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A shrill sound escapes her.
With a wild glare thrown at him, she smacks down a lumpy sweater onto the crumpled bag. “Bambi?” His pet name for her when she’s sloshed beyond reason, falling all over the place. Not exactly a kind nickname.
The only expression he wears is a blank one, to anyone but Billie. She sees through him, like a clear-glass window. It’s in the eyes, those pitch-black eyes that start to deepen into pits of nothingness.
Beneath the mask are currents of his rising anger. “You embarrassed yourself, no one else had to do it for you. You were Bambi. You could barely stand up straight, you leaned your weight on me, your eyes were half closed, and you almost fell over yourself to get that next drink—do you not see yourself, Billie?”
She stares at him, long and hard, a hint of hurt the only speck of emotion to flicker across her face. “I see myself. And so did everyone else down there. I just never thought you did.” Sniffing, she turns back to the bag and starts ramming her things into it. “You humiliated me. You were the one who was supposed to make me feel better, but you did the fucking opposite. You wouldn’t know, know how that made me feel. Down there, in all the silks and furs, me in this crappy dress from… I don’t know, probably Rave, and you… you of all people, are the one to make me feel ashamed.”
He steps closer to the edge of the bed.
The canopied post is what stands between them, but his eyes draw her in all the same, a touch of hurt in his furrowed brow.
He shoves his hands into his pockets. “I bought you a dress for tonight.” His tone is dark and stern, a sheet of steel over the bubbling anger beneath. “An appropriate dress that you refused to wear. Instead, you insisted on looking like a failed country singer.”
Her trembling hands falter in their actions, paused over the zip and edge of the bag’s opening. Slowly, she lifts her gaze to him—
And his jaw tenses the moment he recognizes the glossiness of her eyes. Not from the drink, but from tears she’s fighting back.
As always, he cuts his gaze away. He looks to the side, at the wall, not at her. For a quiet beat, she just stares at him, the side of his perfect face and perfect features and such perfect dismissiveness, a slack look of disbelief on her face.
“Some things just never change,” Billie mutters under her breath, returning to the bag. She zips it up and shakes it around a little when it gets snagged. “I can’t do this anymore.”
When she flicks her gaze back to him for a moment, he’s watching her already, turned back to her, full attention and a spark of worry twisting his pink lips.
“Billie,” he starts, then loosens a sigh of exhaustion. “Must you do this every time we disagree? Throw a tantrum as though you’re still that same child who broke things. Now, you breakus—and run away.”
She parts her twisting, sneering mouth to shout a response—
But he cuts her off before she can even start, “Let me guess what you’ll do now. Go to the bar. Drink yourself into a stupor, or into the drunk tank, whereI’llbe the one you call to pick you up, and we’ll fight some more. Those details might change, maybe you will go home or to Kate’s, not the bar. Maybe you’ll pass out in your own sick, not be in the drunk tank. But what won’t change,” he says and steps around the post, coming too close for her liking, his dark eyes narrowed down at her, “is what will happen tomorrow or the day after. You’ll come back to me. We will make up. Fuck. Kiss. Love. Then, something will annoy you or spook you, and we’ll start this cycle all over again.” His chin is lifted slightly, and he looks down his fine nose at her, ever the superior. “Let’s skip all that headache. Go to bed, sleep it off.”
His order is just that—an order.
And he thinks it shuts down the conversation entirely, as he turns to walk away from her, leave her in the room while he rejoins the party downstairs.
But he’s stopped by a stray cushion that goes flying through the air and whacks him on the back.
He spins around.
A flash of danger illuminates his dark eyes just for a moment.
Too late.
Billie has already grabbed another thick, feathery bed cushion and pitted it at him.
He smacks it aside before it can hit his face. “If you would just fucking listen to me for once,” he starts, voice raising, and a hand free from his pocket to point at her, like it’s some sort of pistol. “If you’d have just put on the dress! Stuck to the water I gave you! If you could pretend for one fucking night that you’re not—”
“What?” Her shout rises above his. “Pretend what? I’m one of them? I’m one of you? Or that I’m not some trailer trash alcoholic that you’re ashamed of?”
He snaps.
Bounding towards her, he snatches the ignored designer shopping bag from the foot of the bed and shoves it in her face. “It’s a fucking dress, Billie! You make everything more difficult than it has to be!”
He throws the shiny white bag aside, and it hits the wardrobe with a smack. Towering over her, his face is stone-cold, but his rage is in his taught muscles pulled too tight.
“It’s not enough!” She screams up at him. Blood splotches red patches all over her twisted face. “I’ll never be like them!” The tears that sting her eyes have escaped, they run freely down her cheeks leaving streaks of mascara in their wake. “I won’t be…” She sighs, lolling her head back for a beat before facing him. “I won’t besilk.”
His frowned mouth is all the confirmation she needs. He understands what she means.
