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"This is my room." I guide Billy into my bedroom. He's been to my house, but he's never been to my room. "Yeah, I know. I drove you home when you were passed out drunk on Halloween, remember?" He says. "Oh, wait." He smirks. I roll my eyes. He knows I don't remember. "However I haven't really gotten to look around." Says Billy, holding the bag of frozen peas against his eye. He looks at the pictures on my desk and picks up the picture of me when I was nine, a year after I escaped the Lab. I'm sticking my tongue out in the picture and holding an ice cream cone. He smiles at the picture which makes my face heat up in embarrassment. "Do you have any pictures of you when you were younger?" He asks and puts the picture back down. No, because I was kidnapped. "We didn't have any cameras then." I lie. "Why not?" "My... uncle couldn't afford one?" Charlie and Collin lived with my uncle Joe when my parents died, and when I escaped I lived with him until he passed away the same month that Collin turned 18. Collin immediately got full custody of Charlie and I. So I guess it's not that far-fetched of a lie. "Oh, right. Sorry. I forgot that your parents... y'know." "Yeah. It's fine." I say. "Actually..." I start. "I have one picture of me when I was two." I walk to my book shelf and pull out my journal on the top shelf. I flip to the page with the bookmark and open it. And there's the picture. It's my mom teaching me how to walk. It's one of the few pictures we have of my mother. I hand the photo to Billy, which he takes with his free hand. "Is that your mom?" He glances at me. I nod. "Pretty, isn't she?" Her blonde hair is curled perfectly and her red dress fits her perfectly. "Yeah. Yeah, she is." He looks down at me. "And so are you." I feel my face heat up. I bet I look like a tomato. He then chuckles at the picture. "Are two year olds usually this tiny?" He points at me in the photo. I laugh. "Collin tells me that I would refuse to eat all the time, which shocks me because I am the biggest foodie ever." "You barely even touched your food when I took you to the diner in November." He frowns. "I was mad at you." He laughs. "That's right." He passes the photo back to me and I stick it back into my journal. I put my journal back on the top shelf. "You've got quite a lot of books there, Wilson." He addresses me with my last name. "Comic books," I correct him. "And I've read all of them." "What are you, a freak?" Billy jokes. I giggle. "Oh, definitely." He pulls me into his arms. After a quiet moment, he says, "I should get going. Your brother will probably kill me if he finds me here." I pull a few inches away to look up at him. "You're not going back to that house tonight." "Thanks for the concern, baby, but I have to." He furrows his brows. I blush at the pet name. "Why? Why do you have to go back?" I look into his eyes. "If I don't, I'll get you in trouble." He gazes back into my eyes. I shake my head. "Not if Collin doesn't find you." Billy frowns. "What?" "You can hide. Maybe on the floor on the other side of my bed. And then when nighttime comes I'll just lock my door." I explain. "You want me to be hide in here," He says, "on Christmas Eve?" "Yes." I state. Billy smirks. "Fine. But if Collin finds me..." "He won't." "...Then it's your fault that I'll never be allowed to speak to you again." I roll my eyes. "There's no way he could ever do that." Billy raises an eyebrow. "Oh yeah? I did it to a kid in Max's class back in California. After what I did to that son of a bitch he wouldn't even go within 30 feet of her." He smirks to himself. "What? Because you found him in her room?" I frown. "No, he was just an ugly, pimple-faced creep." He shrugs. I facepalm. Why am I not surprised? "What did you do to him?" "Uh, you don't wanna know, Princess." "Tell me or I'll..." "Mhm? I'm waiting, Princess." "Just tell me!" He groans. "Fine. I shoved his big ass head into a toilet and then beat him up." My eyes widen and I push away from him. "You did what? Oh my god! That's horrible!" "It was three years ago!" "Like that makes a difference!" I run a hand through my hair. "Did you ever apologize?" "No, because it turns out he was stalking her anyways." Billy shrugs. "So I guess I did have a good reason to do it." "Well that's just great." I grumble and take a seat on my bed. He sits next to me. "Sorry," He says. "For?" "Doing all of that to him." I glance at him to see if he's joking. His face is serious. I burst out laughing. "You're apologizing to me instead of the kid?" He cracks a smile. "Yeah." "I'll forgive you if you promise to never do that to anyone again." I tell him. "I'll promise to never stick someone's head in a toilet, but I can't promise that I'll never kick anyone's ass again." He studies my face. "I guess that works." I smile. He grins back and leans in to kiss me. He pulls away less than an inch to ask, "So I'm spending the night?" "That would be a yes." He smirks and kisses me again.
