“Just give in to the thrall that’s Billie,” he said. “Admit that you were kids in the past and that both of you fucked up—Billie in not trusting you with whatever truth she’s hiding, and you in letting her just walk away without so much as questioning her actions for even a second. You were—still are, actually—a prideful bastard, and holding onto your hurt has impacted the best part of you for nearly a decade. It’s time to let it go.”
It sounded so fucking easy when he said it like that. “I can’t,” I told him truthfully. “It’s burned into my being, into my blood, into my music. I don’t exist without this pain, and I’ve grown with it, so there’s no cutting it from my soul.”
Rhett was still smiling, but his eyes were flat. “Then you’ll lose her again. And having experienced it once myself—admittedly nowhere near as intense as you have—I’d say that for you, there’d be no surviving a second time.”
As desperate as I was to argue with him, I couldn’t. He spoke the truth.
“She was hurt,” I whispered in a rage. “She starved. I let that fucking happen, and there’s no taking it back.”
The fact that Billie didn’t appear to hate me as much as I hated her astonished me when I took into account the life she must have lived. “What the fuck are all her scars from?”
Rhett’s humor was completely dried up now. “I think that’s her story to tell, don’t you? She gave me some of the pieces, more than you’ve got for sure, but it feels wrong to go sharing her secrets behind her back. Ask her again, maybe when your tempers have cooled down. I know right now you’re thinking the worst and probably want to raze this forest to the ground.”
“And kill every motherfucker who ever laid a hand on her,” I agreed, grimacing. I couldn’t push him to tell me; he was right to respect her like that.
He nodded, darkness casting shadows across his face until he was near unrecognizable.
“If I find out Angelo is responsible for even one of the marks on Billie, I’ll destroy him,” I said. The Riccis’ wrath would be a small price to pay if it came to that.
“I’ll help you bury the body,” Rhett said, voice dropping lower. “But… as much as I want to see that handsome bastard removed from her life, I don’t think he’d ever hurt her.”
I fucking hated that he was right. Or I thought he was. The Angelo I knew, my best friend for the first eighteen years of our lives, would rather kill himself than harm Billie. I just had to hope some things hadn’t changed.
We remained in a testosterone cloud for a few seconds before managing to calm down. There was no one to kill at the moment, so we’d have to save our rage for another day.
Maybe the day Billie finally revealed all her secrets.
“How do I get through the next few days?” I asked, my thoughts tumultuous. A dozen or more song lyrics raced through my mind, and I hoped there was some paper in that RV, because I needed to write this music down. Release it from my mind before it drove me insane.
“With earplugs because I’m going to be fucking our girl every chance I get, making her scream my name,” Rhett said, his smirk back in place. Then he gave a joking imitation of a girl's voice as he moaned, “Oh Rhett, yes, harder, Jace never fucks me this good. His dick is so tiny compared to your weapon, Rhett!”
Laughing at his antics, I punched him in the arm. “Shut up, asshole. You know that’s not true.”
He snickered. “Come on, we should get back. I don’t like leaving her alone for long. Not since she disappeared on me the last time I did.”
If I was being honest with myself, and I fucking hated doing that, it also bothered me to be so far away from her when there were killers out there hunting for us.
We both started back together, and when the silver trailer came into sight, guitar music drifted toward us. Along with the scent of cooking.
“Who started a fire?” I said, panic hitting me that maybe someone had found us. Found Billie.
But why the fuck would they start a fire? Was Grayson back, maybe?
A second later a pitchy voice drifted along with the chords.
Rhett paused, tilting his head to the side. “Is Billie… singing?”
Despite my complete lack of humor at the moment, a short chuckle escaped me. “Billie is a lot of things, but a singer is not one of them. Girl can’t do much more than hum along in time, but she has an ear for music writing that makes the rest of us look like amateurs.”
Rhett joined me in laughing. “Look, she sounds adorable. Off tune as fuck, but adorable nonetheless. And that melody is fucking catchy. No wonder you managed to write some of our greatest hits with her help.”
I had. And I’d never captured that same magic again, not even with my band. Billie and I made perfect music together, and when we were done for the day, I’d strip her bare and fuck her to the sound of our tracks. Often right there on the floor of our makeshift recording studio. Sometimes with Angelo watching, sometimes with him joining in. It was a part of my life I never wanted to revisit, and yet here the hell I was, making music again and fucking Billie. I’d just swapped out one guitarist best friend for another. Some asshole was having a great laugh at my expense.
Rhett picked up the pace, clearly wanting to catch Billie in the middle of her song. I kept pace because it made sense, not because I was in a rush to do the same. Fuck no. Billie and I were toxic, and I just had to make it through the next few days without losing my shit at her again.
Surely, I could manage that. We were adults. It was time we started acting like it.
When we rounded out the front of the RV, we saw the small fire she had going with a pot hanging over the top. Billie had an old acoustic on her lap, eyes closed as she hummed along and strummed a few more chords, before she found the sound and rhythm she was looking for.
