Chapter 5
Selfish.
Billie scowled in Noah’s general direction as she finished packing up another box of stuff that needed to be taken to the dump. More useless things that hadn’t been touched in years, but Laura had refused to throw away.
Noah was doing his best to steer clear of her, she could tell, but his very presence had all of her nerve endings on fire, making it hard to concentrate. After he circled her for the third time, she threw the packing tape down and glared at him through her hair.
“Is there a reason you’re still here?”
His mouth lifted into an irritatingly handsome smile.
“Wouldn’t you like to know?”
“You bet your ass, I would! It’s been three days, shouldn’t you be gone by now?”
He did his best to dodge that question as he took a seat on the edge of the couch, his blonde hair falling into his eyes. She hated the way he stared at her, like he still knew her, like he had a right to know her anymore.
“You got such a smart mouth on ya, Billie. Ain’t you tired of being so mad at me?”
Billie snorted and shook her head, her blood starting to boil yet again.
“Don’t go there with me. You said you wouldn’t be here long, and I would like to get back to my normal life before you came waltzing back into it!”
His mouth quirked, and she just knew that he was going to say something so irritating that it would make her hate him even more.
“I want you to call me Slayer, Billie.”
“I want you to leave.”
“I’ll stay somewhere else if you say it one time,” He offered.
“Nice try, but that would be a victory for you, and as far as you and I are concerned, I ain’t lettin’ you win a damn thing.”
He huffed under his breath and stared at her for a long while.
“I’ll be here for a few more days, and then I’ll be gone, and you’ll never have to hear from me again, okay?”
Billie didn’t have an answer for that because she knew that seeing him after so many years would only make it harder when he left her for the second time. She still had a little hope, a little love that just wouldn’t die, and she hated herself for it. Noah had no idea just how many nights she’d lain awake, craving him, needing her best friend, only to awaken alone yet again.
“You have no idea how good that sounds to me.”
It was a lie, and it seemed like he knew it, too.
His eyes widened, and for a fraction of a second, she imagined that he would say something to change everything. An apology she could count on, something magical and perfect that would serve to erase the last six years of agony.
Instead, he dipped his chin slightly and nodded.
Billie wanted to scream.
When he stood to leave the room half of her wanted to rebel and ask that he stay, but she refused to give into that portion of herself. She couldn’t show him how much she absolutely wanted him to stay because at the end of the day, he would leave. Whether she gave herself to him again or stayed distant, he would leave and she would have no control over the situation either way.
There was something definitively disappointing about loving a man who didn’t know what he wanted, and if she allowed it, his journey to find himself would inevitably lead her astray, and she would end up lost. There was nothing wrong with loving the wrong person, but there was something wrong with loving the wrong person for too long; six years was long enough for her.
Sometimes, Billie missed the old her. The one that was trusting and forgiving and open to anyone who would need her. Sometimes, when she thought about it hard enough, she wondered how in the world she would ever be able to give a part of herself to anyone new; anyone who didn’t know her before. How would they ever really be able to know her? How would they ever really be able to understand her?
Either way, Noah wasn’t going to stick around to get to know the woman she’d grown into. She’d survived the storm, sure, but wasn’t she still coughing up rain every time she turned around?
With a glance around the house they’d both grown up in, Billie decided that maybe a little distance from one another would do them both some good. Maybe it’s what she needed to survive another few days of storms. To survive Noah ‘Slayer,’ Osborne, one last time.
Billie discreetly grabbed her purse from the counter before she stepped outside into the damp heat, confident in the fact that Noah could find whatever he needed to occupy his time; he knew the house just as well as her, he didn’t need her there to proverbially hold his hand.
Each step took her farther away from her problems, or problem, and with each step she took, she could breathe a little easier. It felt like a little too much to bear when her and Noah were in the same room, but tucked safely within the confines of her car, Billie felt more at ease then she had since he arrived.
It wasn’t going to be easy to ignore him, Lord knows she’d be fighting the fight of her life, but if she didn’t do her best to keep her distance, she’d sink into his quick sand yet again, and she couldn’t handle that either.
◆◆◆
Slayer knew that Billie was up to no good. He could feel it in his veins like he could taste the beer burning the back of his tongue, and it certainly didn’t settle well with him. All he wanted to do was find her, go home, and try to forget about the fact that he could barely keep his mind off of her.
She was a devil-woman in the prettiest form he’d ever seen, and he’d seen many; he didn’t earn his nickname by shaking hands and kissing babies, that’s for sure. All he needed to do was narrow down the list of choices she would most obviously choose when it came to where she spent her time, and he’d be golden.
The hard part was, well, figuring that out. She could be anywhere and he wouldn’t know. It’d been a very long time since they used the same stomping ground, and while he knew there were only a handful of bars she could have run to, he didn’t want to spend his whole night worrying about whether or not her crazy ass actually made it home.
Alone.
He didn’t even want to imagine the shit-storm that would ensue if she tried to bring a man home, no matter how entitled to it she was. He couldn’t stop her, no, and truth be told he more than likely wouldn't- but he didn’t want to find out.
His bike wasn’t the quietest ride around town, and more than one local stopped to stare, presumably judging him from their perfect little perch on the sidewalk, but fuck ‘em. He didn’t owe anyone anything, not even Billie, but that was another story altogether. A very long story indeed, one that hadn’t ended yet, but he wasn’t sure if he wanted to travel that road now.
Slayer didn’t know much of anything anymore.
The bar he stopped at last, with his patience running thin, was a hole in the wall place that didn’t look like it housed the kind of people Billie should be spending her time with, but he fell onto that list too, right? He was an outlaw, a bad man, a hollow man, and he was coming to steal her away.
The bar was loud, filled to the brim, and the patrons were going crazy for something in the corner that had his blood boiling in one second flat.
Billie.
That fucking vixen was shaking her ass up on a table like she owned the joint, but she obviously owned the crowd; men of all ages were reaching for her, spreading their fingers wide to get close to her perfect skin, and he hated it. She didn’t see him until he got close enough to wrap his hands around her ankles and yank her forward, toppling her over into his grip.
“Noah, let me go! I’m dancing!,” She cried angrily.
He didn’t say a word as he ripped her keys from her pocket and threw her over his shoulder, the only sound between them being her screaming. More than one local stepped towards him, some of them he recognized and some he didn't, but when they saw the anger on his face, no one said a word. If they knew Billie, they knew her, and what was happening didn’t need any further explanation.
This wasn’t the first time he’d had to throw her wily ass over his shoulder and it probably wouldn’t be the last, but at the moment, all he cared about was the fact that he’d been looking for her all night, only to find her shaking her ass for a room full of men she didn’t even know.
Or, maybe she did- but he didn’t want to know either way.
Logically, he knew the didn’t have any reason to be angry. He didn’t have the right to be angry, not with all the pussy he’d slammed over the years, but he’d yearned for hers. Sure, he wasn’t the sharpest tool in the fucking shed, but he knew real love when he felt it, and he’d only ever felt it tucked between the softness of Billie the hellion’s thighs.
Finally, after minutes of squirming and arguing on her end, he spanked her ass.
“Quit your fightin’, you’re only makin’ me angrier. I don’t wanna fight with you, Billie, but this right here is some Grade-A bull.”
Billie snorted ineloquently and slammed her fists into his back over and over again, some of her fingers getting caught in his long hair along the way.
“Put me down, you-you neanderthal!”
He shook his head, “You were the one shakin’ that fine ass of yours all over a table top, Billie. Don’t be calling me names now, that’s just rude.”
She made a screeching sound in the back of her throat as she flailed around, her knees catching him in the ribs just as he got her car door open and tossed her ass over head into the passenger seat.
She looked like she wanted to argue further, and in his head, he thought, good.
Maybe we’ll get it all out this time.
She certainly didn’t disappoint him when she glared at him from the passenger seat and swore under her breath.
“You think that just ‘cause you came back to town that you own this pussy, is that it? Well, guess what, you don’t own shit! This is my life and those were my friends, and I don’t need you lookin’ out for me, or whatever the hell you’ve convinced yourself you were doing,” She slurred.
“Is that so? Really? Ya wanna go there with me?”
All she did was nod her head.
“Those were not your friends and you fuckin’ know it! I never said anything about owning that sweet pussy you got between your thighs, either!”
He would never admit it, but he hated how close she was to hitting the nail on the rusty fucking head, too. She was a tough bitch to crack, always had been, but now she felt like a Rubik’s cube and he was definitely too dumb to solve one of those. He was struggling to drive her car after riding a bike for so long, but after a few minutes of tense silence, he got the hang of it.
“You didn’t have to say anything! You show up, uninvited I might add, and toss me over your shoulder like some biker-slummin’-caveman, and you think I’m just gonna let that happen? Are you out of your sun-bleached-mind?!,” She yelled.
He rolled his eyes heavenward and prayed for patience as he looked over at her.
“Don’t act like you’re so pissed that I saved your ass from having to take a cab all the way home, Billie. You’re still mad at me because I left.”
“You’re right, you did leave! Don’t know why after all these years you’d bother to come back now, mama didn’t need you around. She had me, the one who stayed, the one who took care of her until the day she died! I wish you’d do all of us a favor, including her ghost, and go back to whatever hole you crawled your way out of,” She snarled.
He had to admit; that one hurt a hell of a lot. He knew Billie was mad, he knew she probably wouldn’t forgive him, but he hadn’t adequately prepared himself for the anger she was spewing in his direction. He deserved it, no doubt; but hearing such venom come from sweet Billie’s mouth, well, it didn’t settle right against his heart.
It made him feel all that guilt he’d been brushing off rise to the surface.
“You don’t mean that,” He stalled.
“I sure as hell do mean it, ya selfish bastard!”
Selfish. He knew he’d been selfish, hated how he’d grown into that, and wondered if there would ever be a way to erase some of it from her life. He knew that she was more than likely right in one respect; he should leave her alone. He should skip town, handle his mama’s affairs from North Carolina, leave Billie to herself and her own grief.
But, fuck that, because he couldn’t deny the fact that even seeing her was enough to make his whore of a heart flicker back to life in his muscular chest.
Billie would forever be his downfall.
“Why are ya doin’ this to me, huh? What do you get out of it, Slayer? Why do you want to hurt me? I ain’t never done anything to you,” She whispered sadly from the passenger seat. Her words were like a knife to his leathered skin, and he hated himself for hurting her in any way, when all he wanted was to make amends for what he’d done to her before.
She’d called him Slayer, and it’d hurt more than he thought it would.
“I don’t want to hurt you, I want to love you, but I never really learned how,” He admitted.
He waited for her response, for her inevitable hatred and rejection to spew forth like a leaky faucet, but it never came. When he finally worked up the courage to look in her direction, he saw she was fast asleep, her eyes closed and her mouth parted slightly. She looked beautiful, even passed out, but he couldn’t deny the fact that he was sad as hell that she hadn’t heard him admit that out loud.
He didn’t know if he’d be able to do it again.