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Her spiraling thoughts are interrupted when a knock raps at the door. She looks up from the bottle and blinks wearily at the door. It’s only then she realizes she was slipping into a sleep.
No chance to call ‘come in’ or ‘who is it’ before the brass knob turns. Billie can smell her before she steps in and gently shuts the door behind her.
Kate’s stink of cologne tells exactly where she’s been, and with who.
Did she forget there’s a killer running around town? Or does that just draw Kate into bed with Trevor even more than usual?
Billie dismisses the thoughts. She’s only bitter about it because of her own issues with Preston and she knows it.
“I’ve been looking for you all over,” Kate lies so easily to her.
‘You won’t find me in Trevor’s bed,’ Billie wants to say, ‘so you couldn’t have looked that hard.’ Instead, she just says, “You found me.”
Guilt is etched into the tension on Kate’s face, the little lines that crease into her skin and the flush of her cheeks.
Opposite Billie, Kate falls back against the door. “You saw Preston.”
“We had a nice chat.” The sarcasm drips from her tongue like venom from a snake’s fangs.
Kate scoffs a tired laugh, the kind that whooshes just once through the nose. “Listen, Bee…” she falters, runs her hands down her face then lifts those guilty eyes to look across at the drunk girl in the bathtub. “I need to talk to you about something. But… you have to promise me, promise me you won’t freak out.”
The vodka keeps Billie slumped in the tub, her eyelids heavy, keeps a dazed look on her own pale face, but the flutter of her lashes tells that she’s listening.
“It’s my fault this is happening,” Kate whispers. Her voice may be small but the hushed tone carries a punch through the bathroom, one that forces a frown onto Billie’s face.
Whatever Kate’s going to tell her, it’s what she was trying to say earlier in the bedroom—it’s something eating away at her. Billie knows her too well to not be able to read her.
Her dark, glossed lips part—
But words don’t come out.
Instead, a roaring crash thunders through the house.
Billie blinks. Once, twice—then like she’s been doused in coffee, she scrambles to sit upright in the tub.
Kate pushes back from the door, eyes big and wild, and hands clenched at her sides.
“What was that?” Billie whispers a shaky sound, asking an unanswerable question.
A crash. That’s what it was. They both heard it. But what caused it?
Curling her legs closer to her body, Billie recoils in the rub. Her skin prickles all over, and she watches as Kate breaks free from her rigid stance then moves for the door.
“Don’t—” Billie’s hushed voice is silenced as Kate pulls open the door.
Kate looks out into the bedroom for a beat, apparently sees nothing, then turns to Billie. “Come on.”
She shakes her head borderline violently. “We should stay here.”
“Come on.” Kate grits out the words and, to emphasize them, flourishes her hand. “I’m not going out there alone.”
Billie makes a face like a toddler told to go to bed or eat their vegetables, childish. With a muttered ‘fuck’, she clambers out of the tub.
The bottle is left behind with the burnt-out smoke she lets fall out from between her fingers.
Billie rushes out after her, the drink sagging her posture.
Kate leads the way across the room.
