by Linda Grimes
The window didn’t have much of a view—only similar buildings across the way and the street down below—but it did let in a lot of light. I could see the SUV, and wondered what Al and Candy were talking about. Whatever it was, it had to be less tension-filled there than it was here.
“Ciel … I’m sorry. I was stupid. I thought of a hundred different ways to explain it to you, to excuse it, but that’s the simple truth.”
“Why are you telling me this? You still don’t want a kid, do you?” I said, not looking at him.
He sucked in a breath. “No. I don’t.”
I flinched, automatically hugging my middle. The scale just tipped. Anger for the win. “Then why are we even here?” I said harshly, keeping my back turned.
Billy came to me. Leaned over, hugging me from behind. Like he was sheltering me. But from what? Himself? I tried to pull away and, failing that, to elbow him in the gut. He held on.
“I’m not going to lie to you, Ciel. I don’t want a kid. The idea of it scares me shitless, and you know I don’t scare easily. I think you have a right to know why.”
I stilled, needing to hear what he had to say.
He took a deep breath. “The woman who gave birth to me is in an institution. For a very good reason.” He swallowed hard. It obviously wasn’t easy for him to talk about.
I twisted around in his arms, compassion, for the moment, pulling ahead. “I know. Your father told me about it right before you got there.”
Anger sparked in his eyes, at Uncle Liam I supposed, for telling me what Billy had obviously wanted kept a secret over all these years.
“He was worried about you, about what you might do. He never would have said anything otherwise.”
Billy nodded, resignation replacing anger. “The thing is, as much as I don’t want a kid, I do want you. I want you so much more than I don’t want a kid. So I’m here, admitting I was an ass in Houston.” He looked deep into my eyes, his face stripped of his usual brash, take-on-the-world confidence. “Ciel, I regret that more than you can possibly imagine.”
My shields went up, and I pushed away. He let me go. “You once told me you don’t do regret, that it was a waste of time. That mistakes were nothing more than life-enriching experiences.”
“I still believe that’s mostly true. But not with this. This is the first time in my life I honestly know what regret means. Deep-down, soul-searing regret. I should not have left you there, alone with this.” He spoke the last sentence slowly and deliberately, his eyes emphasizing the sincerity of every word.
“Damn straight, you shouldn’t have,” I blurted, poking his chest with my finger. Because if you hadn’t, I never would have slept with Mark, I thought, and I wouldn’t be feeling so damned guilty right now!
And not guilty on Billy’s account either. Guilty at what I’d done to Mark. How I’d used him as some sort of giant Band-Aid for my psyche, without considering how it would make him feel afterward.
That was part of my problem, I realized. Sure, Billy had made a mistake. But would I really be having such a hard time forgiving him if I wasn’t trying to avoid my own damn conscience?
Billy laid his hands on my shoulders. My anger deflating, I let him. “Ciel, I’d sell my soul if I could take back the hurt I caused you”—one corner of his mouth lifted wryly—“not that seared souls are worth much, and anyway, that’s stupid. I can’t. All I can do is tell you if you still want to keep the baby, even knowing about my birth mother, I’ll be right there with you, doing my best to be a father.”
I stared up at him, stunned. Until that moment it hadn’t once occurred to me that I didn’t necessarily have to have the baby. If pressed, I would have considered myself pro-choice, but somehow I’d never thought to apply it to myself.
“You want me to—” I couldn’t say it. My God, if my mother ever found out …
“What I don’t want is for you to be saddled with a kid from my gene pool.” Bitterness clouded his eyes. And something else. Fear.
The silence stretched out as I tried to consider the possibility. In a way, it made sense. And, God, if it would erase the terror I saw in his eyes …
I was a fixer, and it was certainly one way I could fix a complicated situation. But in the process I would break something inside me. And I’d never be able to put it behind me, because every time I looked at my new niece or nephew I’d be reminded.
I shook my head slowly. “I don’t think that can be on the table, not for me. I’m no more ready to be a mother than you are to be a father, but the way I was raised … I don’t think I could.”
He nodded. Accepted it. “Okay then. Let’s do this thing.”
I sagged into him, laying my head against his chest, grateful he wasn’t going to push it. “Why didn’t you tell me about your birth mother before? In Houston, if not sooner?”
“Before, it never seemed to matter. Frankly, I didn’t want to think about it, much less talk about it. And in Houston … it all kind of reared up and swallowed me. I knew I finally had to see her for myself. To see exactly what kind of crazy I’m carrying around inside me.”
I looked up at his troubled face. “Billy, she’s mentally ill, not some sort of monster,” I said as gently as I could.
Pain twisted his handsome features. “No, that would be Dad. And me.”
“According to a woman who doesn’t have a firm grasp on reality. It sounds to me like she’s a product of her early environment. It’s sad, but your father is doing the best he can for her.”
“But what if it’s genetic? What if I lose my mind down the road? What if I pass it on? Jesus, Ciel, aren’t you even a little bit afraid of what we might bring into the world?”
“No. I’m not,” I said firmly. “I have never met anyone more grounded than you, and I’ve known you all my life. I think I would have noticed anything off by now.” I reached up to stroke his cheek. “Your dad said she reacted, um, poorly to seeing you.”
“If by ‘poorly’ you mean screaming that I was the devil and collapsing into a catatonic heap on the floor, yeah, that happened. Not very good for my ego, let me tell you. I left, quickly. Probably a little too quickly.”
Something about the way he said the last part worried me. “What happened?” I said.
He looked uncomfortable. “I was agitated. Took a curve faster than I should have. Banged up the Chevy a bit, that’s all.”
“How banged up?”
He shrugged. “More than scratched paint, but it fared better than the tree.”
“You hit a tree?” Billy was one of the best drivers I knew. Other than Mark, I didn’t know anyone better.
“Only a small one,” he said.
“Jesus Christ on a piece of toast. Are you okay?”
“Look at me, cuz. I’m fine.”
Ha. I knew better than to take that at face value. “Show me,” I said, narrowing my eyes so he’d know I meant business.
He dropped the adjustments he’d been making to his aura, revealing a bruised and abraded cheek. Across his forehead was a long gash, perilously close to one eye. It had been stitched neatly, but still stood out starkly on his face.
“Windshield?” I said, compressing my lips.
He nodded.
“Is that all of it?” I said, proud of how well I was controlling my reaction.
He lifted his sweater. Above his drool-worthy abs was a spectacular eggplant-colored bruise. I ran my fingers over it lightly, swallowing hard. No wonder he hadn’t been able to come back any sooner.
“Steering wheel?”
Again, he nodded.
“Did you break any ribs?”
He dropped his sweater back into place. “No. I told you, I’m fine. My car and I will both be back to our excessively handsome selves in no time.” The words were pure Billy, but the delivery lacked his usual panache.
I made myself look at the long cut on his face again. “Will it scar?” I asked. He had enough scars from his birth mom; he didn’t need a reminder of her every
time he looked in a mirror as himself.
“Probably. But it will fade in time, according to the doc. And meanwhile”—the visible remnants of the accident disappeared—“it’s not like I’ll be frightening the general public. Or my family.” He stressed the last part, looking at me significantly.
I sighed. “I won’t tell on you. You know a scar doesn’t matter to me, right?”
He nodded.
Okay, enough is enough. Time to lighten this shit up. “I mean, you’ve always been prettier than me anyway. Frankly, I was getting tired of all the how-did-she-ever-score-him looks I was getting from other women.”
He grinned. “Want me to rip out my stitches so it will leave a grizzlier scar?”
“Aw. You’d do that for me?” I said.
“Say the word. And then get me some Vicodin and lidocaine, because damn, this is going to sting.” He reached up to his forehead.
“Stop that, you idiot,” I said, and hugged him gingerly.
He pulled me to him harder, as if he felt like he deserved the pain, and his voice turned serious again. “Ciel, I mean it. I am so, so sorry. All I can say is, in my warped frame of mind—then, in that moment—I honestly thought you’d be better off without me. My biggest fear now is that I was right, that you would be. But I’m not strong enough to stay away from you.”
Tears sprang to my eyes at the thought of Billy being afraid of anything, and clogged my voice when I spoke. “Stop it. I need you, damn it. Warts and all.” I managed a small laugh. “Not that I won’t use it against you for the rest of our lives. Just so you know.”
His laugh was suspiciously watery, too. “Deal. And worth it, as long as our lives are together.”
We stood there a few minutes longer, digesting our emotions, realigning our relationship’s equilibrium. When we finally pulled ourselves apart, Billy said, “Okay, enough about me and my shit. What about you? Are you all right?”
“Oh, hell yeah,” I said brightly. “Heck, I wasn’t even in the condo when it was torched. My landlord”—I winked—“is taking care of everything. And on the upside, I got a whole new wardrobe out of it from Mom and Dad. I didn’t even have to go shopping for it. Hey, counting today, that makes twice I’ve gotten out of shopping this week. It almost makes up for having to do the whole damn mall with James and Devon.”
Billy listened patiently to my rah-rah-I’m-fine speech. “I’m glad, but that’s not what I meant. I knew Thomas would handle your condo. How are you after the skating rink?”
The blood took a nosedive out of my head at the reminder, leaving me wobbly. “How do you know about that?”
He gripped my elbows and held me up. “Mark told me.”
“Mark’s been trying to reach you for days. Why’d you answer him now?”
“The message he left this morning said Loughlin had almost succeeded in killing you. I’d ignored all his previous messages because I knew you were safe—”
“And stupidly thought I was better off without you?” I said.
“And, yes, misguidedly thought you were better off without me—”
“Stupidly,” I insisted.
He quirked his mouth. “Have it your way. Stupidly. But that message got my attention. So I called him.”
I imagined the conversation, and my stomach constricted. “Did he tell you I killed a man?” I said, my voice flat.
“Yeah. He said you had to—the guy had an ice pick to your chest. Jesus, cuz, is that true?”
I nodded. “I sliced his carotid with the blade of my skate. There was a lot of bl—” I swallowed the word, almost gagging on it. I tried again. “Blood. It g-got in my eyes”—I’d begun trembling badly; Billy wrapped me in his arms—“and my nose and my m-mouth.” And there went the sobs. Goddamn stupid pregnancy hormones. Seemed like every stray thought was an emotional bear trap, ready to snap and set me off.
Billy picked me up and carried me to the couch, and sat, keeping me on his lap. “It’s all right, sweetheart. Shh. It’s okay. You did great. You hear me? That asshole was going to kill you and you didn’t let him. You’re fucking awesome.”
“No, I’m not. I was scared and I panicked, and got lucky. I pretty much imploded afterward.”
“You wouldn’t be human if you didn’t. God, I wish I’d been there for you. You don’t know how sorry I am I wasn’t with you when it happened. That I wasn’t the one to slaughter that worthless piece of shit.”
“Huh. You and the owners of the rink,” I said with a weak laugh, getting hold of myself. “I’m sure you would have been able to accomplish the deed without getting the place shut down as a hazardous waste site.”
“No doubt. Snapping a neck isn’t usually bloody.”
I pushed myself up from his chest so I could see his face. “Have you snapped someone’s neck?” I asked.
He tilted his head, considering me. “You really want to know?”
“Yeah, I do,” I said, fascinated in spite of my churning stomach.
“I have.”
“When? Where? Why did you have to do it? Was it a man or a woman?” Call me morbidly curious, but I had to know.
“Which time?”
“‘Which time’? You’ve done it more than once?”
He shrugged.
“Tell! All of them,” I said, tears turned off like a faucet, my misery brightening at the prospect of company, as misery is prone to do.
“Well, okay, but you have to promise me you won’t turn this into some sort of gruesome competition…”
I slapped his chest. But lightly, on account of his injury. “Tell me already.”
“I mean, you do have a competitive streak. I don’t want you to feel like you have to go out and break some malefactor’s neck just because I have.”
I gave him the evil eye. “I won’t have to go far.”
“All right, all right. The first time was on my third job for the spook—see, you’re already ahead of me there, so you can relax.” The teasing glint in his eyes was wrong on so many levels, but humor—even when it was of necessity dark—was a coping mechanism that tended to work for me, and Billy knew it. “I was filling in for a midlevel diplomat on an overseas trip. I can’t tell you which country, or Mark would have to kill me. One day, my driver took the scenic route to our destination. Along the way we met up with a man who obviously meant us no good. The diplomat’s wife and five-year-old daughter were with me. The wife was shot between the eyes before I could do anything to stop it, and the bastard was about to do the same to the girl. He turned his back on me. I had an opening and I took it.”
Billy had lost the humor as he related the story, and by the end was looking grim. I guess dark humor will only take you so far.
“How did you feel afterward?” I asked.
“Immediately? Good. Pretty damn heroic, in fact. Later? Sick to my stomach. Small price to pay for saving a little girl’s life.”
“Did you throw up?” I asked. Billy had a really strong stomach, so if it had made him vomit, it would be a good indicator of how much it had affected him.
He tugged my hair. “Yes, smarty-pants. I did. By the way, it takes a lot more force than you might imagine to break someone’s neck, so don’t go getting the idea that you could have stopped your attacker that way and avoided the mess. You did the only thing you could do under the circumstances.”
I nodded, knowing he was right. “You said ‘first time.’ How many more?”
“One. But it was a bit more … deliberate. I’m not sure you want to know.”
I looked at him, waiting.
He finally nodded. “Okay, but remember—you asked. It was the same diplomat. I’d thought it was odd that the man who’d killed his wife hadn’t put me out of commission right away—most attackers will take out the man first, to avoid exactly what happened. I could only figure the attacker had reason to believe the diplomat wouldn’t fight back. Mark did some digging, and found out he’d set the whole thing up to get rid of his wife.”
“That’s h
orrible,” I said.
Billy nodded. “Worse, the daughter was seen as collateral damage. Being a diplomat, the guy couldn’t be brought to justice through official channels—it would have amounted to the dreaded ‘international incident,’ which naturally had to be avoided at all costs, at least according to Mark’s higher-ups. But they were willing to turn a blind eye if some sort of tragic ‘accident’ happened to the guy. Say, a mugging gone awry. I volunteered to be the accident. Mark didn’t want to let me—he said it was different from killing in the heat of the moment, and he didn’t want me to go there. I did it anyway.”
I was quiet for a minute, absorbing what he’d told me. I came to the conclusion he’d done the right thing. “Was it?” I said at last.
“Different? Yeah. I was prepared. Told myself I was protecting the girl. I still believe that. And, no, I didn’t throw up that time.” Billy hesitated. Swallowed. “But Mark was right. The planning, the preparation … it adds a layer of … I don’t know if I’d call it guilt exactly—the bastard deserved it. Maybe ‘culpability’ is the word I’m looking for.”
I took his face in my hands and kissed his forehead—lightly—offering him the same absolution he’d given me.
“So, shall we start a tally board or what?” he said, quirking his mouth. “Should there be extra credit for coming close to biting the big one? Or according to how big an asshole they are? We could color code it for evilness, black being for the most heinous villains we dispatch, of course. And maybe partial credit for roughing someone up? On a sliding scale, depending on how much blood is drawn. I should at least get a gold star for those neo-Vikings last summer.”
I tried not to laugh—but yeah, dark humor. It helped. This was the Billy I loved, warped humor and all. He understood me, and I thought I understood him, too. I saw the pain beneath his joking, and I couldn’t give up on him.
