Beard Necessities (Winston Brothers, #7)(72)

“What do you need?” Billy asked flatly.

“I don’t know. Parmesan cheese, maybe. Seems like we put it on everything here. Would you walk back to the store with Billy?” Cletus addressed this question to me, but his eyes were on his brother. “He can’t find his way out of a paper bag, ’cause paper bags are made of wood and that’s too close to being like a tree.”

“Yes. Of course. I’ll walk back with him, no problem.” Despite the nerves in my stomach, I pressed my lips together so I wouldn’t smile at Cletus’s antics.

Cletus gave Billy one more lingering squinty look, and then turned and marched after Ashley. I watched them go until they disappeared beyond the crest of the hill. And then I stared at the spot where they’d disappeared for a few more seconds, gathering my thoughts. Then I looked at Billy.

He wasn’t looking at me. His hands were still in his pockets and his eyes were on the vineyard across the stream. The severe line of his jaw and the ticking at his temple told me he was unhappy with my surprise hijacking.

“You know . . .” I took small steps along the trail until we were standing side by side, me facing him and the lavender, him facing the stream, fence, and vineyard. “You know why they plant the rosebush at the edge of each row?”

He said nothing, just kept staring. And he calls me stubborn.

“It’s because the rosebush and the grapevine are susceptible to the same kinds of diseases. The rosebush is the Italian version of the canary in the coal mine, as it were.”

His gaze drifted to the stream, but still he said nothing. He wanted silence? Fine. But I wasn’t leaving until we talked this through.

Closing my eyes, I listened to the water rush past and a bird call to another bird in the sky, inhaling the heady scent of lavender, green grass, dirt, and sunshine.

“So this is what it feels like,” I said, mostly to myself.

He persisted in silence, and I thought he wasn’t going to respond. So when I opened my eyes and discovered his gaze affixed to my face—just looking—I was surprised.

“What feels like?” he asked, finally speaking.

“The silent treatment.” My lips curved up, and I studied the blue of his eyes. I decided I’d call it Tuscan glacier from now on. “I forgot what it was like when you decide I’m not worth talking to. Wait a minute, before you glare at me with those gorgeous judgy eyes, I realize we just went through an epic period of me giving you the silent treatment. So maybe I should just accept it now as my due, and maybe turnabout is fair play. Maybe it should be easy for me. But it’s not. It’s hard.”

I took heart in the fact that, though he was firmly encamped within his armored fortress, he didn’t look away.

I tested my luck. “Please. Tell me. Why do you have that tattoo? What is it covering?”

His lashes flickered, like I’d blown dust in his eyes, and his throat worked. “I don’t want to tell you.”

“Why not?”

“Because it’s covering your father’s name.”

My stomach dropped, the world tilted, and I whispered, “What?”

Closing his eyes, he said, “When they took me, Razor cut his name in my shoulder first. Then he connected the lines so it would look like random marks. But I knew. So I covered it with a tattoo.”

Lifting my fingers to cover my mouth, I stared at him in horror because I knew exactly what that must’ve felt like. “I can’t—I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry.” I didn’t want to imagine it, but how could I not? The image would haunt me for the rest of my life, and the sense of helplessness.

He opened his eyes, the desolation in his gaze quickly eclipsed by frustration. “Don’t look at me like that.” His voice was like granite, cold and severe.

“Like what?” I whispered.

“I am not Ben.”

I blinked, confused. “What nonsense are you speaking?”

“I never told you because I didn’t want you to look at me like you looked at him, with equal parts hero worship and resentment. I’m no hero. I’m a man, and I was in love with you, and I wanted you to see me, to want me.”

I took a half step closer, encouraged by the raw honesty and gentleness of his tone. “You think I didn’t want you?”

“Oh, I knew you did, that was never in doubt.” He sounded so sad. “But you never saw me clearly enough to do anything about it.”

“And whose fault is that?”

His Adam’s apple worked, like he was swallowing my statement, or his reaction to it.

He rubbed his forehead. “I did what I did. And it’s over and it’s done and life has moved on.”

“So you’re saying you completely moved on from being beaten nearly to death? You’re saying you didn’t do it for me?”

Billy nodded firmly, returning his attention to the vineyard. “That’s right, I did it for myself.”

“You said that love means never giving up.” I studied his profile, amazed at the serenity of our conversation thus far, how open and honest and calm. “Well, lying to someone is not how love works either. That’s how fear works. Lying to me means you don’t trust me.”

His eyes sliced to mine, pain behind them, but not anger. “You don’t know.”