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)
Whatever Billie wanted. Whatever made her happy.
“That’s nice of them, though. To extend that friendship branch.”
Will was watching Billie now. She was moving around in the kitchen by herself, but she was doing it happily. He spoke quietly even though Billie couldn’t hear. The house was that big. “Stevie wanted to come over to help Billie so bad. We just felt with school starting tomorrow, and it’d be late when we got here, it was better for her to wait to come over later in the week.”
“Solid thinking.”
He flicked his eyes up. “Harmony’s coming around—”
“Will.”
He stopped at my sudden firm tone.
I said, “Don’t do that. Don’t start to say some shit that’ll be some excuse why your wife isn’t coming around when our niece would move in here if all of us allowed that. We both know what’s going on, and while it doesn’t make me really like your wife that much, I probably wouldn’t have liked her anyway because she’s got a personality where she cares what other people think about her. I’m not like that. Billie’s not like that. She’s not hurting because your wife is scared of befriending her. It is what it is. I know your wife is getting some asinine opinions put in her head and I know who’s putting those asinine ideas in there. So let’s just say that we’ll make sure to come to family holidays when certain people make their leave. However, Harmony isn’t a bad person either. You love her. She loves you. She also loves Stevie, Georgie, and Sammy, so there’s no bad blood between us either.”
Will picked up on who I wasn’t including, and who else might’ve been at their family holidays.
He nodded, sighing. “It bothers me, though.”
“But it doesn’t bother Billie.”
We were in agreement there, sharing another look.
He said, “We need to have a talk about how much we’re going to let Stevie come over here. She’d come over tomorrow before school if we let her.”
“Sure.”
“Just talk it out with Billie about what you guys want, and I’ll talk to Harmony too, see what she’s okay with as well. We know Stevie will be here a lot, and I know it somewhat hurts Harmony’s feelings, but we’ll deal with it. We can all tell that it’s good for Stevie to be around Billie.”
I agreed.
He left after that, finishing his non-alcoholic beer before going over to hug Billie and say his own goodbyes to her, whispering something to her which got him another tighter hug and lots of smiles from Billie.
She swung her eyes my way, still smiling, but I also caught a shadow there. She didn’t come over so whatever it was, she’d tell me later. If she didn’t, I’d be bringing it up. I didn’t like seeing that shadow over my woman.
She liked the sunshine, and I’d make sure to remind her of that tonight.
No more shadows.
Just sunshine.
EPILOGUE 2: BILLIE
I was happy and wired and so tired that I’d progressed to hyper level three thousand. I liked my little home at the farm, but I also got used to Brett’s big house and now we were in Fallen Crest, and if I were going to have a dream big house, this was it.
It was past midnight.
We’d gone to bed shortly after Will left, but again, I. Was. Wired.
Brett tried holding off from falling asleep until I went first. He did that all the time, but this time, he finally faded a few minutes ago and I slipped from the bed.
God. I couldn’t believe how far we’d come with everything.
There were shows about the Midwest Butcher, and now those shows were revamped to add the last section that involved my brother and me. It spurred a whole new frenzy of the obsession people had with serial killers, and there was even a show coming out on Netflix loosely based off my life, including my relationship with Brett. They approached me to do the show, but they could’ve done it anyway, so I signed off with it as long as my name was never included in any line of the show or in the credits and if I got financially compensated. Brett had lawyers look over the contract, so there was no loophole to screw us, which at first and second pass, there’d been some items that needed to be smoothed out. In the end, my secret hope was that the show would either crash and burn and no more shows would come out or the opposite, where it’d get so big that people would forget it was even inspired from my life.
Fingers crossed.
I’d made peace that the show was happening, and after Ben’s death, I hadn’t been hated along with him. That’d been my biggest fear. It hadn’t happened, and I finally felt like I could breathe easier. The rest would be fine.