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“Joel.” Billie voice from behind me. “What the fuck?”
Then softer footsteps following me.
I was already at the door to her temporary office (a place I hadn’t been to, but one I immediately recognized as hers).
Her scent—sweet, floral, tart—in the air.
Her jacket hung on the back of her desk chair…pushed back from a desk that was covered in file folders and stacks of papers. Cords for her laptop. A wide monitor. A ring light. A cup crammed full of pens.
Boxes shoved against the wall, hardly leaving enough space for a person to move between the chair and desk.
A narrow file cabinet topped with a television to the left.
A loveseat that would barely fit one of his butt cheeks, let alone his entire body filled the opposite wall, a fleece blanket crumpled on the cushions, a pillow—not one of those square throw ones my mom had a million of on her much-bigger couch. It was full-sized with a plain white pillowcase.
And that was when I saw it.
When it was confirmed.
She was sleepinghere.
And that was when…I lost my shit.
“What—”
I spun and gripped her shoulders, dragging her toward me and forcing her to look at me. “What the fuck are you doing?”
Her eyes went wide, and they were still that deep cobalt.
Only without a lick of pleasure in those blue depths.
This wasallfury.
“Get your fucking hands off me.” Cold. Clipped out words. Ice in her eyes, frosty flecks of blue in her irises.
“Tell me,” I gritted, “that you’re not fucking sleeping on this couch.”
A flicker in her eyes—fury giving way to chagrin. Before her chin came up and she tried to step back.
I tightened my hold. “Tell me.”
She glared at me. “Where I sleep is none of your fucking business.”
“That’s not you telling me you are notsleeping on this fucking couch!”
Yes, I was yelling.
No, I wasn’t a yeller. I didn’t like it.
My parents were good folks. They loved us kids, and I didn’t have a moment in my childhood where I didn’t know I was loved. But they weren’t always patient. Two parents. Both working intense jobs. Four kids. All busy with extracurriculars and friends and eating them out of house and home and fighting on the regular (mostly about the nail polish I’d found on my hockey pucks or Delilah borrowing Avery’s sweater or Kira forgetting to do an assignment until nine-thirty the night before it was due and getting it done thus required rummaging through everyone’s—well, my sisters’—stash of craft supplies).
This meant our house was full of love and plenty of chaos.
This also meant that sometimes my parents lost their cool and there was yelling.
I didn’t like this, nor the way it made my sisters jump and cower and immediately get in line, nor how it settled like a snake coiled, ready to strike, in my belly.
So, I made it a point to not yell unless it was on the ice and it was specifically regarding hockey—
