Chapter Twenty-Two
Gus
I lied to Billy. I told him I didn’t care, but I did care. I cared so much I drove the van approximately fifty feet before I lost my mind and hit the brakes.
The van lurched to a stop.
The car behind me beeped and swerved around me, but I barely heard it over the blood roaring in my ears. Billy’s face filled my mind. The hurt in his eyes when he’d thought I’d fucked someone else. The resignation when he’d decided he deserved nothing more. And then later, confusion, when the only relationship he could rely on to be consistent had blown up in his face.
WhenI’d blown up in his face.
Anger faded. Despair took its place. I gripped the wheel with shaky hands, and my knuckles turned white. Dammit, I was a fool. Mia was right: I did think with my dick. If I hadn’t, none of this would’ve happened. But I was tired. Tired of being the only one to keep my temper in check, and my feelings so locked away I forgot about them. Mia and Billy shouted and broke things. Luke was King Reticence, but his silence bled out and hurt other people. Me? I plastered a blank smile on my face and kept going so they didn’t have to, and I was so tired of it.
My phone rang.
I ignored it and put the van in gear. I drove out of town with no idea of where I was going. Houses turned to woodland, and trees covered the road in a canopy that hid the night sky. The road became a sandy lane, and then a dirt track that led to the abandoned farm buildings I’d explored as a child. Later, when my mum had been dying at home, I’d come here to sit in silence, craving the solitude of my own grief. Back then, loneliness had been an ominous cloud on the horizon, a promise of what was to come when my mum was gone. But still, I’d never imagined I’d be facing it alone. That Mia would leave me too.
What’s that got to do with anything?Or is it okay for you to take your pain out on Billy while cursing him out for doing the same? He lost all the same things you did.
True facts. But we were different men. Billy’s emotions were noisy bright lights, but they made sense. I understood. Perhaps even he did too. Mine were dulled by years of suppression, and when they spilled out, unchecked, I had no idea what to do with them.
I pulled up by the dilapidated barn and got out of the van. It was darker out here than in town, and the stars shone with obnoxious light that cut through the shadows. Foxes screamed in the distance. Hoarse, ragged cries that suited my mood. I ducked into the barn and sat on an old tractor tyre. At some point I’d have to go home and watch Billy pack his things and leave. But before that could happen I needed to scrape my heart from the floor and shove it back to the pit it had come from.
It was easier than admitting I loved Billy too much to let him go.
