Nina rushed to her feet and smoothed out her skirt. “Billie, I?—”
Billie’s eyes flew open. “I said…get out!”
Nina swiftly lifted her tablet from Billie’s desk and skittered across the office floor. She turned back as she clasped her fingers around the door handle and smiled. “See you at four. Mrs Chamberlain and her daughter have an appointment for some alterations.”
Billie droppedher keys onto the counter and let the door swing shut behind her. She didn’t move, preferring the stillness to press down on her shoulders. Normally, this space was her sanctuary. It was the place she always knew she could come back to when she needed to breathe. Only tonight, it felt as though the walls alone had questions she couldn’t answer.
She’d lost her footing entirely. She’d already known it as this week had progressed, but it had been cemented the moment Nina had left her office, her eyes filled with a confusion Billie never allowed. Then came the silence. It wasn’t clean like it usually was. No, it was pulsing with guilt.
Billie pressed both palms to the kitchen counter and bowed her head. She’d built her life on rules, yet she’d somehow used the one person who still looked at her with unwavering loyalty as a stand-in for someone else entirely. The shame for doing so came slowly, settling deep in her chest until it burned.
Nina hadn’t deserved that. She never would. She was diligent and eager…and God, she was desperate to please. Billie had spent years teaching herself control and the art of never letting anyone too close. And then, in one brief lapse, she’d undone her own lesson.
All because she couldn’t stop thinking about Debra Allen.
She poured herself a drink and knocked it back in one gulp. The image wouldn’t leave her. Debra standing in the mirror, wearing that suit and holding the power that came with it. The way she’d looked at Billie that afternoon, calm but furious, yet heartbreakingly direct.
I walked in…complicated and messy, and you realised you didn’t want to handle that.
Billie had spent hours trying to decide if Debra had been right. Maybe she had; maybe everything Billie said to women was just another way to stay untouchable. Power in the guise of care. Debra had seen through it, she’d seenher,and Billie hadn’t known what to do with that.
The thought of it now made her throat constrict. “Pathetic.”
Anger was easier than guilt. It always had been. She had no right to be angry for wanting Debra, but it was better than admitting the truth. She was lonely, and no amount of power at the office could change that.
Billie dropped down to the edge of the couch and rubbed a hand over her face. She tried to find the rhythm of her breathing—in through the nose, out through the mouth—a ritual that usually steadied her. But every inhale brought back Debra’s scent, and every exhale replayed her voice.
For years, she’d forced herself to believe that detachment was power and that distance was survival. After everything she’d lived through, it was the only way she’d learned to stay standing. But tonight, detachment felt like a punishment.
You’ve always been good at punishing yourself!
She reached for her phone and scrolled to Ella’s number. She could almost hear her best friend’s voice with that calm, knowing, but slightly exasperated tone.
You used someone kind because you can’t stop thinking about the one woman who actually saw right through you.
Billie set her phone down again. Ella would be right, and she wasn’t ready to hear it. Unless someone had a solution for all of this, she didn’t want to hearanything.
She pushed away from the kitchen counter and started to pace.
Nina would be fine; she always was. She’d come in tomorrow, polished and polite, pretending nothing had happened. AndBillie would do the same. They were both very good at pretending nothing was wrong.
But Debra was a different story.
Even now, in this place she’d built to keep the world at arm’s length, Billie could still feel her. The brightness she’d carried into the room and the honesty that had stripped Billie bare without laying a hand on her.
For so long, Billie had told herself that being untouched meant being untouchable. But standing there in the dark, rain streaking down the glass, she wasn’t so sure anymore.
Chapter Ten
The late afternoonair carried a chill as Debra sat down on a worn wooden bench overlooking the Thames. She shivered, watching the tide push itself against the embankment wall. She’d always loved this spot and the calm it offered, but lately it had started to feel like a mirror. The longer she stared at it, the more she saw herself.
Constant movement. No real direction.
What now?
It was a question she’d been asking a lot lately. She was fifty-two, divorced, and for the first time since her twenties,entirelyuntethered. No house to run or children to take care of, no husband to cook for and no one to account for except for herself. She had money—the divorce had seen to that—but not purpose. Right now, she would take purpose over wealth. One without the other just seemed pointless.
Maeve had told her that freedom was meant to feel thrilling, but it didn’t. Not to Debra. It felt like she was standing in a room she used to live in, knowing she no longer belonged there.
