Billy fell to the ground howling and writhing in pain, unsure where to grab–his aching nuts or his gushing nose. Gabe came running out of the house with his gun drawn, but holstered it immediately when he saw that Billy was prone on the ground. He reached for his next best weapon instead, his cellphone. “I need a car sent to Josh’s house,” he told the dispatcher. “One car,” he clarified, “and probably an EMT.”
Luckily, only one squad car and one ambulance responded like Gabe requested. The EMTs stayed long enough to staunch the flow of blood from Billy’s nose then he was hauled away in the back of a squad car, crying and snotting about the pain he was in. I had zero sympathies for him.
“Remember how Laura told me that Billy had disappeared for a few days?” I asked Gabe, after we were alone again in the warmth of my home.
“Yeah,” Gabe replied, looking me over. “Get these jeans off,” he said rather forcefully.
“I’m not really in the mood right now,” I replied sardonically.
“Josh, you have his blood all over you,” Gabe said.
In all the excitement, I had forgotten that he bled on me. I followed Gabe to the bathroom and peeled my clothes off before stepping inside the shower.
“Can we get back to the bombshell Billy dropped before I kicked his ass?” I asked Gabe.
“His nuts,” Gabe corrected absently as he began washing me. It was obvious that Gabe was focused on fussing over me and I wasn’t about to refuse his soapy hands on my body.
“I still knocked him on his ass,” I argued.
“True.”
The hot water and Gabe’s hands melted the last bit of tension that remained in my body. I knew that a heavy exhaustion would follow when the adrenaline from Billy’s failed assault faded. I needed to tell Gabe what I learned before I fell asleep because I didn’t want him to be caught by surprise if it came out later when Billy was being questioned.
“Billy’s been watching us,” I told him.
“I’m glad you were right about him being the one behind the pictures. As disturbing at it was, he’s not nearly as dangerous as whoever killed Nate. They weren’t playing around,” Gabe said.
“It’s worse than you realize, Gabe. He’s been squatting at Bianca’s and watching us through my bedroom window. He…”
“That son of a bitch,” Gabe growled. He balled his fists at his side and his chest bellowed as he breathed hard with fury. I wasn’t worried that he would hurt me, but I thought my carefully chosen bathroom tiles were in jeopardy of getting punched.
I covered his fists with my hands in an attempt to calm him and save my tiled wall. “It’s my fault,” I told Gabe. “If I hadn’t been so enthralled in seeing the light from the full moon on your skin…”
“Stop,” Gabe said, shaking his head. I wasn’t sure what he wanted me to stop until he spoke again. “You’re not to blame for any of this,” he said, cupping my face. “You’re not the only one who was seduced by the light and shadows the moon brings out in your room. He was the wrong one, not us.”
Gabe kissed me fiercely in the shower and made me forget all about Billy and his hate. We turned off the shower, toweled off, and made love in the moonlight once more. I held tight to Gabe’s body as he moved inside me, loving every expression that crossed his face and word of devotion that left his lips. What we shared was the greatest of gifts a person could ever receive in life.
Later, a thought occurred to me as I laid my head on his chest and listened to the comforting sounds of his steady heartbeat. “Gabe?”
“Yeah, Sunshine.”
“In the past few weeks, you’ve referred to this place as your home, but tonight you called it my house. Which is it?” I bit my lip in the dark while waiting for him to answer the question. I don’t know why it mattered so much or why I needed an answer in order to fully rest, but I did.
“One represents the reality of our situation and the other represents the future I wish to have.” Both the timbre in his voice and the meaning of his words caused me to wiggle with joy against him. “You better settle down there before you wake my dick back up,” Gabe warned. “You’re going to need a good night of sleep for the day you’ll have tomorrow.”
I thought about it for several seconds, but that’s all my mind needed to conjure up a billion things. I didn’t miss a birthday, anniversary, and I knew for a fact we didn’t have dinner plans because it was one of my late nights at the salon. “What’s tomorrow?”
“Babe, the copsandan ambulance were here tonight. It’s going to be wall-to-wall with people in your salon tomorrow.”
RELIEF DIDN’T BEGIN TOdescribe the emotion I felt when I found Billy crumpled on the ground from the beat down Josh gave him. I felt even better when I learned from Josh that Billy basically admitted in a roundabout way that he was the one behind the pictures. He didn’t come right out and say it, but he didn’t deny it when Josh confronted him either. All of that faded when Josh told me about Billy squatting in Bianca’s house and watching us through his bedroom window. Josh had tried to blow it off like it didn’t bother him, but I knew better. Billy was a hurtful reminder of his past and someone he wouldn’t want to spoil something that we cherished together.
Damn that Billy! I fucking hated that he saw Josh in a light that I was positive others had never seen, especially not him. With me, Josh was free to be himself without fear of judgment or scorn. With me, Josh let down his guard and showed me everything he felt. With me, he wasn’t afraid to be vulnerable. He radiated lightness that threatened to outshine the moonlight he loved so much. Those things were for my eyes only, and Billy Sampson violated that. For that reason alone, I was glad Josh kneed him in the balls. From the sounds that came out of Billy, he would need to have them surgically reset.
For obvious reasons, I knew I wouldn’t be involved when Billy was being questioned or during the search of Bianca’s house for evidence he might’ve left behind there. I was fine with that for a few reasons. One, I wasn’t going to give his lawyer a legitimate defense or a jury a reason to toss out the charges against him due to my relationship to the victim. It was a line cops should never cross, but it was harder than people realized to take a step back and let others take the lead when it involved someone you loved. Two, I trusted my team, which made being relegated to watch the interview through the monitors under supervision tolerable.
Captain Reardon gave up his chance to play bad cop, which I secretly thought he enjoyed a lot, to keep an eye on me so that I didn’t fuck up the investigation. Not only was Billy a suspect in Josh’s harassment, but he used police evidence to do so when he put that picture of a dead Nate Turner in that envelope and placed it on Josh’s bed.
Adrian took the lead and Officer Wen played the role of bad cop in my absence. I couldn’t help but gloat when he limped into the interview room. Billy was brought in, looking more haggard than a college co-ed coming off a weekend bender. Both of his eyes were black and his nose was swollen from where Josh broke it. He was covered in a sheen of sweat and grime that made my nose twitch. “I hope they let him brush his teeth before he was brought in.” I was taking a page from Josh’s playbook and cracking jokes to cover my nerves. The guys had just returned from executing the search warrant and I was curious to know what they discovered in Bianca’s house.
