Total pages in book: 160
Estimated words: 155798 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 779(@200wpm)___ 623(@250wpm)___ 519(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 155798 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 779(@200wpm)___ 623(@250wpm)___ 519(@300wpm)
I had no idea what the ring looked like.
My tears were blinding me.
It was there and it was sparkling and it was so pretty.
He asked again, “Will you marry me, Billie?”
I nodded, everything in me was overflowing, and as he lifted the ring and slid it onto my finger, he paused once again as he said throatily, “I would love to have a baby with you, and I don’t care what comes first. The marriage or the baby. Just as long as you’re included.”
I laughed, still sputtering out my tears of happiness, but Brett stood and picked me up, then he laid me down and crawled on top of me.
We didn’t do the sex that night.
We did the lovemaking, which was also known as the slow sex, which was so good too.
ONE MORE EPILOGUE: BILLIE
THREE MONTHS LATER
I was nervous. Really nervous.
If I’d been nervous thinking about telling Brett that I wanted to have a baby, then that’d been a—no. They were different situations and different reasons for being nervous.
This one was about telling a secret I’d had all my life and waiting for them to hate me, condemn me, or get mad that I’d lied to them as long as they knew me.
Brett and I were in Texas and we’d just parked at the farm where everyone had gathered. Or the adults. I’d asked everyone to be here, even Travis, but had asked for a babysitter to take care of the kids. It wasn’t appropriate to have them here, not for today.
And thinking all those thoughts, as Brett turned the engine off and started to get out of the vehicle, I didn’t move. I couldn’t.
I couldn’t tell them.
I’d lose them.
I’d lose everyone.
Everyone who supported and rallied around me when it came out who Ben was, what Ben was.
I’d been lying to them too.
I told Brett right after because he needed to know everything. I knew there were new DNA testing measures, and they would’ve taken Ben’s DNA, but I hadn’t known what would happen after that.
But when I told Brett, I also explained to him why I loved when he called me Little Billie.
“Our father was abusive. He hurt our mom. He’s the reason she didn’t want us to have friends. She didn’t want us to get attached because we kept moving to get away from him. He’d find us and then when he’d leave, we’d run again. It happened over and over until, well, until Jojo died. That was the end of it. My mom saw a way where I could be safe from him.” I hated talking about my father. It was easier to talk about him as another person, as someone I didn’t know. When I referred to him as someone related to me, it twisted up all my insides. It sickened me. He sickened me. Which was why I said, “He used to call me Little Billie.”
Brett had tensed, looking distraught for a brief moment.
I shook my head, needing him to understand. “You took that name from him. It’s yours. That’s why I loved when you said it the first time, because it was like another part of me was stripped away from him. You claimed that piece of me for you. He couldn’t have that anymore.” My voice shook. “When you live in fear for so long, you don’t realize all the pieces that get taken from you. That was a piece I didn’t know I’d lost to him, until I got it back. Thank you.”
He was still frowning. “I call you that during sex. That’s—”
I laid a hand to his arm, hoping, praying, he’d understand. Really understand. “I know and because you did, it’s in no way connected to him anymore. It’s not his at all.”
“But—”
“My dad wasn’t abusive to me. He hurt my mom, but I didn’t know that. And my mom said he took Ben with him somewhere. I didn’t know that either, not until the last day I saw her. But he never did anything to me or with me. He was just cold. That’s what I remember feeling around him. Cold and distant, but I could always feel his anger. It scared me. He scared me. I grew up associating fear with him, so when he called me Little Billie, there was no bad association with it. It was his nickname for me. My mom slipped one day and called me that same nickname and he got angry.” I stuffed down a shudder. “Really angry. I think he hurt her that day because she sent Ben and me to the park. She said we could stay there all day and get ice cream on the way back.” Regret sat on my shoulders. “I wish I’d known what was really going on.”
“Your mom protected you from that for a reason. Don’t take that away from her.”