She tilted her head, a little crease forming between her brows. “Time and space for what?”
I almost smiled. “To decompress,” I offered.
“I don’t want time and space, not fromyou.” The way she said you, the way her mouth trembled at the edges made my heart stutter like a bad transmission.
And the way she was looking at me made my body—specifically the part of it below my belt—swell instantly, as if instructed by a committee of absolute morons. I wanted to apologize for the obviousness of my response, but instead I jammed my hands even harder into my pockets, steeled my jaw, and focused on the pale skin at her collarbone and not the look in her eye.
At my non-response, she took in a shaky breath. “I thought you were bringing a plus-one,”
It wasn’t quite an accusation, but there was a kernel of something sharp at the center. I wasn’t sure if it was jealousy or just old-fashioned curiosity.
I blinked, surprised. “Why would you think that?”
Her hands fluttered at her sides, restless. “Because Genesis is in town,” she stated, her voice was flat, almost clinical.
“We’re done. I told you that.”
She nodded, but she didn’t look convinced. “Is she here for you?” The question hung between us, heavier than the dust motes swirling in the shaft of light.
I hesitated, but there was no point in lying. “She did stop by the house a few days ago.”
“Yeah, I saw.”
“You saw? I thought you moved back to your apartment.” Which I hated. When she said she was moving out, I assumed she was going to be moving back in with Bailey.
“There are paparazzi photos of you two kissing.”
“There are?”
Billie nodded.
Fucking Genesis. Of course there were. That kiss felt like a show. “She showed up at my house, I opened the door and she kissed me. She must have staged it.”
“Did you guys talk?” Billie asked.
I nodded, wondering if Genesis had always been this way and I hadn’t seen it or if she’d changed over time once her celebrity started to grow. I honestly wasn’t sure. We only spent a weekend together at a time, so it was hard to say. Anyone could keep up an act for forty-eight hours. Or maybe it wasn’t even an act, maybe it was just one side of her I was seeing during those short periods. The durations of our relationship had been long but actual face-to-face time logged together wasn’t a lot in comparison.
Billie’s eyes narrowed. “What did she say?”
“She said she overreacted and we could put the girls in boarding school,” I said, and my voice came out raw. “She said she was willing to move past mymistakes.”
“Mistakes?” Anger rolled off Billie in palpable waves, the kind of cold, crystalline anger that could shatter bone. Her hands, usually so measured and controlled, balled into fists at her sides. “Boarding school? They’re five.”
“I told you, I’m not going to be with her.”
She licked her lips and nodded, an obvious relief washing over her.
This was ridiculous. We always talked about everything but since I’d been back, we’d been walking on eggshells. We weren’t saying what we wanted to say to each other and it was drivingme crazy. “I love you, Billie. I’m in love with you. But I know we don’t have a future. You don’t want kids and that’s fair, I understand that but I wish we could be friends. I miss you, every second of every day.”
“I miss you, too.”
“But being friends with you would be messy. You obviously didn’t want me to be here tonight with Genesis. I was going crazy thinking of you with Russell. We don’t want to see each other with other people. That’s not what friends do. And, personally, it is hard for me, literally—” I glanced down at my pants which had grown tighter by the second since we’d entered the closet. Billie smiled. “—to be your friend because right now all I want to do is go over there, pull your skirt up and find out if you’re as wet as I think you are.”
A flush bloomed on her cheeks. She wasn’t denying being wet, which told me she was just as turned on as I was. She’d worn that dress for me tonight, even though she thought my ex was coming as my plus-one. Probablybecauseshe thought my ex was coming as my plus-one.
“Do you think we can just be friends?” I asked.
Her nostrils flared. “Yes.”
