Billy’s jaw tightens. “Watch your mouth.”
“Why?” Joey laughs again. “It’s the truth, isn’t it? I can smell it on you. I can smellheron you. You reek of her.”
My face burns. I want the ground to open up and swallow me whole.
“In the whole fucking town,” Joey says, shaking his head. “In the whole goddamn state of Texas, you couldn’t have found someone else to fuck? You had to bring back the one person who ripped our hearts out?”
“It’s not like that,” Billy says. His voice is even, but his hands are clenching into fists.
“It’s exactly like that,” Joey counters. “You’re weak, Billy. You’ve always been weak for her. She doesn’t love you. She loves the attention. She loves that she can make you crawl back every time.”
“That’s enough!” Clara shouts.
She steps forward. She draws her hand back.
And she punches Joey square in the face.
The sound is a sharp crack. Joey’s head snaps to the side. He stumbles back a step, clutching his face.
“What the?—”
Clara stands her ground. “I told you to stop talking.”
Joey’s eyes widen. He looks at Clara, then at his hand, which comes away red with blood.
“You bitch,” he snarls.
He shoves her.
Hard.
Clara stumbles backward, her heels catching on the uneven ground. She falls, landing on her hip in the dirt.
“Hey!”
Tex is there in a second. He slams into Joey, grabbing him by the collar of his jacket and shoving him.
“What the fuck do you think you’re doing?” Tex roars. “You don’t put your hands on a woman!”
“She hit me!” Joey yells back, struggling against Tex’s grip. “She broke my fucking nose!”
“You were asking for it!” Tex shouts.
The yard dissolves into chaos. The reporters are shouting, cameras flashing wildly. The mayor is screaming for order.
Seth is running over, trying to pull Tex off Joey.
I stand there. Frozen.
I look at Billy.
He’s standing still, watching his brothers fight, watching Clara get up from the dirt and dust off her jeans.
He hasn’t moved. He hasn’t said a word.
He didn’t stop Joey when he insulted me. He didn’t defend me when Joey accused me of being a plague. He didn’t acknowledge the intimacy Joey threw in his face.
He just stood there.
