We remained in a testosterone cloud for a few seconds before managing to calm down. There was no one to kill at the moment, so we’d have to save our rage for another day.
Maybe the day Billie finally revealed all her secrets.
“How do I get through the next few days?” I asked, my thoughts tumultuous. A dozen or more song lyrics raced through my mind, and I hoped there was some paper in that RV, because I needed to write this music down. Release it from my mind before it drove me insane.
“With earplugs because I’m going to be fucking our girl every chance I get, making her scream my name,” Rhett said, his smirk back in place. Then he gave a joking imitation of a girl's voice as he moaned, “Oh Rhett, yes, harder, Jace never fucks me this good. His dick is so tiny compared to your weapon, Rhett!”
Laughing at his antics, I punched him in the arm. “Shut up, asshole. You know that’s not true.”
He snickered. “Come on, we should get back. I don’t like leaving her alone for long. Not since she disappeared on me the last time I did.”
If I was being honest with myself, and I fucking hated doing that, it also bothered me to be so far away from her when there were killers out there hunting for us.
We both started back together, and when the silver trailer came into sight, guitar music drifted toward us. Along with the scent of cooking.
“Who started a fire?” I said, panic hitting me that maybe someone had found us. Found Billie.
But why the fuck would they start a fire? Was Grayson back, maybe?
A second later a pitchy voice drifted along with the chords.
Rhett paused, tilting his head to the side. “Is Billie… singing?”
Despite my complete lack of humor at the moment, a short chuckle escaped me. “Billie is a lot of things, but a singer is not one of them. Girl can’t do much more than hum along in time, but she has an ear for music writing that makes the rest of us look like amateurs.”
Rhett joined me in laughing. “Look, she sounds adorable. Off tune as fuck, but adorable nonetheless. And that melody is fucking catchy. No wonder you managed to write some of our greatest hits with her help.”
I had. And I’d never captured that same magic again, not even with my band. Billie and I made perfect music together, and when we were done for the day, I’d strip her bare and fuck her to the sound of our tracks. Often right there on the floor of our makeshift recording studio. Sometimes with Angelo watching, sometimes with him joining in. It was a part of my life I never wanted to revisit, and yet here the hell I was, making music again and fucking Billie. I’d just swapped out one guitarist best friend for another. Some asshole was having a great laugh at my expense.
Rhett picked up the pace, clearly wanting to catch Billie in the middle of her song. I kept pace because it made sense, not because I was in a rush to do the same. Fuck no. Billie and I were toxic, and I just had to make it through the next few days without losing my shit at her again.
Surely, I could manage that. We were adults. It was time we started acting like it.
When we rounded out the front of the RV, we saw the small fire she had going with a pot hanging over the top. Billie had an old acoustic on her lap, eyes closed as she hummed along and strummed a few more chords, before she found the sound and rhythm she was looking for.
There were no lyrics now, and in my head the words were already forming to match her song. It was just how my brain worked, a gift that I’d had long before I ever received any formal training in music. My half-sister was the same, and despite us only knowing each other for the past five years, it turned out that we had more than music in common.
It was odd to me that Billie and Michelle had never met, considering how close I was to my sister now. I wasn’t sure they even knew about each other since I never spoke of Billie if I could help it.
“Billie,” Rhett called as he dropped down on the log beside her. “You compose like a fucking wet dream. Why didn’t you tell me you were a musical genius?”
Her eyes flew open, and she looked relieved to see him beside her. Her face softened, the pink tinting her cheeks when she was happy. Billie was beautiful, but more than just her heart-shaped face, full pink lips, and large hazel eyes. It was the warmth she exuded when she gave you all her focus. Billie had this way of drawing people in, wrapping herself around them, and making them feel like the sun rose and set in her expressions.
She snared you like a black widow, and then just as you were getting cozy in her embrace, she struck and killed you.
It would be foolish in the extreme to fall into her trap once more, and yet I found myself crossing around the fire to drop down right across from her. Right where I would be forced to stare at her all evening. “Sorry, I wanted to have some dinner going by the time you got back,” she said softly, letting the guitar fall against her legs. “I don’t think the fire is large enough to call attention to us.”
It wasn’t, but we probably shouldn’t let it burn too long.
Rhett must have agreed. “Let’s just finish heating the beans, and then we can use some of that bread I got to mop it up.”
Here we were, the picture of domestication, and I knew for a fact that if we weren’t out of here in the next few days, I was in real fucking trouble.
Not of falling in love with Billie.
But in falling out of hate with her.
An emotion I couldn’t afford to lose, not if I wanted to make it through the rest of this week… and the rest of my life.
thirty-two
BILLIE
Domestic bliss was a crock of shit. It actually required all parties to act like sane, mature adults, and that was something severely lacking in our little campout threesome. Shit, not threesome. Threeway. Nope, not that either. Throuple? Fucking hell. My brain needed some bleach so I could stop thinking about fucking Jace and Rhett together at the same time.
Trouble was, it was far from the first threesome Jace and I had been participants in. So my mind had plenty of reference points to weave into my vivid daydreams.
The guys had returned from their little bro-bonding moment in the forest seeming determined to play nice. Which was great and lasted all of an hour while we ate the beans and bread for dinner, then Rhett insisted on cleaning the dishes in the little stream we’d passed on our horses this morning.
Which, again, was great. Except that left Jace and I alone in uncomfortable silence.
“So… I guess you kept up playing the guitar, huh?” he asked, nodding to the old instrument now propped against the side of the trailer.
I frowned, confused. “No, I didn’t. Not since…” Not since I broke up with Angelo, who’d been the original Bellerose lead guitarist. My heart couldn’t take the memories of Jace teaching me and Angelo finessing my style. “Just… no.”
He narrowed his eyes. “Uh… it didn’t sound rusty. You were pretty good.” The suspicion was so clear in his voice it snapped my temper.
“Oh, so now I’m lying about playing guitar? What the shit, Jace, why would I even do that?”
He shrugged. “Beats me, you’re the one claiming you haven’t kept up on lessons, but you obviously have. That sure as shit didn’t sound like you hadn’t played in nearly nine years, Billie.”