my name as his hand slips over my thigh. I'm completely lost in the passion, the contact of his body against mine. I forget my pain and my fear.

I can just feel. With him I can feel.

“I've always hated this shirt,” he says, peeling the fabric off my shoulders to kiss my skin. The danger, the terror—it feeds this fire between us. Elias and I are almost over. The thought is palpable.

He makes me moan, pressing me into the wall. I kiss
him harder, whispering between his lips for him not to stop. I shove his suit jacket open, my hands everywhere. I'm obsessed with the heightened senses. I want more of everything. More of him.

From the door someone clears their throat.

I jump and push Elias back, adjusting my shirt to pin it closed with my fingers. Elias doesn't react nearly as quickly, watching me a beat longer like he's still lost in the moment. But then he drags his gaze to the door, and I turn and see her.

“Oh, for Christ's sake,” Catherine says with a long sigh. She's positioned against the frame, bored and disgusted at the same time. “There are more . . . pressing issues than your sexual frustration, Audrey,” she continues. “If you wouldn't mind, I'd like to speak with Eli. It's urgent.”

I hate her so much. Elias tries to help me refasten the buttons of the shirt, holding back a smile as he does. I swat his hand away, already embarrassed. Elias turns to Catherine.

“You ruined that shirt on purpose,” she calls to him. Elias adjusts his suit jacket, crossing the room. “I'm surprised you didn't throw it into the fire,” she says.

“You came in too early,” he teases. He stops in front of her, and I expect him to send her away, but instead he smiles warmly. “Shouldn't you be at the party?”

Catherine's bitchiness fades, and she reaches to put her palms on his cheeks, examining to see if it's really him. “I was too worried about you,” she whispers, her blue eyes misting over. “I thought . . .”
Her voice trails off, and Elias puts his hands over hers, a tender moment passing between them.

“You never have to worry about me, Cathy.”

“I always worry about you because you're senseless.” She sniffles and then lets out a quiet, self-conscious laugh. She wipes at her cheeks and I realize that she was crying. There's a small stab of sympathy, but it mixes with jealousy and I look away. I'm suddenly the third wheel, and it brings me back to my senses. I need to go. I need to get out of here.

Catherine's voice lowers and she starts to whisper, clear I'm not part of their conversation, but it's the distraction I need. Without a word I steal past them. At the door I turn back. Whatever it is that Catherine is saying, Elias's brow is furrowed as he listens intently.

“He's going to retaliate,” I hear Catherine say. “You have to . . .”

But I don't listen to the rest. Without either of them noticing, I slip out the door into the hallway. I shouldn't worry about petty things like boys or relationships—Catherine was right, I have bigger problems. But it doesn't erase the fact that Elias is different. Hell, he dated Catherine. The horrible things I've done since my mother died pale in comparison to her temperament. He'd accept my mistakes.

There's a deep sense of loss as I start back toward the lobby. Loneliness is a pit in my stomach, empty and void.
I want what I have with Elias to be real, but it can't be. I'm leaving this place, leaving with Daniel and my father. I can't save him. I'm not sure I can save myself.

When I reach the hall leading to the ballroom, I glance again at the staff members guarding the door. I'll have to get my invitation from my room, find something to wear. I'll get past them, and once inside I'll find my family. And then we're out of here. I just have to hurry.

The elevator signals my floor, but I'm only a few feet down the hall when my legs become heavier with each step. An ache starts in my arm, then continues to crawl over my chest, onto my neck. “Ow,” I moan, putting my hand on the wall for balance. Pain, like a tightening vise, starts across my forehead, making my eyes blur with tension. The air has a dreamlike quality. I look ahead to my room, and the walls of the Ruby expand and contract, like they're breathing.

Is the hotel trying to stop me? I consider turning around to make my way back to the elevator, but it's so far—and I'm so tired. So weak. And then it starts: the soft music. The slow strumming of a guitar. The haunting melody, drawing me to it. I rest against the wall, rife with pain and longing for escape. I roll my head to the side and see a light underneath the door of room 1336. The music played in there before but then stopped. If I'm not alone on the thirteenth floor, who else is here?

“Hello?” I call, and push myself off the wall, stumbling forward. My ankle turns and the heel snaps off Catherine's shoe. I stagger forward, the weight of my right leg causing it to drag behind me in a limp. “I need help!”

Instead of opening the door, they turn up the music—louder, until it's on full volume, rattling the mirror hanging on the wall. Are they trying to block me out? What sort of person ignores a call for help? Are they the others? I'm only a few doors away when a terrifying thought hits me: What if this is Kenneth? Or what if it's a trick the Ruby is playing on me?

But the song—the song is so familiar. Around me the temperature starts to drop, colder with every breath. Along with that, my skin feels wet, and I lift my uninjured arm, surprised when I see moisture gathered, like dew on the morning grass.

“What?” I murmur, stepping forward again until I reach the door. I fall against it, my legs finally giving out. I'm slipping toward unconsciousness; I'm slipping away and the terror is crushing. “I'm dying,” I breathe out. “I'm dying.”

I reach behind me, sliding my hand along until my fingers wrap around the metal handle of the door. I pull it down, my eyelids too heavy to see any longer. The pulsing of my heart pounds in my temples. And then, all at once, the door opens and my body is falling backward.

M
y eyes flutter open, and at first the world is blurry. Above me is a light—far, far up in the sky, the world black beyond it. I start to ask where I am, but there is a gurgle and I choke. I turn my head to the side, spitting up blood onto a black ground. I try to take in a breath, but it's difficult. More blood comes up.

I'm cold, and the minute I sense it, the cold is followed by the most immense pain I've ever felt. My entire body is wracked with agony, like it's been dropped from a three-story building, smacking me onto pavement. I moan, struggling to breathe, to comprehend the pain. Then in the background I hear the song again. Only now I can understand the melody. My eyelids flutter again, and I see more light, two round lights below me.

The world is too difficult to understand, and then, slowly, clarity and focus return.

At my side my arm is pinned beneath my hip, a smashing ache at the bone. The fingers on my good hand slide over the ground, touching pebbles and grit and rock. Feel asphalt. A whimper sputters blood from my lips, and I press my cheek to the road and look at the two lights of
my father's car, overturned in a ditch about twenty yards away. The song still plays on the radio, the same song from the CD that we were listening to just before the accident.

The accident. It rushes back—the last moments in the car. Daniel taking my Snickers bar, my mother's CD in the stereo. I was tired and reclined my seat. I'd forgotten the rest. I'd forgotten my father mumbling under his breath, how he couldn't do it anymore. I turned to him, tears glistening on his cheeks.

“Dad,” I said, startling him. He jerked the wheel.

The car began to slide, my weight throwing me against the door, my head cracking the glass of the passenger window, and I reached for the door handle. The music continued to play, but over it I heard Daniel scream my name. I heard him scream, his body flying forward. The world upended as the car rolled; my door opened and there was a
whoosh
as I was sucked out by gravity. Then . . . nothing. We were arriving at the Hotel Ruby.

I'm a broken pile of bones on the side of the road now, unable to move my legs. The song from the car reaches the end and then loops, playing the same melody. “Dad?” I call, although it's only a thick whisper.
We've been in an accident and I'm nearly dead.

I blink, my eyelids stiff, and warm tears rush over my face. I lift my hand to wipe them away, and when I lower it, it's smeared in blood. I need help. I look at the car again and then see, just beyond the smashed-out windshield, a body.

I see my brother's body. Daniel is turned away, but I can make out his profile, the dried blood staining his blond hair, the wound in his head.

I'm in so much pain, but no amount of physical agony can equal what I feel when I see my brother. “Daniel?” I call, even though I can tell from here he's not breathing. “Dan!” Sobs overtake me, and I try to roll to my side, feeling a pop in my shoulder when I do. I scream and bring my fist to my mouth, biting down on the flesh to keep from passing out. “Daniel!” I yell again, crying too hard to be understood. My body won't cooperate, it's too heavy, and I drag myself, nails snapping off on the pavement as I pull forward.

“I won't leave you,” I say to him as if he can hear me. “I'll never abandon you. I never will, Daniel.” I sob. “I never will.”

I've only made it a few feet, if that. I won't be able to reach him down in the ditch, not with my injuries. I stare at my brother's face, noting his skin has gone gray. In his hair, brain matter has seeped out. The crack in his skull is just like it was at lunch this afternoon. This afternoon . . .

At the Ruby. Adrenaline surges through me, and I take a renewed look around. Clear vision doesn't return to my right eye, but I'm trying to figure out where I am. How can we be here now? We were just at the Ruby. Are Daniel and my father still there?
Is
there a Hotel Ruby?

Frantic thoughts, crazy breaks from reality, drag me in and out. My gaze falls on a signpost on the other side of the road:
THE HOTEL RUBY—2 MI
. Eventually help will arrive, but what does that mean? They won't be able to save my brother. They can't save him because he's still at the Ruby.

My lips pull apart with another heavy cry. In reality I know we may never have walked in those doors. I know it. But I can't accept it. I can't accept a life without my family. I can't leave Daniel. Maybe he's dead, but maybe he's at a party in the ballroom waiting for me. Waiting for Dad.

What would he think if I didn't show up? Would he think I'd abandoned him? Is that what he wanted when he told me I had to leave? Had he figured this all out, kept it from me so I wouldn't stay?

“Too bad,” I call to his body. “I won't walk away from you.” Madness seems to overtake me, and I laugh. “I won't crawl away,” I correct, rolling onto my back to stare up at the streetlight. I can't wait for a passerby to help, or even an ambulance. Because when they show up, they'll take Daniel from me. They'll cover him in a white sheet and I'll never see his face again. His pale blue eyes, just like our mother's. My brother will be dead.

And I can't let that happen.

I stop fighting to breathe, letting out a staggered sigh as my eyelids start to flutter. Heaviness weighs on my chest,
and I imagine I'm filling up with blood. I have to get Daniel the hell out of there.

“I'll bring you back,” I mumble, fluid running from the corner of my mouth. I look over one last time at his body, at the car where the music plays. Behind the wheel I can finally make out my father's silhouette—the angle of his broken neck. I'm the only living soul here. “I'm coming, Daddy,” I whisper, slipping away. I close my eyes.