Billie snorted. “By falling apart on her doorstep.”
“By trusting her with the truth. Even if you don’t have the words yet, the fact you’re willing to tell her about the past is huge.” Ella shifted closer. “I think Debra could beexactlywhat you need. Not because she’ll save you, you don’tneedsaving, but because she doesn’t want to own you or control you or shape you into something different for herself.”
Billie stared at the floor and exhaled a deep breath. “She makes me want things.”
“And that’s the point,” Ella said. “You don’twantto disappear anymore. You want to live.”
Billie rested her head back on the couch and stared up at the ceiling. She felt alive yet devastated all at once. “I don’t understand it. I humiliated myselfandI scared her. I regressed in a way I swore I never would again.” Billie’s voice wavered. “But I feel…open. I feel like I have actual breath in my lungs for the first time in a decade.”
“That’s what happens when you stop surviving and start feeling.”
Billie turned her head slowly and met Ella’s gaze. “I don’t know how to do that safely.”
“That’s not something you have to figure out today. You just have to promise me that you won’t punish yourself for it.”
As her shoulders relaxed and her muscles loosened, Billie accepted that her life was changing. “I think I want something real, and even though that terrifies me more than anything I went through with Janet, I…think I’m willing to risk it if it means I potentially have a future with Debra.”
Ella blinked back tears and sniffled. “You don’t know how long I’ve waited for this day to come.”
Chapter Twenty-Four
Debra had been standingat the kitchen sink for nearly five minutes before she realised she hadn’t washed a single cup. Her hands rested on the edge of the counter, her gaze unfocused as the kettle clicked off behind her.
The last twenty-four hours replayed in fragments she couldn’t quite put into any sort of order. Billie on her knees. That flinch and those tears. The weight of her body collapsing into Debra’s arms as though she’d been holding herself together by sheer determination alone.
Debra closed her eyes and willed her tears away. She had slept last night, eventually. It hadn’t been a deep or peaceful sleep, but it had been enough for her to somehow function today. Which was precisely what she’d needed so she could make sure Billie was fed, watered, and driven home safely.
The sound of the doorbell jolted her, and for one very brief moment, her heart leapt with the idea that Billie had come back. It hadn’t even been an hour since Debra had left her at her apartment; she knew it wouldn’t be Billie.
She moved towards the door and opened it, her eyes widening when her daughter stared back at her. “Charlotte!”
She stood on the landing with a canvas tote bag slung over her shoulder and that particular expression Debra had come to know too well since her separation from Gerald. Concern masked as casualness.
“Hi, Mum.” Charlotte smiled. “Surprise.”
Debra frowned. “What are you doing here? I thought you were working tonight.”
“I…swapped my shift.” Charlotte moved inside, immediately dropping her bag by the door. She looked around the flat as though she’d never stepped foot inside before today, then turned to Debra. “Caleb said you didn’t seem yourself the other day.”
Debra inconspicuously swallowed. She really didn’t want to drag her kids into her personal life. It wasn’t necessary. “Oh, he did, did he?”
“He noticed. Which is saying something, because you usually hide it better than that.”
Debra closed the door behind her. “I was just tired. Doing nothing with your life can be surprisingly taxing.”
“Mum.”
There it was. That worried look she’d tried to avoid being the cause of.
Charlotte shrugged off her coat and followed Debra into the kitchen. “He said you were distracted and quieter than usual. He…asked if you were sad again.”
Debra busied herself with the kettle, grateful for something to do with her hands. “Iamallowed to be sad sometimes.”
“I know you are.” Charlotte leaned back against the counter. “But you don’t usually let it show, and you definitely don’t let Caleb see it.”
She turned and met her daughter’s eyes. She looked so much like Debra today that it startled her. She had that same crease between her brows when she was worried.
“This isn’t about the divorce, is it?” Charlotte narrowed her eyes. “Mum?”
