by Stasia Black
Which just made the tears start up all over again.
“I’m sorry,” she sobbed into his chest. “I’m sorry for the things I said to you earlier. I didn’t mean any of it. I was just so afraid. And I never said those things to Sophia. She and I talked but not about that. I never told her she should go out on her own. I told her what a wonderful father you are. What a good man. I told her I’d been wrong about you all along.”
Eric’s arms came around her and he squeezed her tight, kissing her hair.
“Jesus, I love you, you stubborn woman.”
She smiled through her tears. “I love you, too.”
She pulled back and looked into his blue eyes and repeated it. “I love you.”
And it was like something inside her chipped loose of the concrete it had been encased in and was finally set free.
She looked around at Jonathan and Garrett and Billy. “I love you,” she said to them. “All of you. I love you.”
Now that she’d said it, it felt like she couldn’t say it enough. “I love you,” she repeated, laughing and crying all at the same time.
They all crowded around her—at least Eric, Garrett, and Jonathan did. Billy stood back and she looked up at him through her tears and waved him down.
She’d finally forgiven herself, at least, she thought that was what this felt like. How could she not do the same for him?
He fell to his knees and dropped his forehead to the floor at her feet, his shoulders shaking. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”
Drea put her hand on his head and it felt like she was giving him absolution, though maybe she was giving it to herself, too.
But their pasts didn’t have to define them.
It could be their futures that did.
“Come on,” she said quietly, tugging on Billy’s shoulder so that he sat up. His cheeks were streaked with tear tracks and his eyes were red.
“Let’s go see what shape the rest of the girls are in.”
Chapter Thirty-Eight
BILLY
“I’m just going to clean this out and then get you stitched up, okay?” Billy asked the skinny, wan girl on the exam table. He fought to keep his voice steady as he dabbed antiseptic against the gash in her forehead. He’d already cleaned away the crusted blood that had been there for who knew how long.
“You’re doing great, honey,” Drea said, squeezing the girl’s hand. “Jenny, right? You said your name was Jenny?”
The girl nodded, eyes shooting back and forth from Billy to Drea.
“It’s okay, Jenny. You’re safe now. Billy will take good care of you. I promise.”
Billy swallowed hard at Drea’s words. How could she say that? How could she even look at him now, knowing what she did? That while he might not have been in these exact exam rooms with these exact girls, he’d been in ones very similar, working for the same evil bastards, helping them—
But he couldn’t think about that right now. His patient deserved all his focus. So he gave it to her as he began suturing the gash on her forehead shut with a practiced, careful hand.
After he was done, Drea went to bring in the next girl.
She’d been tireless all night long as they cleared and secured the hospital floor by floor. Garrett’s initial assumption had been right—most of the Skulls had been sent out to secure the city and only a skeleton crew had been left behind.
After realizing that Suicide was dead and most of the other Skulls in the building were dead, one finally got smart and started talking. Apparently Suicide had always been certain that Drea would come to him, especially after the attack at College Station. Hence the little scene he’d had prepared on the penthouse floor. When the two guards circling the perimeter didn’t check in, Suicide had ordered the building’s generator shut off, to be turned back on at his command.
He ignored the suggestions of his VP and others to just kill Drea on sight or to at least have more men up in the penthouse with him. Suicide ordered them to go with the men he was sending out to defend the city.
So Drea and the guys got to the fifteenth through twenty-fourth floors that were filled with women locked inside exam rooms, there were only two guards stationed on every floor.
Jonathan made Drea stand back when they unlocked the first room of women, not sure if they’d run into more who were brainwashed like those upstairs.
But they weren’t. They were just terrified, abused girls who couldn’t believe they were finally free.
Drea sent the ones who didn’t need medical attention down to the fifteenth floor lobby to be all together and the ones who needed medical attention she was seeing to personally. They’d obviously not had a proper doctor on staff because while some had problems that just a matter of popping joints back into place, others had far more serious conditions. Broken bones. Infected wounds. A couple he suspected had internal injuries that he was going to x-ray as Jonathan got a make-shift machine Suicide’s crew had on hand working again.
None of the girls who’d walked through the door were ones that Billy had seen before.
Because they were all sold to the four corners of who the fuck knew where by now.
And you did nothing. Instead of helping them, you ran. You saved yourself.
God, the look on Drea’s face as she realized what he’d done. Not just about what he’d done while he was there as the doctor, but the running, too. And then his stupid fucking bumbling excuses cut off by her icy: Don’t.
The horror and disappointment on her face said everything he’d been trying so desperately to silence with pills for the past two years. A year and a half he’d worked for Suicide at his South Texas ‘processing facility.’ In conditions that were bad enough to haunt any sane man.
But he’d stayed. And swallowed more and more pills until he felt only numb while he patched up girl after girl that Suicide and his men broke during so-called ‘training’ and then sent back down to him to be repaired again.
If it wasn’t him, it’d just be someone else, he told himself. He’d give them more care and consideration than any other doctor, he told himself. He wouldn’t further abuse them, he told himself. Such paltry fucking excuses.
More than one girl had begged him to kill them.
Being here in this place, with these girls, fuck, all of it had him wanting to run right back to the place he’d been yesterday—the bag of medical supplies back at the outlet mall, the bottle of pain pills in his hand.
After Drea stormed out, bound and determined to go on her mission to save the world, all the rest of the men who were worthy of her trailing after, Billy had run straight for the pills like the weak, pathetic fuck that he was.
He’d picked it up in shaking hands and heard the voice roaring in his head.
Yes.
Please.
Take this pain away!
Forever.
How many pills would that take? He popped the top of the pill bottle and looked inside.
It was full. Still, if he wanted to be sure the job was done, he should swallow all of them.
And then he’d laughed bitterly. So he’d be selfish even in this, huh? Depriving them of so much precious pain medication because he was a coward to the last?
One last great disappointment.
On one hand, it’d be fitting, he thought, sliding to the floor with his back against the wall. He could die as he’d lived. A coward.
But on the other hand, what would Drea feel when she came back and found out what he’d done?
Eric was always going on about how Drea took the whole weight of the world on her shoulders. How she blamed herself for Maya getting hurt and for what had happened to Gisela.
God, the whole reason Billy had gone on that mission was to try to prove to everyone and himself that he wasn’t a fucking coward. But when it came to it, had it been him shoving Drea aside to take a bullet for her? No, yet again he let a woman pay the ultimate price while he stayed safe in the background.
Fuck, Drea had to know this wa
s all on him. He just wasn’t strong enough. Some people were too weak to handle the shit life threw at them, and he was one of them. Weak.
He’d write a letter, he decided. That way Drea and everyone else would know it was no one else’s fault except his own.
So he went hunting for something to write on. Turned out people in a war zone weren’t big on carrying around writing utensils.
Finally he settled on a cardboard box and picking up the marker David had been using to draw on the wall earlier.
He sat down on the floor and tried to start the letter. He tried explaining about how he used to think that everyone did whatever they had to to survive. That everyone compromised their morals. How he’d thought morality itself and right and wrong were pre-Fall luxuries. And that was how he’d justified…
But then he’d stopped and looked at what he’d written. It was such bullshit. Such whiny, self-justifying bullshit. Excuses. They were the excuses of a fucking coward.
So he started manically scribbling COWARD all over the cardboard, on every surface he could find, all over the other shit he’d written until he was scratching so hard with the marker that he was tearing the box apart.
That was where Eric found him, prostrate on the floor, Billy didn’t know how much later.
Billy didn’t even know he was there until Eric said, “Enough. Get up. We’ve got to go back up our wife and keep our family safe.”
That was all. He said it so coolly, so matter of factly that Billy would swear he was channeling Drea herself.
So Billy got up. Eric had found another motorcycle for them. Billy thought Eric was terrified of the things, but Eric just climbed on behind Billy without so much as a word of protest.
Was it weird riding a motorcycle, something Billy had done maybe only five times in his whole life, with a dude’s arm around his waist—only one arm at that since Eric’s other arm was broken—and trying to balance for both of them? Well, yeah, sure it was.
But everything since running into Drea and Eric on the road that day had felt more than a tad surreal.
There was a part of Billy that wasn’t sure he hadn’t gotten into some bad mushrooms or some shit and this was just a really wicked, really intense trip.
Either way, riding through two Army checkpoints and letting Eric bullshit about them being the last of their crew to make it out of Seguin before the Army there supposedly crushed their defenses seemed about par for the course. As did driving through the third checkpoint and finding nothing but dead bodies.
No doubt the work of their illustrious wife. The woman who was afraid of nothing.
Except that when they’d finally been dragged up to that room, Billy had finally seen it, what Eric had been talking about all along—Drea’s demons on parade.
She’d been about to give into that snake-tongued bastard.
Billy hadn’t had many run-ins with Thomas ‘Suicide’ Tillerman but every one of them had left him feeling unsettled, like the man had seen straight through him. Like he’d seen his cowardice and reveled in it.
But like every other obstacle Drea had ever faced in her life, she overcame that bastard and whatever he’d stirred up for her. She put him and his lies down. Slashed his motherfucking throat like the Amazon warrior that she was.
And then she’d fallen into their arms—including Billy in the embrace. Because while perfection wasn’t supposed to be possible on earth, she was as close to it as humanly possible, he was pretty damn sure.
Where he was weak, she was strong. He was cowardice. She was courage. She was all he’d never be.
So how could she—? With him—?
He shook his head as Drea brought the next woman in.
Drea had her hand behind the woman’s back. She was dark-skinned and walked with her arm cradled against her body.
Billy winced. It was broken. He could tell from across the room. But he had only one thing to offer Drea, and that was his doctoring. So he’d care for these women until his hands cramped and his feet bled.
He’d donate pints of blood and as much plasma as possible before he keeled over. He’d—
“This is Billy.”
The woman immediately started backing up when she saw Billy but Drea put a hand to her back. “It’s okay. He’s like the men outside. He’s safe. We just need to have him take a look at your arm. He won’t hurt you.”
Five minutes later, Billy was really wishing she hadn’t promised the woman, Denise, that. Because it turned out, her arm had been injured about a week ago, and he had to rebreak the bone to set it.
Even with the shot of morphine the woman still screamed and sobbed into Drea as Billy did what needed doing. Drea had tears in her eyes as she stroked the woman’s hair and whispered that it was okay, it was over, it would all be okay now.
Billy knew her words were for Denise. He knew it. But was it so bad if he took comfort in them too, and her nearness as he wrapped Denise’s arm in a proper cast?
Fuck but you’re a selfish, self-obsessed bastard, he castigated himself. God if he could only get a break from himself for two damn seconds. He’d like to live in Drea’s head. He imagined himself there. Caring about other people. Loving them. Sitting in a quiet corner just absorbing her strength and endless determination.
“Something’s happening,” Garrett burst into the room, causing Denise to flinch as Billy finished wrapping the last bit of her cast.
“Oh shit. Sorry.” Then Garrett looked to Drea. “D. You gotta come. It’s the Army. They’re in the streets.”
Drea immediately headed for the door. “Which Army?”
“That’s the thing. It looks like both of them.”
Drea stopped sharply. “What do you mean, both?”
Billy whispered quick after-care instructions to Denise and then hurried to follow Drea and Garrett.
“I mean both. All mixed up together. Come look.”
They were still high up in the building, on the nineteenth floor and the sun had risen about an hour ago.
So there was plenty of light to see the soldiers marching down the streets wearing the distinctive black of Travis’s army interspersed with the normal green fatigues of David’s army.”
“What the hell does it mean?” Drea whispered.
“I’d say we’re about to find out,” Eric said, “because it looks like they’re coming right this way.”
“Shit, you’re right,” Garrett said.
“It could be a trap,” Eric said. “If they defeated David’s army, they could have easily captured enough soldiers and taken their uniforms. If they weren’t fooled by his Defeat in Detail tactic, they could have sent their full forces against David’s troops at New Braunfels. David would have had no choice but to surrender or get all his men killed.”
“If there was no other choice,” Jonathan spoke up, “if it was hopeless, he’d surrender.”
“And they could have had them strip out of their uniforms like Eric said—” Drea moved down the window like she was trying to get a better look. “—to trick us after they couldn’t get ahold of Thomas on the shortwave.”
There had been incoming transmissions attempted all afternoon but they hadn’t picked up. If they pretended to be Suicide and were found out, then his lieutenants would definitely know he’d been taken down, but not answering at least left the possibility of interrupted coms.
Drea continued looking out the window for another long moment, brows furrowed. Then she pulled back and said decisively, “I’ll go down.”
“What?!” Garrett exploded.
“No way, you could be walking straight into a trap,” David said, sounding no less exasperated.
“We have to know one way or another,” Drea said, “and I’m the best representative—”
“I thought we were past all your self-destructive bullsh—”
“It’s not that, Eric,” Drea cut him off. “I promise. But there’s an army down there. And if the did capture David’s men, then we have to—”
“I�
�m going,” Billy called loudly from where he stood, already in the elevator. He’d snuck over while the rest of them were arguing.
“Billy,” Drea called out in alarm, hurrying over like she meant to stop him.
But his finger was already on the Door Close button.
“I love you,” he said to her right as the doors were closing.
As the elevator descended, Billy expected to feel the normal terror he did when heading into dangerous situations—his usual instinct for self-interest and self-preservation that usually overrode every other thought.
But instead, he felt… calm.
No matter what he faced when those elevator doors opened and he stepped out, for the first time in so, so long, he was doing the right thing.
And he was at peace.
Chapter Thirty-Nine
ERIC
“I can’t tell what’s going on. Can you?” Drea asked, face pressed anxiously to the glass of the window.
Eric was down at the opposite end of the room with his forehead to the window. “I can’t see anything either. Just a bunch of soldiers all bunched in a group in the street.”
Goddammit. To have made it this far only to be trapped in the top of this tower. It was infuriating. They should have had a better exit strategy than to just wait for the army. They should have had contingency plans in case David—
Behind him, the elevator dinged.
“Get back,” Garrett growled, running over and standing in front of Drea, cocking his rifle and aiming it at the elevator. Eric was right behind him, Jonathan by his side.
“No,” Drea said, pushing to get through them. “Put your weapons down. They’ll shoot you. Stop it!”
But before any of them lowered their weapons, the elevator doors opened.
Revealing Billy and David.
Drea let out a cry and pushed past Eric and the others. She flung herself first at Billy, hugging him and then pulling back and shoving him hard. “Don’t you ever do that to me again, do you hear me?” she shouted. Then she hugged him again before turning to David and yanking him into the embrace too.