25. Reva
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
REVA
A letter for me arrives the next morning.
It’s waiting on the silver charger in the front hall, sitting on top of an electric bill, a thick cream envelope addressed to Nash, and something glossy from a charity that probably wants Blackwood money and has no idea how that money was made.
I know the handwriting before I touch it. My stomach swoops and then drops.
Deacon.
The letters used to come to Chicago, written on plain note paper and folded into equally plain envelopes with no return address.
I never knew where they were mailed from.
I never knew whose hand had written them.
I used to sit on the edge of my bed after bad shifts and trace the slant of the words with my thumb, imagining a faceless person somewhere in the world who could read the ugliest parts of me without flinching.
Ash, he told me to call him.
Not Deacon Cross. Not the man with the rosary tattoo. Not the man who kissed me in a kitchen and told me I had been his since before I understood the shape of that word.
I pick up the envelope with my name on the front.
Just Reva. No last name. No sweet little lie for me to hold.
I take it upstairs before anyone sees my face.
Homer follows me into my room, tail high, harness-free and therefore returned to his full power. He jumps onto the bed and attacks the corner of the blanket while I sit at the window with the letter in my lap and try to decide whether opening it counts as weakness.
I’m pretty sure that it does. I open it anyway.
It’s the same plain note paper. White, a little on the thick side. The words are written in black ink with the same precise slant I know better than I want to.
Little Ghost—
You hate that I call you that now. You didn’t always. Once, you sent me an essay about feeling like a ghost in your own life, and I gave you the name because I wanted you to know I heard you.
I still hear you.
I handled Delia badly. I’m not saying I’m sorry because I think I made the wrong choice in protecting her. I did not. She needed protection.
I’m sorry, I guess, for trying to keep both of you on opposite sides of a wire and convincing myself that doing so was the same thing as loyalty.
At some point, I guess I needed to make a choice.
I thought I had chosen you years ago. Quietly. Privately. In a way that kept you breathing and kept me useful to the people who would have buried you—twice—if I slipped.
Quiet choices are sometimes cowardly ones. Mine were.
Last night, I made a pretty obvious choice. It may cost me.
I just wanted you to know that before things began changing…
because they’re probably going to start shifting pretty fast now.
I want you to understand that whatever I have been, whatever I still am, my line has become more…
visible. You are behind it. Anyone who wants to get you will have to cross it.
Stay inside the walls today.
Argue with that if you need to. I will enjoy the attempt.
D.
I read it once.
Then I read it again, my forefinger tracing each line as though it might change in front of me. The third time, my hands shake.
“Fuck this,” I tell the empty room. Homer pauses mid-attack and looks at me. “I’m not doing this.”
He resumes killing the blanket. I crumple the letter into a tight ball and throw it at the trash can beside the desk. It lands beside it with a soft thud and sits there, white paper bent around words I did not ask for.
I stand. I walk to the door. I make it three steps into the hall. Then I turn around, go back, and take the letter from beside the trashcan.
The paper doesn’t smooth out completely. The creases stay, no matter how carefully I flatten it beneath my palms. That annoys me, which annoys me more because why am I invested in the condition of Deacon’s stupid letter?
I open the bottom drawer of the nightstand and slide it under the stack of old ones I brought from Chicago.
Then I close the drawer, like that’s going to fix something, and stomp out of the room, already texting Sonny.
It’s not going to fix a damn thing. But I’ll be damned if I stay shut up in this house.
The next day, another letter arrives. This one is shorter.
Little Ghost,
You ignored my instruction to stay inside the walls. I expected that.
I also liked the green shirt. Shiloh has taste. I resent this but cannot deny it.
Don’t go anywhere alone. If you are determined to be reckless, take Ever. He is better at stopping bullets than conversation, which makes him useful.
Go ahead and throw this one away, too.
You will retrieve it.
D.
I stare at the last line for a full minute, eyes narrowing. I don’t even ask how he knows I threw the letter away. They’re all like that. They know things, which makes them the most annoying assholes this side of the Mississippi.
I pause. Which side of the Mississippi are we on, anyway?
I throw the letter away. Then I retrieve it. Then I hate him until lunch.
On the third day, the letter comes to Noir while I am in the storeroom pretending to help Sonny with inventory.
Pretending because my attention span is next to worthless.
I count three bottles of bourbon as four, write gin under vodka, and label one line simply Suspicious Brown Liquor because Sonny will not stop talking about a man she met who claims he can read elbows instead of palms.
When the front door opens, I poke my head out and glance down the hall.
One of Nash’s guys steps in, hands a small stack of mail to Ever, and leaves. Ever glances through it. His expression doesn’t change, but his eyes come to mine.
I sigh and walk over, holding out my hand.
He hesitates. “Say the word, firefly. I’ll beat him up for you.”
A little smile touches my lips. “I can handle my shit, Ever.”
“But you don’t have to.”
He bends, gives me a soft, lingering kiss, and hands me the envelope. Deacon’s handwriting sends heat shooting straight up my neck.
Sonny leans over. “Ooh. Secret admirer?”
“Go count liquor bottles.”
I tear it open in the kitchen.
Little Ghost,
Your temper is not improving.
You are angrier now than you were when you arrived, which means you still have work to do. Do not aim your rage at people who are trying to stand between you and the grave.
Aim it at me if you need to.
I can take it.
D.
I fold the letter once.
Very carefully.
Then I unfold it, because careful is not the mood, and crush it in my fist. I march through the hall with it gripped tightly.
Ever says my name behind me.
I ignore him.
Nash’s office door is partially open, a scant few inches. I don’t bother to knock. I hit it with my palm hard enough that it bounces open against the wall.
Nash looks up from behind his desk.
Deacon is standing near the bookshelves in jeans and a black shirt, one shoulder against the frame, his rosary ink visible at his wrist. He looks at the letter in my hand and then at my face.
His mouth almost moves.
It had better not be a smile.
I hold up the paper. “Stop.”
Nash leans back in his chair.
Deacon says nothing.
“Just fucking stop it.” I step inside and slam the door behind me, which ruins the effect somewhat since Nash is still in the room, but I am too angry to care. “This isn’t going to work the way you want it to.”
Deacon folds his arms over his chest, the muscles beneath the fabric of his shirt flexing with the movement. “What isn’t?”
“Whatever this is.” I wave the letter. “Letters. Instructions. Little observations. You reaching for the version of me who actually wrote you back. Newsflash: she did that because she didn’t know any better.”
His eyes sharpen and my nerves tingle. Good. I want blood.
“She knew enough,” he says.
“She trusted a fabrication. Someone who wasn’t real.”
“She trusted someone who answered.”
“She trusted a liar.”
“Yes.”
I hate how fast he gives me that. He doesn’t flinch, doesn’t make excuses, doesn’t soften the word. He just takes it, and somehow that makes me angrier.
Nash looks between us, then at the letter, then at Deacon. One dark eyebrow lifts. Then he stands.
“Coward,” I snap at him.
“I prefer strategic,” Nash says, straightening his cuffs.
He walks to the door, stops beside me, and bends close enough that only I hear him.
“Try not to break my desk.”
My mouth falls open. Nash leaves, closing the door softly and deliberately behind him. Deacon’s gaze has not left me.
The office feels too quiet now. Too contained. Shelves lining the walls. Heavy concrete walls. Nash’s desk between us, dark and metal and suddenly much more alive than any piece of furniture should be.
I point at Deacon with the crumpled letter. “You do not get to…court me…with the same handwriting you used to haunt me.”
His expression changes. “Court you.”
“That is what this is.”
“Okay, fine.”
My hand drops. I was prepared for denial. I was not prepared for okay, fine.
“You are a piece of work.”
“So I’ve been told.”
“This isn’t romantic.”
“No.”
“It’s fucking manipulative.”
“Possibly.”
“Stop agreeing with me.”
He lifts one shoulder in a shrug, eyes glinting. “No.”
I make a furious sound and step toward him. “You broke something in me. Do you understand that? I had this one safe space. Those letters. This one person who didn’t have any connection to the closet, didn’t have a stake in my past. And that was you. Ash.”
His jaw tightens. Finally.
“It was the only way I knew how to be a part of your life…and yet remain on the outside of things.”
“You don’t get points for effort.”
“I am not asking for points.”
“What are you asking for?”
“You.”
The word is too simple. Too much.
I laugh once, sharp enough to hurt. “No.”
“Yes.”
I force another laugh. “Just like that, huh? You said it, therefore that’s how it’s going to be? No, Deacon. You don’t get to write a few letters and bite my lip in a garden and decide this is happening.”
“I decided long before the garden.”
My face goes hot. That’s worse.
He steps away from the bookshelves and comes toward me. Slow. Measured. Like he has no doubt I’ll either give or hold my ground, and it doesn’t make much difference which…the result will be the same either way.
I hold my ground. Mostly.
“I am not a plan you get to execute,” I say, craning my neck to look up at him when he closes the distance between us.
“I know that.”
“I am not an assignment.”
“No.”
“I’m not Delia.”
His face closes at that. His voice drops. “You know there was nothing there. Don’t use her against me out of lack for anything else.”
We’re close enough for me to see the scar through his brow, the dark focus in his eyes, the way his control has started to look less like calm and more like a locked door under pressure.
“Then stop sending me letters like you own my survival.”
“I do own some of it.”
My breath catches. He does not back away from it.
“Little Ghost was mine. Ash was mine. Every letter you wrote back came to me. I know what that makes me, and I will answer for it. But do not stand there and pretend those words mean nothing because you are angry with the man holding them.”
I shove him. He lets me.
The fact that he moves half a step irritates me, so I shove him again. This time, he catches my wrist.
“Careful, little ghost.”
“Do not tell me to be careful.”
“You’re shaking.”
“With rage.”
“I know.”
“You don’t know anything.”
His grip tightens just enough to stop the lie. “I know you kept my letters.”
My stomach drops.
“You arrogant—”
“I know you smoothed the first one out because the crease bothered you. I know you read the second twice before throwing it away.”
I twist against his hold. “You’re impossible.”
“And you are finished pretending you don’t want me.”