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He nodded. “It feels like I’ve wanted you to be mine for so long, Shayna. I had to make sure you were okay.”
She could hardly believe what was happening, but it was everything she’d been wanting, too, so she wasn’t going to waste a minute questioning it. “Well I am yours, Billy. And you’re mine, too.”
“Better fucking believe it.” He gave her another quick kiss. “Okay, baby. Go kick some more ass and come back to me when you’re done. I’ll be right here waiting for however long it takes.”
Chapter Eighteen
They got home at five in the morning.
Then slept like the dead in Billy’s bed ‘til two in the afternoon.
And then they’d taken turns washing the past few days off one another’s skin in the shower. Not really talking. Not trying to arouse. Just wanting to take care. Because they were both physically beat up and emotionally drained and needed the TLC. From one another.
Something about the past twenty-four hours had forged them so that Shayna felt closer to Billy than she’d ever felt to anyone in her life.
Maybe it was having shared their feelings and realizing she wasn’t the only one in over her head. Or maybe it was how he’d supported her work, waiting at the scene for five hours. Or maybe it had been how he’d ridden in the ambulance with her and held her hand, staying by her side as much as he could as she got stitched up. Or how he’d held her all morning long as they’d slept—how they’d held each other.
Or maybe it was how Billy had admitted his fears about losing her and his fear of fire.
Whatever explained it, Shayna was considering—really considering for the first time—telling Billy the thing that she most feared him finding out. Because she wanted what they had to be real, and real meant that he needed to know her. All of her. Even the ugly parts. And that she had to be brave enough to trust him to…she didn’t know. Forgive or accept her, maybe?
So as they stood in the bathroom in nothing more than towels, Shayna took a deep breath and let the truth fly, “It’s my fault that Dylan died.” The words made her pulse pound like a bass drum, but there was also a kind of freedom for having voiced them.
“What? No. No, baby, it’s not.” Billy cupped her face in his hands.
“It is,” she said, meeting his gaze. A shiver shuddered through her. “I was seeing this guy who Dylan had insisted was bad news. We’d only gone out a few times, and I liked the guy. Dylan and I actually fought over him. But I just wouldn’t listen.”
“Oh, Shay, no.”
“Please, let me get this out.” When he nodded, she continued, the words coming faster now like they were a poison she needed to purge. “The night of the accident, the guy had…um…”
This was the part that no one in the whole world knew.
“He’d tried to force himself on me. And then he’d tried to keep me from leaving his house, but I managed to get out a back door before he could stop me. I zigzagged through people’s yards on foot in case he was following me. And when I finally felt like I was safe, I called Dylan and asked him to pick me up, knowing he’d been right all along. Even though he didn’t gloat about it. Not once.”
“Jesus,” Billy said, a storm rolling in across his expression, making him look fierce. Lethal. “I’m so sorry, Shayna. But none of that makes the drunk driver who hit you your fault.”
She gave a fast nod and could no longer hold back her tears. “Don’t you see? If I’d listened to Dylan in the first place, none of that would’ve ever happened. He wouldn’t have been in his car picking me up. The drunk driver never would’ve been anywhere near us. And Dylan would’ve gotten married like he was supposed to. And my parents would have all of their children, and probably some grandkids, too. And Ryan would have his little brother. But because of what I did, all of that was lost. And you…you were right. I did run away. From my whole family. Because I know they blame me and it was easier to be alone than to see it.”
She couldn’t believe she was saying this, but she also couldn’t deny how much she needed to give voice to it.
After so long of holding in the guilt and the shame and the overwhelming sorrow.
?
??Aw, Shayna, you’re not to blame. I promise. Dylan died because someone decided to drink and get behind the wheel of a car. End of story. And I can tell you for a fact that Ryan doesn’t blame you, either.”
She gasped. “How do you know?”
“Because he said as much to me when it happened. He was never anything but relieved that you’d survived. He loves you.” Billy kissed her tears away. “And I love you. In case you think this changes a single thing, know that it just makes me love you more.”
“Why?” she asked, her belly a nervous mess even as his support and acceptance built her up. Still, how could he love her more when her role in this made her feel so damn unlovable.
“Because I know what it’s like to hate yourself for surviving when people you care about died. I carry that same pain. Maybe…fuck, this sounds stupid…”
She grasped his hips, needing to touch him, to feel him. “What? Tell me.”
He twisted his lips. “It’s just that, maybe our souls recognized that we carried that same pain. Maybe that’s why we were so drawn together,” he said.
