“What was it?”
I took a deep breath. Another damn fork. In for a penny, in for a pound. “Gangster’s Folly.”
I felt Billy’s entire body stiffen behind me. And not in a good way.
“Seriously? My book?” he said, and moved to sit up.
A chill rippled through me, and not just because he’d removed his body heat. He slid to the end of the couch, and I pulled my legs from his lap and sat up myself, pulling the blanket around me, the end of it long enough to still cover most of Billy.
I loved his body, but I had a feeling we would need to be covered for where this conversation was headed.
As if he was thinking the same thing, he rose from the couch and pulled his jeans on in the dark. He tiptoed through the papers still on the floor and turned on his desk lamp, casting the whole room in a soft glow. He then returned and sat down on the arm of the couch, further away from me.
“Okay, let’s…can we talk about this? My book?”
“Yes,” I said, not really wanting to. But I’d said all I’d wanted to say on the subject of that bastard Steven, my heartless mother, and my long road to finding myself again. I’d happily talk about how much Billy’s book meant to me, even though I sensed it probably weirded him out a little.
“I mean, I knew you’d readFolly, we talked about it when we were FaceTiming, but I guess I thought that was fairly recently. Like, because you were taking my class or something.”
“Well, I did reread it right before fall semester started. Because I was taking your class.” I rose from the couch and dropped the blanket, reveling in the soft moan Billy let out. I didn’t hide myself from him as I dressed.
“Reread,” he said from behind me. “You said you read it more than once?”
I fastened my bra and slid my shirt over my head. “Yes. Although not as often as that first year.” I looked over my shoulder at him, trying to let him see the significance of what his words did for me back then. “That year when I was…recovering, I read it over and over. Probably twenty times.”
I was expecting a softness on his face, a look of…somethingto tell me he got it. Got what I was trying to do. Thank him.
But that was not the look he had on his face. His gaze followed me as I, now fully dressed, moved back to the couch and sat on the arm opposite him, bringing my bare feet up to land on the place where our heads had been moments ago.
I shrugged while he continued to stare at me. “I’ve probably reread it a couple of times a year since then.”
A strangled sound came out of him, part laugh and part…I wasn’t really sure. His strong chest heaved with a huge breath and he put his head down. I admired his body in the dim light. The way his muscles bunched in his shoulders, the long sinewy arms that held me so tight. The hands on his knees, which had done indescribable things to my body all afternoon.
“Gangster’s Follysaved my life, Billy,” I said only loudly enough for him to hear me. Scrubbing his hand across his chin he looked up at me, and the look on his face made me flinch.
Pain. There was such…pain. It was almost as if someone had hit him. Or hurt him very, very badly.
“What…?” I whispered, but he held up a hand to stop me.
“One question,” he said, and I nodded. “Did you come to Bribury because I was going to be here?”
It was complicated, and I tried to parse my thoughts on the best way to word it, but my pause, momentary as it was, was too much for him.
“You did, didn’t you?” he said, the pain from his face now clearly in his voice. “Syd,” he whispered, but it wasn’t directed at me. Instead, my name floated in the air like some kind of smoke signal. But I wasn’t sure what it meant. It was like I didn’t know the code. There was something missing here, that I wasn’t getting.
“That’s not exactly how it happened,” I said, about to explain that Bribury was in my final three, and that his being here seemed like more of a tipping point than a sign from above.
Although, that wouldn’t be totally truthful—I had taken Billy being at Bribury for a year as a sign that it was the place for me.
But not in the creepy stalker way that I now realized he was imagining.
He was shaking his head as I opened my mouth, so I stopped. “I think…I think we might have found the straw that broke the camel’s back,” he said with such sweetness, such melancholy in his voice, that I instantly knew that I was going to walk out of this office no longer having Billy Montrose as my Valentine.
The pain wracked through my body, almost physically pushing me back so that I had to put my hand on the back of the couch to steady myself. But I kept my voice firm and unemotional as I said, “Explain that, please.”
He didn’t look at me as he rattled off points that I’d thought we’d come to terms with long ago. “You’re a student. You weremystudent. Youaremy employee.” He looked back at me, then hung his head and said softly, “And you’re a Folly Dolly.” There was such sadness in his voice that I had to stop myself from crawling across the couch and comforting him.
Yeah, comforthim, when I was the one getting dumped. And for what? Being a fan of his writing?
