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“Blood… Hood,” her voice is still an awful, hoarse sound, like someone took her vocal cords over a grater—and one flashing image reminds her why, reminds her of strong gloved hands wrapped around her throat.
“Billie, no,” he says with a slight shake of the head, so slight she almost didn’t notice it at all. A dark tendril falls out of place from his thick head of curls, and it brushes over his shaped brow. “It wasn’t ahe. I killerher.”
“Her?” Billie’s lips shape the word, but her voice doesn’t quite manage to speak it.
Still, Preston understands her.
His fingers squeeze around her slender hand. Then he says something so ridiculous that it couldn’t possibly make sense to anyone at all. “I killed Tonya.Shewas Blood Hood.”
Just as she starts to shake her head, the door swings open and a wide-grinning nurse pops her head into the private room. “I see someone’s awake,” she croons.
Billie just gapes at her. Like a stunned fish, she stares, then blinks, then looks at Preston who studies her quietly.
Breaking the silence, she chokes out, “What?”
But Preston doesn’t answer. He doesn’t get the chance.
The nurse takes over, and for a long while, Billie and Preston pause.
In that time, the nurse flocks to her side, another comes in, they ask her all sorts of mundane questions she can’t muster any answers for, prod her with cold metal, check her vitals and her clipboard at the foot of the bed.
Then the doctor comes in and does all the same shit.
But not one of them asks Preston to leave.
He wouldn’t anyway. But she bides her time, waiting out the doctor and nurses, waiting for them to piss off, so she can do just as she does when the door to the private room finally shuts on them and they’re alone again.
“It wasn’t… T-T-To…” Billie tries to sit up. Her ribs scream in protest and Preston takes her by the shoulders before pushing her back down on the stack of pillows. “Not Tonya—”
“Yes, it was.” His hands linger on her shoulders. Fingertips graze over her prickling skin. “They took the hood off at the scene.”
Every scrap of strength she has, she forces into her weak voice—but some words come out as little more than breaths, “Ton… was… kid-nap… in… chair.”
His face shutters, a fleeting look of confusion, before he clarifies, “Tonya was kindapped?”
In answer, Billie nods.
He adds, “You found her… in a chair?”
A sigh of relief escapes her, and again she nods, weaker this time. Relieved.
Preston frowns. “She must have staged it. Listen, Billie. It was her. She got me here with that knife.” He lifts his bandaged arm. “And I stabbed her. Paramedics were checking you when the police took her hood off. I saw that with my own eyes.”
It’s Billie’s turn to watch him closely. Study him. Her eyes narrow in on his smooth, caramel-toned face, the fullness of his tightly pulled mouth, the perfect curve of his nose, and most of all, the bleakness of his eyes.
“Don’t… believe,” she finally says.
His mouth softens. He parts his lips as if to speak, but he doesn’t say anything for a heartbeat or two.
Preston sighs an elegant, soft sound. Refined, so unlike her own sighs that are much too gravelly.
“It’s not that I don’t believe you. You were drinking,” he says, and the guilt he feels shows in the way his eyes cut away, not meeting her stare. “And you were grieving. Maybe you had some weed, I don’t know.”
“Not lying—” It’s all she can manage before a rolling wave of coughs crashes into her, and she’s wheezing for breath.
Only when the coughs subside and she starts to relax does she smack away Preston’s hand that lingers too close to her face, as though he’s trying to comfort her. But he doesn’t believe her, so he can shove his comfort up his ass for all she cares.
His voice hardens again, and he flicks his stare back to her. “I’m not accusing you of lying.”
