Beard Necessities (Winston Brothers, #7)(87)

He paused, considering me. Some of his fury faded. “What if it weren’t because of you? What if I had to end it for a different reason?”

Unbelievable. “Oh yeah? Like what?” Crossing my arms, I glared at him. He drove me crazy. Cletus was right about Billy vying for the Most Honorable Martyr award.

“Like—” His stare searching before turning inward. “What if I were in jail?”

“In jail? For what?”

“I need to tell you something.” Billy’s gaze cut back to mine and held. I did not like the look in his eyes.

A fissure of alarm had me closing the distance between us and reaching for his hand. “What? What is it?”

He’d dropped his eyes to where our fingers were tangled and his Adam’s apple moved like he was struggling to swallow. “I did something. I don’t regret it, but it was illegal. And when I get back to Tennessee, I might be arrested for it if I don’t turn myself in first.”

He sounded so stark, so resigned, like he’d already accepted his fate. This whole time we’d been reconnecting, finding our way back to each other, had this been weighing on him?

Lifting his palm level with my chest, I pressed it between both of mine, my heart suddenly going haywire. “What happened? What did you do?”

Billy glanced around the room and then tugged me over to the couch, sitting us next to each other. Once we were settled, he held my hand, cradling it, studying it, as though this might be the last time he saw it, or me.

“You’re scaring me,” I blurted, staring at his grim profile, fighting the urge to climb in his lap or handcuff us together. Note to self, always bring handcuffs.

“I am scary.” The slant of his lips told me he was frustrated, but not with me.

“No. You’re not.” Now he was really scaring me. “Just tell me what happened. We’ll figure it out.”

The night your—Razor, the night Razor attacked Roscoe and I found them . . . I cut his hands.”

He blinked once and then lifted his eyes to mine, his blue eyes steady as they braced and inspected me for my reaction.

Meanwhile, I was confused and could do little more than stare at him and repeat his words over and over again in my mind, searching for the meaning. I cut his hands. I cut his hands. I cut his hands.

“Whose hands?”

“Razor’s.”

I reared back, my grip on him tightening instinctively. “You did what?”

“When I heard the gunshots that night, I turned my car around and drove back to the diner.” Again, as Billy spoke, he sounded so calm, resigned to some mysterious fate. “I walked in, Razor was standing over Simone, knife raised. I knocked him out, and then I put ice on Roscoe and Simone, that’s the end of the official story.”

“Okay?”

“The FBI hasn’t released the fact that sometime between me knocking out Razor and the ambulance arriving, his hands were cut open. Scarlet, I sliced his tendons in half, straight through the palm. Your father will never be able to pick up or hold anything ever again.”

Originating at the base of my skull, a shiver raced down my spine and I flinched, struggling to understand the jumble of emotions vying for first place.

“I don’t regret it,” he said quietly, fiercely in the face of my continued silence. “After what he did to you, after what he did to me, I don’t regret it. But I didn’t do it for you. I did it for myself. And I’d do it again.”

Tears flooded and stung my eyes and nose as I looked at him. My dear Billy, with the voice of an angel and the heart of a lion. The sweet boy who’d brought me hot chocolate and cinnamon rolls in the winter, who’d changed my bandages and snuck me into his house so I wouldn’t sleep in the cold. He’d been the first person to ask about my hopes and dreams, to make me believe in possibility. And he’d been the only person I trusted to hold me, keeping watch and the monsters at bay.

My love. The strongest and best man I’d ever known. What had life done to him?

Throwing my arms around his neck, I clambered onto his lap. “I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry.”

“Shh. Don’t be sorry.” His arms came around me, held me tight as I straddled his hips. “You have nothing to be sorry about.”

But I did. I’d exposed him to my father, I’d shown Billy my scars, and he’d been beaten because of me. I couldn’t imagine the kind of festering anger he carried. I couldn’t believe his resentment hadn’t already swallowed him whole.

And in all of this, I didn’t understand myself or what I was feeling. My weary heart both rejoiced and mourned. I’d lived my whole life terrified of my father. Reason told me he was in jail and could never hurt me or anyone else again. Reason told me the double panic rooms in my house—both in Green Valley and in Nashville—were absurd. Reason told me to live my life without constantly looking over my shoulder for his shape in the shadows. Nightmares don’t care about reason.

Now he could and would never hold a knife again. My solace in this fact was palpable, a corporeal thing. And yet, at what cost? I despised that my father had inspired such a level of hatred in Billy that he’d committed this violent act. Maybe Billy was broken, maybe not. At the very least, his soul was wounded and that was unacceptable.

I was a mess of horrified relief and grief, uncertain how to feel or what to feel first. But one thing was for certain, there was no way in hell Billy would be going to jail for this. No way. No. Fucking. Way.