Sadly, after the day I had, I couldn't just go home and relax. Instead, after Billy walked me to my truck and I drove him to his car, I was heading home to go through the notes we'd made in of the files we'd gone through so far. I wanted to be sure that we hadn't accidentally missed the mention of the power to burst a person's head into a gooey mess.
I drove home using muscle memory, hoping against hope that I had something I could throw together for dinner when my cell phone rang through my blu-tooth system. Seeing my mother's number didn't make me feel excited, but I knew her well enough to know that if I ignored it, she would keep fucking calling until I wanted to throw the phone out a window. Not doable since my cell phone was the easiest way for work to contact me. Shit.
"Hello, Mother." I answered, hoping that my tone was mild and smooth. My mother would pounce on any change of tone, be it tired or miserable, and then she'd find a way to make the person feel worse.
"You sound tired." Fuck. "That job of yours is too stressful, Veronica. You should have-" I let her run on, all of the advice she and my father had given me that had fallen on my deaf and defiant ears. I wasn't listening, and she noticed. "Veronica, are you listening to me?"
"Of course I am, Mother." Don't ask me what you just said, don't do it. "I'm just trying to keep my eyes peeled so I don't end up hitting anyone while riveted by our conversation."
"You're driving?" Hello? Check the time, woman. "You should have said so, I would have let you call me back when you got home." Her long suffering sigh came through as loud and clear as she expected her words to. "No wonder you're distracted. I only reminded you that the club's annual-" I nearly sighed. The Club. Fuck. I hated the club. Ugh. And I knew precisely what miserable event was coming up.
"Do NOT sign me up again, Mother." The irritation and warning clear in my voice. "I'm busy that day and night."
"Veronica Taylor," I waited for her to build steam about my duties as the single daughter of my father, a leader in the blah blah blah. "If you aren't included, tongues will wag, you know that."
And? "Mother, the tongues could fall out of their heads and roll on the carpet for all I care." I could hear her sniff. "I am NOT going to be auctioned off for a mind numbing date with one of the most boring men in the world." Been there, repeatedly, will NOT repeat. "So make my excuses, or have them call me and I'll make them, but I won't do it." Never again.
"Veronica," she sighed on the other end and I nearly offered her the name of a good doctor to get an inhaler from. "You know that being a part of a family of our caliber means sacrifice. It isn't as though we're asking you to marry the winning bidder, it's simply one meal." Sure, one meal where I'll be staring at my fork wondering if I want to lobotomize myself or my date. "And it's too late anyway, you're automatically signed up yearly. It's part of being a single woman who is a member of the club." Shit. Fuck. Damn it.
"Then I'll come down with a very debilitating illness." I muttered, and she chuckled.
"You'd be auctioned in absentia, dear." Fuck. "We had to do it with the Miller girl." Twisted, that's what rich people were, twisted. "She had appendicitis and the winner just had to wait until she was out of the hospital and capable of eating real food." My mother said this like it was completely normal. And she wondered why I chose psychology.
"Great. Just great." I was turning into my driveway. "I have to go, Mother." Drown myself in my bathtub, try auctioning off my corpse, I added in my head.
"I'll call you closer to the date with the details, Veronica." I rolled my eyes and said goodbye.
Inside my garage, engine off, darkness all around, I let my forehead fall to the steering wheel. Why did I suddenly really hope that something massively diverting would happen before I had to go through with the fucking auction? Like screw it, let the anonymous head popper take a shot at my fucking head. If I was nothing but goo, maybe my mother would let it go.
I hadn't found anything in the notes that Billy took. Nothing aside from the fact that he listed things in much the same way I did. No powers that would make head bursting at a distance logical. Eating a peanut butter sandwich, followed by a long hot bath, I got into bed and tried to relax.
I almost managed it, until my eyes closed and I saw Billy Butcher hovering over me as his lips came closer. Fuck. I groaned, trying to force the image away, but as exhaustion hit me hard and fast, my imagination took over, and in my dreams we weren't interrupted.
I woke up and felt marginally rested. My bed looked like a tornado hit it, the sheets and comforter twisted and half off the bed. Pillows were tossed around, and I was nearly falling off the edge. At first I couldn't imagine what caused me to destroy the bed, but in a flash I remembered my dreams, how real and hot they'd felt and the state of my linen made a hell of a lot more sense.
Taking a quick shower, throwing on another one of my work outfits, sliding my still blue toes into my heels, I grabbed my bag and keys and was out the door within the hour. Billy was waiting for me when I got in, and I tried not to blush when I remembered how my mind had filled in the blanks about what his fully clothed body looked like naked.
"Looking a little pink in your cheeks, Ronnie," he mentioned as I opened my office door. Fuck. "Something on your mind." He sounded smug, but that could be my own imagination. It was pretty fucking good at concocting shit, after all.
"Must be from the walk from the parking lot," I offered, pulling out our notepads from my bag. "Nothing caught my eye on either of our lists, you want to take a look while I get started where we left off?" I handed the notepads to him and kicked off my heels. His eyes went straight to my toes. "Too much to do last night to change colors, Billy." My voice was quiet, and when our eyes met the twinkle was back in his.
He let his attention go to the notepads in his hands, and I got comfortable on the floor. I watched as he took off his duster with one hand, not allowing his focus to move from his work. Shaking my head, I pulled out the next file in the box we'd been working on the day before.
Our routine returned when Billy handed me my notepad back, agreeing that nothing on either list had caught his eye, and he joined me on the floor. Backs against the desk, flipping through file after file, jotting the notes we needed on to our notepads, and working in near silence. Peaceful, unlike the evening I'd had. The thought nearly jarred me from my work. Billy Butcher working with me had become peaceful. Who the fuck would have thought that was possible?