6. Reva
CHAPTER SIX
REVA
For a moment, the word seems to vanish after it leaves my lips.
The marsh goes quiet. The range lights buzz.
Broken china glitters in the dirt at my feet, sharp little pieces of someone else’s ugly history.
The men stand around me with their mouths closed, and the space between us turns strange, muffled, like I’ve sunk under dark water and they are all watching from the surface.
Maybe I said it too softly, and they didn’t hear me.
I pull in a breath that scrapes all the way down.
“No,” I say again, louder and more firmly this time.
Ever stares at me. The light catches on the hard line of his jaw and the sweat darkening the neck of his shirt. His eyes stay on mine for one long second. Then he shakes his head a little and clamps his lips shut, like he is cutting off any words before they can come out wrong.
He turns and walks away. Just like that.
Past Nash. Past the shattered plates. Toward the side of the cabin where the shadows gather thick between the cypress trees.
For a second, I only stare after him.
“What the hell is he doing?”
Shiloh bends to pick up another piece of broken china. He opens his mouth, closes it again, and drops the shard into the bucket. The sound of porcelain hitting porcelain makes something in my chest jump.
I whirl on him. “What the hell is this? Silent treatment?”
Shiloh’s hand tightens around the bucket handle. He looks up at me, and for once, there is no smile waiting to rescue either of us.
“We can’t fight you when you’re determined to be your own worst enemy, Reva.”
The use of my name stings.
His voice is low, rough at the edges. Frustrated. Tired. Still tender somewhere beneath it, which makes the frustration harder to dodge.
“We are trying our damndest to keep you alive,” he says. “You are making that difficult.”
I flinch.
I hate that I do. I hate that a few blunt words from Shiloh are harder to deal with than gunfire or Nash’s orders or Deacon’s quiet truths. Maybe because Shiloh usually gives me softness wrapped in mischief. When he stops wrapping it, I feel the edges.
“I’m not trying to be difficult.”
“I know.”
The quick answer takes some of the heat out of me. His face softens, though the frustration stays. He sets the bucket down and wipes his hands on his ruined pants.
“That’s the part tearing me up,” he says. “If you were pitching a fit for the fun of it, I could handle that. This is you…hurting.”
The marsh hums around us. Frogs, insects, water shifting against the pilings. The sounds slide into the silence Ever left behind.
My throat closes. I look toward the darkness where he went, then back to Shiloh.
“I can’t just sit here.”
He glances at Nash, who remains conspicuously silent. “I know that, too.”
“I can’t just hide while Cal is lying in that bed. While Delia is with her.”
“I know.”
“You keep saying that.”
“Because I do. We all do.”
His patience almost breaks me. Maybe it should annoy me. It does that too, because grief has turned every feeling into a fist.
“I just got her back, Shiloh.” My voice thins on the words. “I don’t even have her. She hates me half the time and barely tolerates me the other half, and I still just got her back. I can’t let Isabel take her from me again.”
His expression cracks.
“What if she—”
His arms go around me before I finish.
No hesitation. No negotiation. One second I am standing in the wash of range lights with broken china at my feet, and the next I am against his chest, his arms locked around my shoulders and his hand at the back of my head.
“I know, Yank,” he says into my hair. “I know.”
The nickname gets under my ribs.
I grip his shirt. My fingers curl into fabric that smells like sweat, smoke, and Shiloh.
The scent should make no sense out here in the marsh after blood and gunfire and hospital lights.
It still does. It tells some damaged part of me that I am held.
That I can stop bracing for the length of one breath.
“You’ve gotta trust us,” he murmurs.
“I do.”
He gives a quiet sound against my temple.
“I do,” I insist, though the words feel tangled. “I trust you. I trust Ever. I trust Nash most of the time when he’s not being insufferable.”
“Generous.”
“I even trust Deacon in whatever weird way that’s turned into.”
“I guess growth looks different on everyone.”
I almost laugh. It comes out wet and pathetic. Shiloh tightens his arms, then eases back enough to look at me.
The question slips out before I can stop it. “Is Ever mad at me?”
Shiloh’s face changes.
I wish I could pull the words back. They sound young. Smaller than I want to be. It should be obvious. Ever is not leaving me. Ever is not abandoning me. He walked away because if he stayed, we’d fight. And neither of us would win.
I know that. Some old, ugly part of me does not.
People leave. People get dragged away. People bleed out.
Shiloh reads too much of that on my face.
“Oh, no, you don’t” he says, the words immediate and sure. “He is scared to death of losing you while he tries to protect you.”
My chest hurts. “Oh.”
Such a small word for the way it sits in my throat.
A bird calls from somewhere over the water. The range lights hum. Nash is quiet behind us, giving me the mercy of pretending he cannot hear every raw thing being said ten feet away. I’m sure he can. Nash hears everything that might matter later.
Shiloh brushes a loose strand of hair off my cheek with his knuckle. “Go talk to him.”
I look toward the shadows again. “He walked away.”
“Because he loves you enough to avoid saying anything that might make this worse.”
“That’s annoying.”
“Yes. He’s very mature. It’s an annoying habit.”
My mouth twitches.
Then Shiloh leans in and sniffs. Actually sniffs.
I pull back. “Did you just smell me?”
His nose wrinkles. “Regrettably.”
“That was rude.”
“But accurate.” He steps back and gives me a careful once-over. “Maybe take a shower first. You smell like hospital mixed with swamp.”
I stare at him.
He lifts both hands. “Don’t shoot the messenger. I’d still fuck you.”
Nash makes a faint sound from behind us. It might be the ghost of amusement. I choose to ignore that because acknowledging it feels like letting him win something.
“You’re awful,” I tell Shiloh.
“I have been called worse by ugly women.”
I start to walk away, then stop. “Wait. Was that an insult?”
Nash snorts.
Shaking my head, I turn toward the cabin.
Inside, warmth and light wait behind locked doors and reinforced glass. Homer sits on the kitchen island, one paw in a pile of something that used to be neatly arranged beside a ceramic canister. He freezes when I walk in, eyes wide, as if we have caught each other in separate crimes.
“Do I want to know?” I ask.
Homer blinks. A torn packet of tea slides off the counter and hits the floor.
“Fine. Keep your secrets.”
He trots away with his tail high, heading down the hall like he owns the place and we are all just guests with poor manners.
I follow him.
The bedroom they’ve given me sits at the end of the hall, smaller than my room at Blackwood House and nowhere near as old. No carved wood. No heavy drapes. No antique mirror that looks like it might contain a ghost.
This room is clean, contemporary, and softer than I expect.
Concrete floors warmed by a bright rug and a quilt spread across the bed.
Deep blue, gold, green—little bursts of color against white sheets.
A low dresser. A reading chair angled toward the windows.
A lamp with a linen shade that gives off a warm pool of light.
My bag sits at the foot of the bed. My phone charges on the nightstand.
The rubber bands on my wrist press into my skin, and I swallow against the sudden tightness in my throat. Care is everywhere in this house, disguised as logistics.
Homer followed me in and has already claimed the center of the bed. He circles twice, steps on the quilt like he is testing for traps, then collapses into a dramatic orange crescent. His harness is gone. Someone removed it, a small mercy.
The bathroom door stands open. I step inside and stop.
It is ridiculous.
It’s the kind of bathroom that pretends simplicity while quietly costing more than the earth.
The shower is encased in glass with black metal framing, and a deep soaker tub rests beneath a narrow window.
The counters are smooth stone, their shelves stacked with thick white towels.
My toiletries are lined neatly beside the sink, along with things I did not pack but use anyway.
Toothpaste. Face wash. Hairbrush. A clean razor still in the package. My shampoo.
My shampoo.
Someone went to Blackwood House, collected my things, picked up my cat, packed my clothes, and arranged my life in this room while I sat in a hospital waiting area with Cal’s blood beneath my nails.
My fingers curl around the edge of the sink.
I want to be angry about it.
I am angry about it.
I am also grateful, and that feels like losing an argument I never wanted to have in the first place.
Beyond the bedroom, the wall of windows looks out over the marsh. Retractable blinds are stacked high, leaving the glass bare. Dark green water glints between tall reeds. A clear patch stretches between the cabin to just before the tree line.
Ever stands in that patch with an axe in his hands.
He’s shed the shirt. Sweat clings to his back, individual trails of droplets, visible even from a distance, pushing their way down the corded path of muscle and sinew. Shoulders. Arms. The knotted ridge of his spine…all of it catches my eye and refuses to let go.
The hard flex of tendon and muscle as he lifts the axe and brings it down into a log with clean, brutal force makes my mouth go dry.
Wood splits.
He sets another piece on the stump.
Swings again.
No wasted motion. No dramatic display. Only that damn control of his driven into labor, over and over, like if he chops enough wood, the image of me under a gun might finally leave his head.
It won’t. I know that because the image of Cal bleeding will never leave mine.
The axe comes down again.
Sweat slides along the side of his throat. His hair is damp, dark against his forehead. His jaw is set in a line so hard it makes my chest ache.
I stand at the window and watch him longer than I mean to. The anger inside me shifts. It doesn’t vanish, but it finds another shape.
Ever is beautiful in a way that has always felt tied to function. Built for standing between danger and the people behind him. Built for locked doors, long nights, quiet endurance. He doesn’t shine like Shiloh. He doesn’t command like Nash. He doesn’t haunt the air like Deacon.
He holds. Even when holding costs him.
The axe pauses halfway up. His head turns, and our gazes lock through the glass.
The air changes so fast I feel it in the goosebumps that break out along my skin.
He stands there with the axe in one hand, chest rising and falling, eyes fixed on me. The distance between the clearing and the bedroom window ought to make the look he gives me weaker. It doesn’t. It still hits like a physical touch.
I remember a meme Sonny sent me once. When a woman needed to apologize to her man, the most efficient means of doing so was to pull her hair back into a ponytail and…get to work.
At the time, I laughed so hard I nearly choked on my coffee.
Now I stand in a borrowed sweatshirt that smells like hospital and swamp, grief lodged under my ribs and a man outside who thinks walking away means leaving less damage behind.
Maybe I owe him words, but I’ve always been shit at words.
Eyes on Ever, I lift my hands to my hair. Ever goes very still.
There is no hair tie on my wrist. Only rubber bands. I find one that won’t rip too much of my hair out if I’m careful, gather my hair slowly, and twist it up. The movement lifts the sweatshirt, exposing a strip of skin at my stomach.
His gaze drops, and heat flashes through me, low and sharp.
I pull the sweatshirt over my head.
Slowly.
The gray fabric slides up my ribs, over my breasts, catches for one second at my elbows before I free myself and let it fall to the floor.
I am wearing the bra Sonny helped me into hours ago, delicate and ridiculous under everything that happened after.
Its lace is torn near one strap. There is a faint smear of old blood along the side where the sweatshirt rubbed against skin.
Ever’s hand tightens around the axe handle.
I kick off the too-big sneakers.
One. Then the other.
My borrowed sweatpants go next, pushed down over my hips and left in a soft heap around my feet. I step out of them and stand in the bedroom light wearing torn lace, bruises, and a look I know he can read from the clearing.
Come here.
His chest rises once. Then he sets the axe down.
Carefully.
That carefulness does obscene things to my pulse. He starts toward the house.
I turn before he reaches the porch.
The bathroom light glows warm over black tile and white towels. I walk into it without looking back, leaving my clothes on the bedroom floor and the blinds wide open behind me.