1. Reva #3
I turn on him then, because anger is easier to hold than grief. “You don’t get to tell me no.”
His face is pale beneath the streetlamp, but his mouth stays firm. “I do when you can barely stand.”
“I’m standing.”
“You’re shaking.”
“So what?”
“So I’m not letting you walk back into a room full of predators while you’re bleeding out.”
“I’m not bleeding.”
Shiloh’s gaze flicks to my palm. My fist closes again.
He looks back at my face. “Not there, Yank.”
The words hit their mark. I hate him for knowing where to aim.
A black truck pulls up to the curb. I don’t know when Ever called for it. Maybe he didn’t. Maybe there is always someone waiting when men like Nash Blackwood own the night.
Ever opens the back door.
“I’m not leaving Nash in there with Deacon,” I say.
“Nash can handle Deacon,” Ever says.
“That’s not the point.”
“It is right now.”
My laugh comes out broken and mean. “You all keep deciding what the point is for me.”
Ever absorbs that without flinching. Shiloh doesn’t. His face twists for half a second before he smooths it out. He reaches for me, slower this time, giving me room to refuse. His fingers close around my wrist, careful of my palm.
“Yank,” he says, voice rough. “You can hate us in the truck.”
I stare at him. Then at Ever. Then at the black mouth of the open door.
The heat presses against my back. Music leaks from the club each time the door opens behind us. Somewhere down the block, a siren wails and fades. New Orleans keeps breathing around me, careless and damp and alive.
With a sigh, I climb into the truck.
Shiloh climbs into the front passenger seat. He does not close the door until I am fully inside and Ever has me tucked against him, one arm around my shoulders, my knees drawn up toward my chest.
I let it happen.
That might be the worst part.
I let Ever pull me in. I let my cheek rest against his shirt. I let my breath hitch against his ribs. I let the truck door close between me and the club, between me and my sister, between me and the man—men?—who should have told me everything before we ever got here.
Nobody speaks as the truck pulls away from the curb.
The city moves past in streaks of gold and red. Wet pavement. Iron balconies. Tourists laughing too loudly on corners where they don’t know any ghosts. A woman in silver heels carrying her shoes in one hand. A man asleep in a doorway. A street preacher with a sign no one reads.
I watch it all through the window and feel none of it reach me.
Ever’s thumb moves once against my upper arm. A reminder.
Here. I am here.
I breathe because his chest rises beneath my cheek and some animal part of me copies him.
Shiloh says nothing from the front seat. That scares me more than if he filled the truck with words. Shiloh always has words. Pretty ones. Sharp ones. Useless ones. Tonight he has none, and the absence sits heavy between us.
I don’t ask if Delia will still be there when he turns around, or if she will vanish again into whatever grave everyone built for her and forgot to tell me was empty.
My palm throbs. I open my hand and look at the marks my nails left. Four red moons. I press my thumb into the deepest one until pain flares.
Ever catches my wrist. “No.”
My eyes burn, but no tears fall now. Maybe I used them all. Maybe my body has moved past crying into some colder place.
“It hurts,” I say, my breath hitching on the words. “I’d rather feel this than that—”
His face is half-shadowed by the passing streetlights. For once, he does not hide from me. He lets me see the anger there. The fear. The helplessness he would probably rather cut out of himself than admit.
“Then let me do it.”
The words are rough. Almost angry.
Then he lowers his face, blotting out the streetlights, and kisses me, hard.
One hand twists tightly in my hair, pulling it almost cruelly and stealing a gasp.
His mouth opens over mine, rough enough to stop the shaking for half a second, and when I try to drag in another broken breath, he catches my lower lip between his teeth and bites.
The truck turns, jostling us apart and carrying us farther from Noir Night.
Farther from Delia, and farther from answers.
Closer to the house that has started to feel dangerous for an entirely different reason. Not because I think the men inside it will kill me, but because I am starting to understand they might be the only thing keeping me from breaking myself apart on the truth.
I relax a fraction, settling into Ever’s hardness.
Ever’s arm tightens around me.
I do not know if he feels the change or if he is holding on because he needs to. Either way, I let him.
For now.
Just for the drive.
Just until the house.
Just until I can stand on my own again.
Outside the window, the city blurs.
Inside my head, Delia turns away from me again and again and again.
You should never have come.
You don’t know what you’ve done.
I press my wounded palm against my chest and try to hold myself together around the hole she left behind.
But the truth is already inside me.
Moving.
Breathing.