Chapter Twelve
His eyes narrowed at her tone. “What the hell does that mean?
“I don’t know,” she said flatly. “You tell me.”
“How would I know?”
Roxie tried to shift underneath him. “I don’t want to get into this.”
“I do.” Billy braced himself over her on both arms. They were eye-to-eye, face-to-face, and most importantly, still intimately connected. She felt the tension that snapped through his body and heard the way his breaths changed.
The other shoe was dropping, and there was nothing she could do about it.
“Those words are your fallback. It’s how you justify everything.”
His forehead wrinkled. “Like what?”
“Like when that kid stole my money.”
His eyes widened. “Jesus. Are we going all the way back to that? Roxie, he pulled a knife on you.”
“You want something more recent? How about when you came back to town and found out that Loud Louie had died?”
“What the— He had cancer. He’d been suffering.”
Her jaw set. “It’s also what you said when we found out I wasn’t pregnant.”
Heaviness settled over the room, the kind that made it hard to breathe.
Billy’s fingers curled, straining the sheet.
“You were happy about that,” she whispered.
While she’d been devastated.
“I hate those words,” she said, swallowing hard. “They’re what you say whenever you turn on me.”
“Turn on you?” he growled.
This time when she pushed at him, he backed away. Their bodies, still warm and lax from shared pleasure, stiffened and disconnected. Roxie pulled the sheet over herself and moved until her back was pressed against the headboard. Watching him defiantly, she wrapped her arms around her bent knees.
Billy’s hands fisted. “I’ve had your back since Day One. You’re the one who gave up on us. You’re the one who walked away from what we had.”
What they’d had…
Life had been crazy back then. They’d been trying to figure out how to live in the real world.
They hadn’t had much, but they’d had the building blocks.
They’d had each other, an apartment, and an old Ford that Billy had fixed up.
He’d had his job at The Ruckus. A baby hadn’t been in the plans, but once the idea had set in, Roxie had gotten excited about it.
The possibility that she’d finally have a real family, someone to belong to, had been a dream come true.
Until it hadn’t.
“You didn’t want a baby then; I’m just making sure we don’t have any ‘accidents’ now.”
“Bullshit.”
The curse cracked across the room like a rifle shot. Roxie’s head snapped back, but Billy’s gaze was fierce.
“This has nothing to do with biology. I know you’re on the Pill. I saw it in your medicine cabinet. You just don’t want to let me close.”
Her eyes narrowed. “Tomato, to-mah-to.”
“Because you’re scared.”
The blunt words were like a jab, and she forced herself not to flinch.
“You don’t think I’d make a good mother,” she accused.
And that burned. She remembered her mom, faint as the memory was. She remembered her long, dark hair and her lavender perfume. Most importantly, she remembered the feelings associated with that memory.
She’d make a great mother.
“God damn it, Roxie. I’ve never said that.” Climbing off the bed, Billy found his jeans. He pulled them on and planted his hands on his hips. “I think you’d make a kick-ass mom, a real mama bear.”
“Then why was it ‘for the best’?”
“We’ve been through this. Because we couldn’t care for a baby.
The two of us, Roxie, not just you.” The words exploded from his lips, and he raked both hands through his hair.
His abs were cinched up tight, and his eyes had gone dark green.
He paced the room one time and then turned back to her.
“We were teenagers fresh out of the system. We were barely getting by.”
“We’d been out for two years.”
“You were just graduating from high school.”
“Billy, we weren’t some big-eyed, wet-behind-the-ears kids. We had to grow up faster than that.”
“Did we? I raced every goon that looked at me funny, and how many times did Charlie catch you shooting street craps? That’s why it was for the best you just let that money go. You won it in an illegal game!”
He jabbed a finger in her direction. “You can’t get everything you want. Sometimes life kicks you in the ass, but then you find out why you needed to go down a different path.”
“You think I don’t know I can’t have everything? My ass is sore from all that kicking, but I expected you to be with me, Billy. It’s called being supportive. I trusted you.”
“And I trusted you,” he snapped. “You like to pretend you’re so tough, that you can go it alone. If anyone takes one step wrong with you, you hold them off. No second chances. I deserved better than that.”
She pounded her fist against the mattress. “We could have done it.”
“They wouldn’t have let us!” He paced another lap around the room. “You know they would have been watching us. There was more than one Albert Fenton who wasn’t happy with how we gamed the system. One slip and the authorities would have said we were unfit.”
His voice was quiet but whip sharp. It cut through Roxie’s hurt and anger, startling her. They’d had arguments about this before, but he’d never said that.
He stopped and wrapped his arms around his middle.
The leather cuff and the tattoo made him look dangerous, but for once, his wide shoulders seemed scrunched in.
“We never would have been able to fight them, and the last thing I’d ever do would be to let a kid of mine grow up the way I did.
I stand by my word. It was for the best.”
Roxie’s shoulder blades dug into the headboard.
“I don’t ever want kids. Especially with someone who won’t let me close in the most important way.” His green eyes burned. “And I’m not talking about sex. I never turned on you. You’re the one who shut me out as I was looking you in the face.”
He swore and reached down to sweep up the rest of his clothes. “Every time I’ve managed to crack that door open, you eventually slam it again. So yeah, it’s probably for the best that we split up, too. This time, I think it’s going to take.”
In two steps, he was out the door.
He was gone so fast, Roxie didn’t have time to react. His words had been like blows and, for a moment, she was dazed. They’d argued many times in the past, sometimes about kids and sometimes not.
But they’d never gotten that deep.
“Billy?” she called shakily.
He didn’t respond.
She heard his muffled footsteps cross her living room and the door to her apartment open before slamming shut. It was the sound of his footsteps on the staircase, though, that prompted her out of her paralysis.
“Billy!”
She sprang from the bed, ripping the sheet right off it. Flying out of the room, she barely avoided her favorite red chair as she rushed to the door.
His footsteps were out of hearing range now. Her breaths were too loud in her throat for her to hear anything.
She skidded out into the hallway, barely remembering to cover herself. When she rushed down the stairs, the sheet billowed behind her, making her look like a haunted woman in white. Coming to a stop on the second-floor landing, she pounded on the rental unit’s door.
“Billy? Open the door.” She knocked harder, pounding until her pinkie finger felt numb. “We’re not done.”
A door opened, but it wasn’t the one she was expecting.
“What’s all this racket?”
She spun around. The grouchy old man in 2A glowered at her, but then his caterpillar eyebrows jumped.
“So that billboard wasn’t touched up,” he muttered, his old voice cracking.
She followed his stare down to her chest. Her impromptu toga had slipped, baring her breast. The old pervert.
She tugged the sheet higher and turned her back on him. Switching to her other hand, she began pounding. “Billy!”
“He’s not there,” 2A bellowed. “He just came down this staircase like a team of Clydesdales. There are other people in this building, you know. We deserve some peace and quiet.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Roxie muttered, already moving along. If he wanted peace and quiet, he shouldn’t live next to a bar that stayed open until two in the morning.
She hadn’t made it three steps when his croaky voice stopped her again.
“You won’t find him down there either,” 2A said, thumping his cane. “He tore out of here in that truck of his like a bat out of hell. I couldn’t hear my TV program because of it.”
Billy had left?
Left, left?
She took the remaining stairs two at a time. The sheet clung to her legs, trying to trip her. The first-floor lobby area was empty as she rushed across it, 300-count polyester whooshing all around her.
She hit the door going practically full speed and lurched out onto the sidewalk.
The truck was gone. The parking spot on the curb was empty.
A cry left her lips as her chest squeezed. Oh, God. What was happening?
Down the street, two guys walking into The Ruckus whistled at her. Feeling pain rifling through her, she slowly lifted her head. She turned on them like a vengeful banshee, hair whipping in the wind and let out a shriek. Their eyes popped and both muscle-bound bikers hurried into the bar.
Roxie’s fingers curled, balling the sheet right over her heart.
Where had he gone? Was he just blowing off steam?
“When I leave this time, I won’t be back.”
His words echoed in her ears, spurring her into motion again.
Ignoring 2A’s concerns about quiet, she raced back up the stairs, feet pounding.
She grabbed the keys Charlie had given her in case she needed to show the empty apartment.
She opened the second-floor rental, her hands shaking, and slapped at the light switch.
She quickly scanned the apartment. There were furniture and kitchen appliances. It was a furnished unit, but she was looking for anything personal. Anything of Billy’s. She searched the living room before moving on to the bathroom and then the bedroom.
His duffel bag was nowhere to be found.
She bit her lip.
He couldn’t leave now. She’d known he eventually would, but not now. They couldn’t leave things this way.