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Unsuccessful, obviously.
Billie doesn’t say it, not to Preston or to Kate, but she does really think Trevor was in love with Preston. He just couldn’t come out… not when he’s fromthatsorta family.
The Vanderbelts.
Like hell would Trev ever be accepted for that.
It’s the only thing Billie can understand about him. What it’s like to feel so unwanted by your parents (well, in her case, just a mom, ‘cause she’s no idea who her dad is).
God, even now—
The very reminder of her mom she’s been avoiding. It sits on the dresser, beside that strong-smelling stuff perfume Preston’s mom bought her. Billie doesn’t use it. Pretty sure there’s poison in it, considering who it’s from.
But it’s her own mom that’s irking her into a heavy sigh as she pushes up from the chaise.
Billie slips the envelope off the dresser, but before she settles in to read it for the first time since it came in the mail two mornings ago, she flickers her gaze to the clock that ticks softly on the wall.
Preston will be back soon.
And she’s got booze-breath to hide.
So ‘hide it’ is what she does. Tucks away her vodka in a dresser drawer, washes her face and brushes her teeth, before she flops back down on the chaise.
“Bitch don’t know when to quit,” she mumbles to herself and tears open the envelope with just her fingers and a tug. Fancy Preston would use a letter opener—the most useless invention ever, Billie thinks.
Her words and thoughts fall away as she flicks open the folded, cheap paper. Paper so cheap that it’s near-see-through. But the letter is simple enough and she only reads it once before she crumples it up into a ball in her fist.
Just as she does, and makes to toss it across the room, she hears the faint jangle of keys—followed by the click of the front door closing. Soft footsteps on carpet,thud, thud, thud.
Billie keeps the letter balled up in her clenched hand.
Preston makes his way to her.
And she looks up at him as he comes around the side of the chaise lounge, his dark eyes tracing down the silhouette of her leg. His fingertips are soft against her skin as he takes her calf in his grip, and he lifts it high enough that he can slip between her legs onto the chaise.
Preston’s lashes are long and dark over his obsidian eyes. She watches him as he looks up at her for a heartbeat before his gaze cuts to the crumpled paper in her hand.
Takes him a quick second to realize what it is. “Did she ask how you are?”
Billie scoffs. “Nope. Not a word about any of it.”
He studies her in silence for a moment. “What does she want?”
“What I said she would want from me. From you,” she bites back the words ‘I told you so’. Wasn’t Billie’s idea to track down her mom and then write to her in the penitentiary. “She wants,” she starts with a sigh and counts off the list on her splayed fingers, “money in her commissary so she can buy snacks and tampons, and she wants me to drive down there to bring her drugs in a baked cake, oh and she wants you to hire her a good lawyer to get her off on the drug charges.”
“And not once in her letter she asked how you are?” He takes the paper from her grip, then lets it fall to the floor, as if helping her push it from her mind, refocusing her on those who should matter to her more than her deadbeat mom.
Billie nods with ahumph.
“Then I’ll ask,” he says, and the tender touch of his palm glides up the side of her thigh, his thumb grazing the ticklish skin near the bubbled stab-scar.
“It’s sore. Stiff.” She shrugs. “I had a bath, that helped some.”
Preston doesn’t look away from the ugly scar, just as he’s never turned away from the scar she wears on her face that runs across her cheek to the corner of her mouth. A nice scar she got from her mom—when she was six years old. Mommy-dearest didn’t like how her boyfriend was looking at Billie. And that blame fell on Billie.
She never told Preston that. Just Kate.
Preston lets a small smile play on his lips, though it’s so obviously exhausted from how much he’s been wearing himself out in the city, and he leans down to ghost a kiss over the scar on her cheek.
