Beard Necessities (Winston Brothers, #7)(88)

“What can I do to make this right?” I cried against his neck, wishing I could take this burden from him, wishing I could make it all go away.

“Nothing.” His fingers threaded into my hair, stroking it and then stroking my back. “Everything is right.”

“What are you going to do?”

He placed a kiss on my neck, speaking against my skin, “I don’t know.”

“You are not going to jail for this.” I held him with all my strength.

“We’ll see.”

Abruptly, I leaned away, gripping his shoulders and capturing his eyes. “No. We will not see. You will not go to jail for this. You will not. You will not turn yourself in. We could—we’ll travel forever. Move to a country with no extradition treaty with the US.”

His mouth slanted with a weary smile, but his eyes warmed as they trailed over my face. “And live off what?”

“I can work anywhere.” I shrugged. “And I’ll fly back to the States for the promotional stuff. I’ll be your sugar momma.”

His hands slid down my back until they rested just above my bottom. “No. No, I don’t want that. I’d miss my family. They might not need me as much anymore, but I still need them just the same.”

“But, Billy—” Desperation built a mountain in my chest, painful and tight. “Do the police have enough evidence to charge you?”

“The FBI is running the investigation and, no. I don’t think so, no. It’s his word against my silence.”

“But why be silent? Why not just say you didn’t do it?”

His weary smile grew. “I’m not going to lie.”

I fisted my fingers into the fabric of his shirt, frustration building a new mountain next to desperation, but hot like a volcano. “Yes. You will lie. You will say you didn’t do it and then it’ll be his word against your word, not your silence.”

Billy lowered his forehead to my shoulder.

“Please. Please. Lie. Lie and be done with it.”

“I’m tired, Scarlet,” he whispered. “I’m so tired.”

My chest ached, I ached. I firmed my lip and voice before my chin could give a betraying wobble or my throat could clog with emotion. I lifted my eyes to the ceiling, blinking to stop new tears.

Of course he was tired. He’d been shouldering so many burdens all alone for so many years. No wonder his family had seen fit to meddle. Billy needed a respite, an oasis, a safe place. He needed to be protected. And rescued.

“Okay, okay.” Pushing my fingers into the short hairs at the back of his neck, I massaged him, touched him. “We’ll talk later. But tonight, for now, you let it go. Let me handle it.”

He sighed like the breath came from his bones. His hands slid lower and pressed me forward, inadvertently hiking my dress up in the process. I didn’t care.

All I cared about was showing him how much I loved him, and needed him, and how essential he was to me. Because now that we’d found each other, I was never letting him go.





Billy slept.

We’d kissed. He’d removed his jacket, shoes, socks, belt, dress shirt, and tie. So many layers of clothes. Then we’d cuddled and kissed. Eventually, he’d slept, curled around me, his exhales falling against my shoulder.

Meanwhile, I channeled my inner Cletus and plotted.

Ben had told me a few times that I didn’t understand the difference between right and wrong like other folks. Perhaps my childhood was the issue, how I’d been raised, an intrinsic distrust of the law. My brain prioritized honor and justice over lawfulness. Laws varied depending on the place and time, required documentation, due process, and interpretation. You couldn’t count on the law to serve justice.

Honor didn’t need to be explained. It just was. Within most people existed honorable impulses, whether they listened to those impulses or not. Honor was the reason the majority of folks rooted for the underdog and never questioned why.

What Billy had done wasn’t lawful, but it was justice, and now he refused to lie out of some insane sense of honor, a sense of honor I didn’t share. Not in this case.

I’ll lie for him. I’ll save him.

Over the course of my life, when possible, numbing myself had always been preferable to suffocating on fear. Fear, as an emotion, fascinated me, my relationship with it a pendulum. To survive, fear was essential. To truly live, fear was detrimental. But over these last few weeks with Billy I’d come to realize that if I feared what I couldn’t control, then I would fear everything.

The answer wasn’t to hide from what scared me most, but to call it out, to confront it, to destroy it.

Restless, I extracted myself—slowly, carefully—from Billy’s arms and tiptoed to the bathroom, pausing briefly when I spotted the Hers box that had been left on the bed but that we’d set aside earlier. Snatching it up, I closed the bathroom door and flipped on the light. Once the lid was removed, I found my phone, passport, and wallet, and I took it as a sign.

I knew what I had to do.

Also within the box was a clean outfit of mine; the Winstons had obviously borrowed it just to hide it here. Stripping down to my undies, I mapped out my next moves, what I’d need to do in order to fly back to Nashville as soon as possible, how to get in touch with Simone Payton, how to bring Cletus up to speed without telling him too much and compromising him.