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Daisy tries her best to fight off the heated anger that sparks when Billy makes a snide comment about Nicky during soundcheck, but she can’t, and it ignites. Like so many of the other things she feels for him. She wishes she didn’t care. She wishes he didn’t care. But, unfortunately, they both do.
More than any one person should when it comes to another.
Except she’s the only one who seems to ever acknowledge it. At least, that it exists for both of them. He’s plenty comfortable bringing up her feelings. She thinks sometimes it’s to mock her for them, but others…She might just believe that he does it to remind himself that they’re real. That what they once had has burned into ash, but they were something. Once upon a time.
I know what it looks like when you’re in love with someone.
She will never escape those words, the look in his eyes when he said them, the way he leaned in close, close enough to kiss her, after he did.
He feels something for her. She isn’t even sure what, but it’s there. It’s something wrong and burning and irresistible. There are times when she thinks she’s imagined all of it. That he really doesn’t feel anything remotely like that for her. It’s nothing, just desire and passion and want. That it is all in her fucking head. But then she catches him looking at her and she knows better. It only gives her a small satisfaction. She holds on tight to it anyway.
She flicks ash off her cigarette and stares him down. If she didn’t know better, she would think it pleases him. Like her anger is something to celebrate. As if he just wants to see an emotion, any emotion, even if it’s hate directed at him.
“Don’t talk about my husband like that,” she snaps.
He sucks at his teeth and she thinks for a moment that he’ll let it go, roll his eyes and look away, as he has dozens of other times.
Instead, he takes a step toward her and meets her anger with his own. It feels good. It feels awful, too.
Behind them, she sees Warren’s eyebrows go up and Eddie rolls his eyes and Karen and Graham exchange a loaded look. They shouldn’t fight like this in front of everyone. They’re already too obvious. They always have been, if she’s being honest with herself. Except Daisy can’t stop her own reaction any more than she can his.
“Don’t call him that like it means anything,” he says, looking smug and like he knows her. As if he knows everything .
She tilts her chin up at him. “What the fuck is that supposed to mean?”
He takes another step and she should back away, but she doesn’t.
“Come on, Daisy.”
He laughs and it’s so cruel she could kill him right there. Both of them have always known how to save the other, how to comfort and help. The exact words that they need to hear. Only these days, that means that they know the ways to hurt the other most.
“We all know that your marriage doesn’t mean shit. You may have fooled yourself into thinking that it does, and fooled him, too, but the rest of us see right through it.”
“Billy—” Karen starts, a warning in her voice.
Daisy feels her whole body tense up and he looks proud of himself. She wants to throttle him and destroy his precious ego. She wants to say all the things Nicky tells her at night about how Billy makes her less her. The little comments that she can’t run from, after he’s done fucking her. She wants to hate him.
But she can’t.
She knows what she can do though, and she doesn’t hesitate before going for it. As stupid as it is, as much as it makes her a lesser person. It doesn’t matter. They’re both too far gone now.
“Well.” She smirks and narrows her eyes. “I guess I’m in good company on this tour then.”
She waits around for one second to see the shit-eating grin slip off his face and then she storms away. She hears Warren calling her name and Eddie saying, “Real nice, Billy.” She doesn’t trust herself to stop, so she keeps going. Until she’s out in the back alley of the venue. She sucks in air and fights off tears she wishes were solely from rage. She hates herself because she can’t hate him, and it doesn’t make anything the least bit better.
She needs a hit or more of her pills, but she left them behind in the green room, and she curses herself for being so stupid.
For a few minutes, she paces back and forth, stewing and steaming and wishing she hadn’t been the one to run away. It should’ve been him. But the only thing Billy’s truly ever run from is the truth for how he feels for her, and she knows that will never change. He will never stop being himself and neither will she. That might be the worst part of all of it.
He will keep her close enough to hold onto, but never really have, and she will keep waiting for him to change his mind.
She wonders if either one of them will ever walk away, but just the thought of that hurts more than the idea of staying. Of running away from their fights and truths and lies and wishing he would come after her. And knowing that even if he does, that it doesn’t mean anything. It won’t change anything, and it will never be enough.
Daisy will never be enough.
She hears the door open but refuses to turn around and meet her crushing disappointment when she sees Karen or Warren there. There’s a lump in her throat she can’t get rid of, even though she swallows over and over. She squeezes her eyes tight, but even that can’t stop the tears. She lets out a gasping breath.
There’s a crack of thunder and a flash of lightning, and before Daisy can pull herself together, the sky opens up, and rain comes pouring down.
Fucking perfect.
The rain soaks her thin clothes until they’re practically see-through and her hair sticks to her head and her eye makeup is probably running down her face. She wraps her arms around herself. The tears don’t stop, but at least if she goes back inside now no one will be able to tell.
She turns around, and half-expects to see a roadie smoking a cigarette. Or Warren attempting a joke that doesn’t land. Or maybe Karen, there to steer her into the green room to get her dry before the show. Even Eddie would’ve been less unexpected.
Except there, in front of her, looking as miserable as she feels, is Billy.
She sniffs and glares at him. Who does he think he is? Following her, coming out here, looking at her…The way he’s looked at her for months now. Anguish and yearning and desperation. LIke he could drown in just one look. He shouldn’t look at her like that. Because she’s not his wife. Because they would destroy each other. Because he might already have destroyed her.
“What the hell are you doing out here?” It comes out as a shout.
He blinks at her and seems surprised by her question. Maybe he’s surprised by his coming out here, too. It wouldn’t be the first time.
She bites her lip and nods, welcoming the anger once more. “You know what?” She spreads out her arms, the rain still pelting down on both of them. “Fuck this,” she points at him, “and fuck you.”
Daisy starts to storm toward the door, stomping her way through puddles. She hopes he’ll let her go. It’s the only thing that should happen. At the last possible moment, he puts his hand out and places it on her arm, and stops her.
She tries to pull away, but he merely holds on tighter. Through the rain, she looks up at him with every ounce of fire inside of her. As if she could burn him by just meeting his eyes with her own. He returns it, and that feels good. It feels right. But there’s a deeper truth beneath it. One that neither one of them are prepared to face.
Daisy wishes she never saw that look, or any of the others. In this exact moment, she wishes she never met Billy Dunne. Even though she knows it’s useless. That they can’t go back and change any of it. But she can’t stop herself from wanting it.
Her lip trembles and she feels so hopeless, so raw. She feels like every moment her mom or Gary or any of the other assholes who told her she wasn’t anything have been compounded. This is so much worse than all of those other times. Because it’s one thing to be told she’s shit. It’s another to know Billy will never admit the truth. To acknowledge, in no matter how small of a way, that he loves her.
And she knows now, she feels so intensely she wants to die, that she will never be good enough for him to say it.
“This has to stop,” she says. She shivers, the rain chilling her to the bone. “You have to stop.”
She goes to walk away, but his grip won’t let her. Don’t say it, she begs in her head. Please, just don’t say it. Not yet.
“You’re the one who has to fucking stop, Daisy,” he tells her. There’s heat behind his eyes, and she focuses on that as he continues, “You’re ruining my life. I can’t think about anything but…” He swallows and she watches as it goes down his throat. “I need to be the man who my family deserves. And you make it harder, okay? You make it impossible.”
“So leave,” she gasps out.
Her voice is desperate, nearly as much as his face seems to express. She wishes it was that simple. That Billy could walk away and take all the ways he’s changed her with him. But even if he does, it won’t rewire her mind—or her heart. She’s different because of Billy. And maybe he’s different because of her, too.
She’s so certain of it that she knows he feels it, too. It doesn’t matter the distance between them. The fire that burns between them can never fully be extinguished.
He doesn’t move, doesn’t say anything either. He just keeps staring at her.
“Then let me go,” she pleads, because she doesn’t know what else there is to say.
Both of them know she isn’t talking about his hand on her arm.
The thought of leaving is crushing and horrible and makes the tears run down her face even more. It hurts so much to be near him, but she thinks being apart from him might ruin her life. More than loving him already has. The rain pours down her face and sweeps the tears away, but she bets he can see them anyway.
His expression changes, and something inside her is so wrecked she doesn’t know how she’s meant to sing with him tonight. This look is the worst of all. Because she knows it so well. She’s never felt so…Seen. Not by Nicky and not by her mom and not by anyone else in the world. And even if she’s never seen it from someone else before, she knows no one else will ever look at her quite like this.
“All of this…It can be done.”
She’s breaking down in front of him and she wants to destroy him for it, but it seems that she can only destroy herself. She looks up at him, rage and heartache pulsing through her.
“You want to have an easy, nice life?” She’s a mess, but she doesn’t care, not when she needs him to hear this. “You want to be the kind of guy you think you should be? You want to run from this, from me? Fine. But you’re going to have to let me go in order to do it.”
He hesitates, but after another moment, he releases her arm. She never thought she was broken, despite everything, until he does. She nods and swallows down every awful and amazing emotion he’s ever made her feel. Some part of her is relieved. Starts to tell her that this is right, somehow, even if it feels like the most wrong, twisted thing that either one of them have ever done.
Her hand is only on the doorknob for a moment before Billy flips her around to face him. She barely has time to glare at him or move or even think. This time, there’s no hesitation when he brings his lips crashing down on hers.
It’s not a kind or soft kiss. It’s desperate, it’s fleeting. She feels more than she has let herself in weeks. It’s bruising, and she hopes that no one else will be able to tell when they inevitably have to go back inside. She makes herself lose herself in the moment though, even if it will only make it hurt more later.
He pulls her harder against him and his hands are everywhere. Her waist, hips, ass. Then back up, tangling themselves in her sopping hair. He moans deep in his throat, and it sparks a light inside of her she thought was long dead. Then her hands are everywhere, too. They hold onto each other as if they could make the moment last forever, as if they could cement themselves in place for the rest of their lives.
She’s aware of the rain, but she doesn’t really feel it anymore. Not right now. She can’t feel a single thing other than Billy. She doesn’t feel cold or wet. In fact, she’s never felt warmer in her entire life than she does in his arms.
His arms wrap around her and she doesn’t understand how it’s possible to be this close to a person. She’s never felt so…Wanted. Not even by Nicky. It rings every last warning bell she still has left, but she can’t bring herself to really care. She will later, of course. She’ll care a lot.
But she feels alive for the first time in so, so long.
Billy seems to sense it. Or maybe he’s been waiting for this, waiting for her to wake up and be her again. She’s certain that he didn’t plan this. Neither one of them ever does. Because to plan this…To admit freely to it…It would ruin everything. The careful tightrope balance they both survive on.
His tongue sweeps into her mouth and she gasps against his lips and feels his smile. Not a smirk or a grin, but a real smile. She can’t remember the last time he gave her one. Probably during the recording sessions, she thinks. When everything seemed so much simpler, lighter.
Everything is heavy now. Like a weight on her chest she can never get rid of. Most days, she feels like she’s being pressed into the ground with it. And that’s where the drugs and Nicky help. Because it isn’t just Billy. It would be easy to blame Billy, and sometimes, she lets herself.
Because her addiction might be reflected by his own, but that doesn’t make it any less hers. It doesn’t make her able to escape her mother’s voice or her own self-doubts or inability to breathe without it taking everything out of her. Billy makes things harder, they both know he does, but the drugs are her getaway car. It isn’t his fault. And she thinks that he might believe that it is.
He whispers words she can’t make out against her mouth. One of them might be, “please,” and another, “need,” and unforgivably, she thinks he calls her, “baby.”
She lets it all hit her, allows herself to truly feel it. He can tell. He increases the intensity of his kisses and her heart pounds and one of his hands drifts down low enough to place his hand there.
Daisy doesn’t remember how long the kiss lasts. It feels like an eternity, it feels like seconds.
She breaks their kiss and he tries to go for another, but she’s already so ruined, she can’t let him. Not just for her benefit, but his, too. This will only make everything hurt more. But since when have either one of them ever been able to walk away from things like that?
Despite the thunder and rain hitting the pavement, the whole world feels quiet. Sometimes, she thinks that’s one of the things she needs from him the most. That he can make everything, everyone else, go quiet. He makes it easier to sleep and eat and just…Be. Then he goes and makes it all harder, makes the noise even louder than it was before.
It doesn’t make sense, but she knows that they’re long past being something that does.
“Don’t go,” he says, fierce and loud over the rain. “Just…Don’t. Please, Daisy. Please don’t leave.”
She looks up at him and hates him but also doesn’t, not at all. This is beyond self-destructive, for both of them. And they know it, too. As if that could change anything. Or make either one of them do the thing that needs to happen. To end this, once and for all.
She looks deep into his eyes and he does the same and she sees so much of what she’s feeling reflected in it. More than he’s ever let her see before. It’s addictive. It’s the most intense kind of drug, because when it wears off, when he shuts down again, it will be the worst comedown she’s ever experienced.
In the end, there seems to only be one choice she can make.
Daisy says, “Okay. I’ll…I’ll stay.”
He pulls some of her wet hair out of her face and cups her cheek, and she tries to convince herself that it’s enough.