"Maybe we went too far now, baby,
Someone was watching you,
Maybe the jokes on you,
I don't know,
Maybe the jokes on me."

Maybe We Went Too Far - Scandal

/

Joss dozed against the soft black leather of the car seat, her mind a whirl of everything that had happened over the last few days. She felt exhausted, unlike Billy who still seemed fully awake and wired after their pool adventures, and he was now taking great pleasure in running the Chevy down deserted roads at a reckless speed. The engine roared its now familiar aggressive growls to every slight tap of pressure Billy made on the accelerator, eager to obey his commands.

All Joss wanted was her bed, sleep.

She could hear a low droning of a voice just above the humming of music from the stereo, and it took longer, much longer than she realized, to understand that voice was saying her name, sounding more and more annoyed and impatient with each utterance.

"Tanner?! You still with me?"

Joss felt her body start with a shock of mild alarm, and she jerked her head towards Billy, still blinking sleepily as he gave her a fleeting look of reproof before returning his attention to the road.

"Yeah, I'm still with you," she said, rubbing her face, trying to massage away the tiredness with physical force.

"Did you space out again?" Billy said, with more than a hint of judgment dusted in the inflection of his tone.

"Yeah, sorry, guess I did."

"Just my luck to be stuck with a space cadet," Billy said, an amused smirk and raise of eyebrow making it clear he was unkindly teasing her.

"I'm way more tired than I thought," Joss said, in sudden heated defence. "Besides, you're the reason I'm so tired!" she accused, feeling that familiar sting of annoyance his offhanded candour always seemed to be able to prick her with.

Billy did laugh then, blue eyes dancing with smug satisfaction. "A good work out will do that."

Joss made a scoffing sound. "No, that's not what I meant. I mean the two late nights in a row, it's past midnight, you know?"

"Yeah, well you'll sleep sound tonight." He gave a flick of eyebrow and a roguish grin, obviously very pleased with himself in this moment, celebrating the many perceived victories this night had brought him.

Joss made the same scoffing sound but didn't reply, she felt too tired to even try and fight back. Instead she listened to the music softly swirling up from the speakers and lost herself for a moment in the atmosphere of the dim interior of the car, the breeze floating in through the open window and the nearness of him. The aftereffects of their time at the community pool still flickering through her like sprays of molten metal sparks.

"Trish is having a party tomorrow and I said I'd go. I'll see if I can swing by the arcade after. I'll drive you home," Billy said, in a careless way that made Joss suddenly feel a little stab of ice somewhere down the column of her spine.

She glanced over at him and implicitly understood he wasn't just hinting at seeing her tomorrow, but of going home with her too, and what was more, he expected it without question or approval. Joss had to push back down the little thrill that wanted to break through her unease, the thrill of her spending another night with him and the whole picture her desire fuelled mind wanted to paint of adventurous darkness filled with them exploring each other.

But, Joss knew things were starting to get out of hand, and what she needed was space and time to figure this all out, so she didn't make any stupid mistakes. Even if part of her still wanted to do exactly what they had just done tonight over and over again, that was allowing instinct to take over sensible thinking, and if she allowed that, she really would find herself in trouble. This was all beginning to feel like she was slipping willingly and foolishly down into a hole she knew would be hard to get out of again, and that feeling intensified with each passing night they spent together. This situation was moving way too fast again. As these thoughts butted against her, Joss felt an intense flare of anxiety spread out like grasping tendrils, finding every pulse point and squeezing, making her wish to be anywhere else but here, in an enclosed space with Billy right now. She suddenly wanted to push down hard and violently on the brakes of everything.

"Maybe, we should just take a rain check on tomorrow?" she said, as lightly as she could, her gaze upon the passing scenery as if nothing was wrong at all, but she watched for his reaction in the semi transparent reflection of the glass window.

He frowned. "What? Why?"

"I'd like to actually try and get to bed earlier than midnight before Monday rolls around," Joss deflected.

"We can get into bed before midnight, that's not a problem," Billy said, with a self satisfied grin.

"You know that's not what I mean." Joss wasn't sure how to explain how she was feeling, or if she even wanted to explain anything to Billy, half fearing he would dismiss her, or even worse, see her exposed underside and feel compelled to go in for the kill. "Exams are coming up and I need time to study." It wasn't a complete lie, but it wasn't really the truth either.

Joss gave him a covert glance, trying to gauge his reaction again, and she could see he wasn't pleased. That feeling of anxiety flared again as it reminded her how little she actually, truly knew him. Outside this car, or the arcade, they were still almost strangers. No matter what had just passed between them, the guy sat beside her was still the same Billy Hargrove she'd seen this past year. She couldn't trust him, despite how friendly or intimate they became in these snatched private moments. Joss couldn't trust anyone, because trust always led to pain.

"Okay, well, I'll just swing by to give you back some of your tapes and take you home, scout's honour."

Joss couldn't help laughing despite her continuing unease. "I get the feeling you were never a boy scout."

He didn't answer, but let out a chuckle that confirmed her suspicions anyway and they fell into a semi-comfortable silence, giving Joss a moment more to think. She just had to toughen up and get a good grip on herself, go along for the ride and enjoy the moment, and not let this situation get into her head. Set clear boundaries between them. This was just a bit of fun and in a few weeks, this would all be a memory, a good one if she had her own way. She felt her nerves finally relax the iron tenseness that had crept into her muscles and let out a sigh of relief. As the silence continued between them, bridged only by the music, the hiss of the cassette turning inside the machine, and the low deep roar of the car's engine, Joss felt the panic ebb away and leaned herself once more back into the comforting lull of the soft car seat.

"So, I was thinking, tomorrow, I might go back to the community pool," Billy said, but his tone held no humour, no fun, and it disarmed Joss for a moment, making her scramble for any witty, cool reply.

"See, I knew you were some sort of criminal, returning to the scene of the crime," she joked, unable to stop herself. He laughed, but it sounded frustrated and forced, and Joss realized he really was being serious. "So, how come?" she said, changing tactics. "Going there make you want to swim again?"

"Something like that. It's been a while. I'd only been there to use the gym stuff, since it's free. I don't think I've swam anywhere since... I was back home. I saw a sign saying they were looking for staff."

"Staff? You want to work there?" Joss blinked, a little surprised.

"Yeah, I'm a strong swimmer, what learning to swim in the ocean teaches you."

There was something about his manner that pricked at her consciousness, the invisible wall he seemed to have erected around himself wavering just a little. Perhaps it was his smug satisfaction of tonight that made him feel more comfortable? After all, a winner never felt vulnerable when celebrating, and Joss knew if she pushed him now about his past, she might actually get an answer, instead of her head bitten clean off. The temptation was too much and she gave in easily, taking the lead of the conversation.

"Who taught you? To swim, I mean?" Joss probed.

He paused and glanced out of the window, doing his very best to avoid eye contact, and Joss knew she had hit a bullseye.

"My mom. She loved the ocean," he said, with a dismissive sniff.

"She the one that got you into surfing too?" Joss said, trying to keep her tone and body language as casual as possible, afraid anything else would shatter this candid moment.

"Yeah. It was our time, out at the beach. Just her and me."

"I kinda remember you saying your dad hated you surfing, but your mom-"

"She thought I ruled the waves." He cut Joss off before she could finish, and although his face remained unmoved, she could hear the smile that wanted to break through in the tone of his voice.

"She sounds sorta cool," Joss said, without adding any expectation to her comment. "Like she cared, you know? About you, and what you liked."

"Maybe once. Just like you thought your dad was everything, that was my mom and me when I was a little kid."

Joss felt that statement hit somewhere tender in her chest, not really because he had opened up about himself, but because it felt like a jibe, a warning that he knew her hurt too, and if she probed too deeply, if she betrayed his trust, he'd be willing to cause hurt in return.

"So, what changed?"

Billy became silent, like he was considering the question, but Joss understood that wasn't necessarily the case. If he held on to his pain in a similar way as she did, he knew the answer, but speaking those words out loud felt like a disconnect between mouth and brain.

"I guess living with my dad became too hard for her," he said finally, with a low sigh, as if he'd given in to peer pressure that wasn't really there. "He hit her when he drank or when he got mad, it was both most of the time. She couldn't even spend time with her friends without my dad accusing her of something. It was like waiting for one of those toys you had as a kid that scared the shit outta you..." He swirled his finger around in the air as if that would help him remember. "You know, the ones that play music and jump out?"

"A Jack in the box?" Joss offered.

He tapped the wheel with two fingers in triumph. "Yeah, a Jack in the box. One minute all smiles, the next, chaos."

Joss wasn't sure what to say to that for a moment, she thought this was the most frank he'd ever been with her, and she felt like her next words would be like walking over fragile eggshells. "Do you know why she didn't take you with her?"

He glanced over at her, and for a moment Joss truly thought he would indeed bite her head off, but his angry scowl slowly turned into something else, something that rippled through his eyes, that spoke of a simmering anger and painful resentment, but a strained acceptance too. "She couldn't, not when she left. She ran out after he'd started on her late one night. I was asleep so..."

"So, she never came back?" Joss' brow furrowed, suddenly wanting to know every facet of his pain and measure it against her own, something she knew to be a morbid and unhelpful compulsion.

"No, she came back to see me a few times, always with a friend, just in case, I guess." He took a moment to flex his fingers around the wheel, his Adam's apple bobbing as he swallowed something invisible and bitter. "She said she wanted me to go live with her. Then she stopped coming by, because my dad liked to mess her around. He'd tell her to come by and then I'd be out playing baseball, that kinda stuff."

Joss didn't have anything to say to that and so she did the only thing that felt right in that moment, she waited patiently for him to continue.

"She'd still call, and I'd ask when she was coming back? How long would it be? And she'd tell me, it'll be soon, real soon, I just had to wait a little while longer."

"Jesus," Joss said, finally understanding how much of a mess the situation must have been for a ten year old to go through.

"My old man, he told her if she didn't come back and take responsibility, he'd take her to court and get full custody, that she'd never see me again." Billy's fingers flexed on the wheel with a disquiet energy. "He said she wasn't acting like a wife or a mother, and I thought he was right because I was real pissed at her." He let out a deep sigh, his thumb starting a rhythmic beat against the wheel that wasn't in time to any of the music that passed through the speakers. "She decided to fight him, in court, which made him angry enough to want to destroy her and so, that's what he did. He had a mortgage, income, stability. She didn't."

"Wait," Joss said, frowning in disbelief, "didn't what you want matter at all?"

He let out a huff of hollow laughter and glanced at her, giving her a pointed look as if she were far too naïve. "No, even if I had..." He hesitated for a moment, as if debating something internally, and glanced at her again, trying to measure her reaction to words he hadn't yet spoken. "My dad told me, all I had to do was keep my mouth shut and she'd come back. I believed him. He said she just needed to learn respect and responsibility, and then we could be a family again."

There was so much left unsaid but Joss felt she could gather some threads together and it wove a picture of control and influence over a young boy that only wanted things to go back to the life he had known, one that had his mom's presence.

"Jesus," Joss repeated. "You were just a kid, of course you just wanted your family together. What your dad did... was really shitty."

Billy didn't acknowledge her words with a response and Joss wasn't really sure if he agreed or not. The drumming of fingers stopped and he clutched the steering wheel with a grip that turned his knuckles white for a few seconds. "Well, he got custody and that was that."

"You never saw her again?" Joss felt truly horrified.

Billy shook his head, and she could see the discomfort in every taut muscle. Joss felt her chest tighten, she knew what it was like to blame yourself over your parents' actions when no child should ever be put in the path of two fighting adults.

"That's messed up," Joss breathed.

"Yeah. Messed up." Billy repeated her words. "My old man said she was always welcome back when she was ready to admit that she was wrong. We moved a few times and at some point the phone calls just stopped completely. I thought, maybe..." He let out another hollow mirthless laugh, as if sarcastically amused by his younger self's thought process. "Maybe my old man had stopped giving our number to her, but he swore he did. I got a cuff round the head for asking, so I let it lie. So I never knew if it was because she couldn't find us, or if she'd just stopped wanting to try."

"Billy..." Joss said, unsure what else to say apart from his name in a low consoling whisper.

"Just before we moved the first time to a smaller condo, she sent the divorce papers, and there was a letter for me."

"A letter?"

"I saw it before my dad, cause it had my name on it." He gave another dismissive sniff and reached for his cigarettes, lighting one up and taking a moment to savor the first deep inhale. "I wasn't fast enough though, he took it right outta my hands and tore it up, threw it in the garbage disposal. He said," Billy smiled as if finding this story sardonically amusing, "she was trying to manipulate me." He sniffed and brushed a finger across the tip of his nose as if casually brushing away any emotion his words caused to bubble up from their locked away depths.

"Billy-" Joss breathed again, shocked by his father's actions.

He held up his hand in a sharp stiff movement to silence whatever she was about to say, the cigarette still smoking between his fingers as his lips thinned in deep displeasure at the mere hint of any sympathy. "Nothing she could have said would have made it okay," he said, teeth grinding together. "She gave up, she stopped fighting, and she left me, knowing what he was like. If that was my kid, I'd have done anything. I'd have fought through fucking fire. She stopped calling, stopped trying, she just stopped."

Joss let out a sigh of full defeat, not knowing what she could or should say to any of this. She felt surprisingly torn in two ways, understanding Billy's anger and hurt, but also understanding why his mother had felt so overwhelmed fighting against a man that seemed determined to punish her in every way he still had control over. There were no clean straight stories here, only jagged edges full of bloodied emotions, and barriers a young boy had put around himself to stop that hurt ever happening again. Joss didn't have any words of wise comfort, or certainty that things would be alright in the end, because so often that wasn't how life worked out, and such words always rang hollow. She had no right to give her opinions or insights on what his mom might have been thinking or why those phone calls had stopped. It could have been anything from Billy's father manipulating the narrative, to the simple fact that Billy was right, she'd finally given up, too tired to fight on. Joss didn't know, because she hadn't been there in the thick of all the turmoil. All Joss could offer was understanding and empathy, not anything to fix or heal his wounds.

"Shit, I'm sorry, that's super messed up," Joss said, reaching out to his forearm, and upon contact she felt all his muscles stiffen under her touch and knew instantly he regretted telling her all this, and any pity was unwelcome. Joss didn't know what he wanted, but she understood in that second he hadn't meant to expose his past quite so openly.

"Look, I hate talking about this stuff," he said, in a way that made it very clear he was now annoyed, and it was unquestionably Joss' fault in his mind for bringing this up at all. "Let's leave my childhood out of what we talk about from now on."

Joss pulled her hand slowly back as if wary of the reaction of a wild animal. The silence loomed over them for a few seconds, uncomfortable and tense.

"I really don't like it when you pull that mind bullshit on me," Billy said, sounding angry and dismissive at the same time.

"Mind bullshit?" Joss questioned with a frown.

He took a long drag on his cigarette and glanced at her, the smoke stinging his eyes before he wafted it away with an impatient, frustrated hand. "You know what I mean."

Joss really didn't, and it took all her effort to not allow the annoyance that bubbled within her to spill into her expression and words. Instead she crossed her legs away from him, her body language brimming with disagreement.

"You wait until you've got me in a good mood and then you trick me into talking about personal stuff."

"Trick you?" Joss spat scorning those two words. "I did not trick you! I was interested in hearing about your past. That is not tricking you! You could have told me to fuck off at any point!"

"Well, I'm telling you now." Billy pointed an accusatory and damning finger at her, his eyes sparking with dark warning. "Back the fuck off."

"Okay, no more 'mind bullshit'," Joss sneered, "no more talking about stuff that happened when we were kids. I got it."

"Watch the attitude, Tanner!" Billy took another harsh drag, letting out the smoke in an annoyed huff. "This is between us, do you understand?" Joss could tell he was getting ramped up and jittery.

"Yeah, yeah," she snapped back, unable to help herself.

"This is private shit. You're dead if you tell anyone anything about what I said tonight, do you understand?" It was a demand, not really a question.

Joss looked out of her passenger window, rolling her eyes to the scenery instead of to his face, knowing that would just make him more annoyed. "Yes, I understand, crystal clear," Joss said with a snort, and returned to watching the hedges and trees whiz by.

It seemed that was enough of a promise for him to relax back into smoking his cigarette and enjoying the drive.

Joss knew she couldn't really leave things this stale between them. After all, he wasn't completely wrong, she had wanted to get him to talk about his past, and her probing had nudged against a boundary he didn't want crossed. She felt it was on her to change the course of the rest of this drive.

"What kind of staff are they looking for at the community pool?" she said, changing the conversation back to what had been the original subject with a breezy air, after a few moments of music had bridged their estrangement.

"Lifeguards and swimming teachers for kids I think, from what the sign said."

Joss almost let out a delighted laugh, but caught it before it could leave her lips. He wasn't wrong, he was a damn strong swimmer, he'd be the perfect choice as a lifeguard - but it took her an extra moment to actually imagine Billy teaching little crying, screaming, hyper children how to swim.

"You think you can handle the kids?"

"I have patience," he said coolly, coming across very aloof, before he finished his cigarette and flicked the stub casually out of the window. "Look how long I waited for you?"

Joss did laugh then, and pushed against his arm playfully, which made him smile, and the unease between them completely disappeared. "Well, a job could be good, making your own cash is pretty sweet."

He nodded. "I fixed some cars here and there for people I know at school, but it's not a steady job, so maybe this is something more reliable."

Joss wasn't fully sure why, but she felt a little swelling of pride build within her chest and reached over, stroking a thumb casually across his bicep. "It sounds like an awesome idea."

"Awesome, huh?" He took a moment to enjoy the word. "Can't be that hard keeping some brats in order, right?"

"I'm sure you'll figure it out." Joss truly meant it, it was good to see him doing something that actually benefited him. She settled back into her seat, once again feeling the warm afterglow of their recent physical intimacy spreading through her whole body, right down to her fingertips. She was surprised to find, this felt good. They'd had a small disagreement but had come out the other side smiling. If Joss was honest with herself, being with him right now felt like the only thing that made any true sense about her life in this dead end town.

Which was all fine and easy if it remained resigned to late night clandestine meetings until she scurried off to her new life, but that wasn't taking into account that life was never that black and white. As whatever this was grew between them, keeping secrets was going to become harder and harder to hide, not only from the outside world, but from each other too. Joss felt a knot form somewhere in her gut and returned her gaze to watching the night sky through her window, unwilling to confront what that knot meant, not now, not tonight.

/

A/N

Hello, welcome and a very happy new year to those re-joining the story.

I hope I can keep you all wanting to read as a bit of drama builds in the next few chapters. Looking at my chapter list we are looking at around 37 chapters in all right now, but I know some of those chapters will need to be split as they are very, very long, so we are really looking at around 40-ish chapters in total until the end. If you want to come on this ride with me, you are most welcome.

Until next time :)