Billy & The Beast (Ever After, New York #3) - Eli Easton Page 0,65
I’d read it over and over, hoping against hope that it wasn’t as bad as it seemed. I’d flipped the paper over, but the back was blank. I’d studied the header. All the email information at the top looked real.
“I had a PI look into Billy, someone I trust, someone I’ve used many times in the past. And thank God I did,.” Emmanuel had said.
“And you’re sure this is real? That this… this investigator wouldn’t just make up something like this to justify his paycheck?”
Emmanuel looked insulted. “Seb, come on! That doesn’t even make sense.”
He was right. How could a random investigator know the worst thing Billy could do, the shape of the ultimate betrayal?
“Swear to me it’s real!” I’d insisted, slamming my hand on the desk.
Emmanuel had held my gaze. “I swear.”
What a fool I’d been to trust Billy. Such a goddamn fool. The accident must have addled my brain worse than I thought. I’d honestly believed there was such a thing as honesty and decency, love that saw past my scars and my terrible crime, a heart as pure and good as sunlight.
But it had all been a lie. Humanity really was as worthless as I’d always believed it to be. And it was always about the money.
After Emmanuel left that day, I’d spiraled. I fell into a black fugue state. I went around the house, picking up everything that belonged to Billy, a few gifts he’d given me, and anything that even reminded me of him. And I tossed them in the trash.
I went down to the pool and pushed the button to roll the pool cover over that clear, turquoise water, while Jack paced anxiously and whined in protest. I never wanted to look at that pool again. All the patio furniture, I shoved and tossed into a heap at the side of the pool terrace, not caring what broke, just wanting it out of sight of the house.
Then I went down into the basement and rowed on my rowing machine until my muscles screamed and I was exhausted enough to sleep.
I couldn’t allow myself to think about Emmanuel confronting Billy. I couldn’t allow myself to think about Billy at all.
Since then, one useless day had bled into another. I hadn’t worked. I’d barely eaten. I didn’t bathe or get dressed. What was the goddamn point?
Billy had betrayed me. It had all been a lie. And if I’d been so wrong about him, then I was obviously irredeemably stupid and naïve. How could I trust my own judgement about anything?
I never wanted to get within a mile of another human being again, not for as long as I lived.
But the quiet. The emptiness of my bed. The slow, agonizing tick of the minutes. My own fetid stench . . . it was unbearable.
Jack made me get up. Several times a day he pulled me to the gate to visit the roses, and into the woods to walk. At first I resented it. I just wanted to lie in the dark. But slowly being exposed to the trees, the flowers, the blue sky, and Jack’s happy trot eased the shock inside me and broke through the fog in my mind.
Then, two weeks after Billy was cut off from me, I found the rock. It was on our path through the woods, at a turn near the northwest corner of the estate. There was a boulder there, around three feet tall, fringed in long grass. For the first time I noticed a smaller rock on top of the boulder. There was something on the rock in white.
I stopped to look at it, picking it up. The rock was around the size of my fist with one flat edge. A heart was drawn in white paint and inside was A+B+J.
Aaron and Billy and Jack.
Tears sprang to my eyes, and I gave a little cry. Jack came jogging back to me and nuzzled my leg while I stood there, staring at the rock and wiping my eyes on my sleeve. For the first time I simply missed Billy—felt the heartache, the gaping loss of the person I believed him to be and the future I imagined we could have together. I missed the stronger, happier version of myself that I became with him.
When had he become my sun and my North Star?
He must have put this rock here for me to find weeks ago. Just something small to brighten my day. That was so like him.