| 030 | Ruby |

"Is everything alright?" I asked him.

"A friend from school? Mum, you had no friends!"

My jaw dropped and I gasped, "Rhett, what the hell? How could you say that?"

"Mum, that's common knowledge. You're a loner. You had no friends!"

Is he mocking me? "Of course, I had friends. Pseudo-friends are still friends."

He scoffed at me, "No, mum, they ain't, they are classmates. No need to lie."

"I'm not lying," I gasped in absolute shock. "Did you just call me a liar?"

"Mum, there was a very manly men in our house, he picked your phone when you were bathing, you never go to the bathroom without your phone when I'm not home. Meaning, he was not a nobody. So, who was him? You can tell me, you know I'm not opposed to you going on a date, or getting me a dad. No need to lie, I'm not a baby anymore!"

"Rhett, mind your words, I'm your mother!" I side-glared my phone. "Shouldn't you be in class, little men? Why are you on your phone? What kind of trouble are you scheming this time, uh?" I narrowed my eyes.

"Mum," he cried, playing innocent, "I would never scheme anything."

"And I'm a fairy," I mocked.

"Mum," he groaned. "I'm not screaming anything, I promise."

"Rhett Callum Vaughan, I've learned my lesson, I only believe your little promises if you do them in front of my eyes, with both hands where I can see. You're my son, and like me, you know how to bend the rules and your words to get what you want. Only someone who doesn't know you and your shenanigans would buy your mischievous words, we've been through that before, yeah? So, what, are you, scheming?" I glared at my plate, imagining his face.

"Uh... Lloyd is calling me, I have to go mum, see you in an hour!" He hung up.

I glared at my phone, fully glared at it, then I was on my feet, "I have to go."

"What? No," Rhyot grabbed my right forearm, making me seat down again.

"You don't tell me what to do," I snapped at him.

"What happened?" He snapped, ignoring my words, as usual.

"Rhett is scheming something," I groaned, "I have to go to school."

"Why would he scheme anything?" He frowned.

Sigh, "He is like... a little fusion of me and you, Rhyot. Aka, a very dangerous combination, especially having my IQ," I hissed. "He's mischievous and he is a sweet talker, he has skills enough to hack the system of the school, and he's in a Prep Elite school, private, for genius kids, yeah? And he's very kin to trouble."

But the bastard smiled amusedly, "Sounds perfect."

"If you want him to be expelled from another school, absolutely!"

"Another?" Niklaus, Damien, and Adeline gasped.

I pressed my lips together, "This is his 6th school in four years."

Rhyot chuckled, "Damn, that's my son."

There was no not-glaring at him, "Will you take being a dad seriously or not?"

That made him go serious, finally, then he was on his feet, "I'll drive."

"What?" I frowned.

But he was already pushing the croissant in my mouth like you'd a tomato on a pig, and taking me in his arms again, then Niklaus threw the key of a Bugatti Chiron to him and he caught it with no trouble, "Love, you can barely walk, I'm not letting you get behind the damn wheel of a car," he said it loud enough that they heard it, and I gasped, punching his chest.

"Rhyot," I hissed.

But the arsehole grinned widely, "Not like we were very quiet, or," I quickly covered his mouth with my hands, and the jerk smiled against my palm, walking away, a strange men who seemed to be guarding the door opened it for us and Rhys walked out of my house with me in his arms.

My jaw dropped when I saw many black G-Wagons blocking both side of the street and about five guards standing in front of the stairs that take to my place, and in front of my lawn was the fancy midnight blue Bugatti. What shocked me the most was how all of the men guarding my place and the ones in the cars, bowed their heads, looking down as they saw us, as they saw Rhys who seemed far too used to their behaviour. He walked to the car, opened the passenger door, sat me on the seat, leaned in to put the seatbelt on me, winked at me, closed the door, walked around the front of the car, hopped on the driver's seat, put on his seatbelt, turned the engine on, and took his phone from his coat and handed it to me.

"Put the address of our son's school in gps, please, love," he asked.

I stared at him in shock, then at his phone, trying to unlock it, I was met with a one-colour wallpaper in the shade of cornflower blue, the exact blue of my eyes, and a keypad for the password, "It's locked."

"042000," he told me, nonchalantly, as he drove out of the street when the G-Wagons on the left end made way for him to drive, all bowing their heads in the direction of the Bugatti.

April of 2000, that's the moth and year I was born in. Because that's not strange at all. When the screen was unlocked, I was met with a wallpaper of a realistic drawing of... me? Trying to ignore the knot in my stomach, I went to the gps and added the address of Rhett's school, and when the pathway was set, I handed the phone back to him, without a word, and he put his phone in the phone holder, a mischievous grin on the corner of his lip.

"A friend from school?" there was an edge in his voice and the knot in my belly only worsened. "Really, Ruby? You called me a friend from school?"

Gulping, I crossed my arms over my chest and looked away from him, to the window at my side, "What was I supposed to say? 'Oh, love, he's your father!', through the bloody phone?"

"Anything was better than friend from school, Ruby!" He scowled, angry. "You didn't even have in school, none of us did," he mocked and I gasped, unable not to glare at him. "We were literally the most hated kids in school, our son is already doing better than us both, he not only has a best friends, as he's even been to a sleepover. Our siblings were best friends, we had none."

"You were more hated than me, Rhyot," I countered.

"And I carry the fucking badge of honor for that!" He exclaimed. "You lied."

"I wasn't going to tell him the truth through a phone call!"

"Then you should have told him that he would know who I am, when he came back home, from school!" He snapped, annoyed. "And not called me a friend from school, for fuck's sake, Ruby Coraline!"

"Don't fucking call me that," I groaned.

"It's your name!" He snapped.

"My name is Ruby," I snapped back, "not Coraline."

"It's middle name, it's not even a bad one," he scoffed.

"Yes, it is, to me! I'm not calling you by your middle name."

"That's because you don't know my middle name," he countered.

He has point, "Of course, I do."

Rhys laughed at me, "No, you don't."

"Yes, I do," I lied, frustrated with how much of a knows-it-all he is.

"Then what is it?" He turned his eyes to me when we paused in a red light.

I sucked on my cheeks, frustrated, trying to remember if I ever heard it, because they probably say it on school, when they called all of our names to make sure we were all in class, a ritual I hated. Fuck, this is infuriating. I remember Hayes's, it was Taylor, Cole always mocked him for it, but not his.

"See? You don't know, because you never really paid attention to me, Ruby!"

"I was never one to pay attention to those who hated me," the words slipped off my lips automatically and his eyes darkened, so much that I realized I may have said the wrong thing.

"Yes? If I hated you so much, why did I know so much about you?"

I clenched my jaw, "You didn't, you just think you did."

"Hah," he scoffed bitterly, eyes back on the road, "yes, I did, Ruby."

"No, you didn't," I hissed, angry with his stubbornness.