7. Ever
CHAPTER SEVEN
EVER
I walk away because I’d end up being cruel if I stayed.
Reva stands in the range lights with broken china at her feet and that word still hanging between us. No. Small word. Hard word. The kind that can save a life or end one, depending on who listens and who doesn’t.
Every part of me wants to turn back. Every part of me wants to put my body between her and the entire fucking world, even the parts of the world she keeps trying to run toward with her bare hands and her bleeding heart.
Cal is in a hospital bed. Delia is gone.
Isabel has already reached past every wall we built and put blood in the way.
Reva wants to move.
I understand that in my bones.
Standing still while someone you love is in danger feels like rot. It gets under the skin. It makes the body turn on itself, desperate to do anything except wait. I know that feeling. I have lived on it for years.
The difference is that Reva wants to run toward Delia.
I want to keep Reva breathing.
My need wins.
That sounds simple in my head. It is ugly in reality.
It means I’m going to piss her off. It means I’m going to stand in doorways she wants to walk through.
It means I’ll drag my own fear into the open and let her hate the shape of it, if that hatred is what keeps her from putting herself in Isabel’s hands.
I make it past the corner of the cabin before my control starts tearing at the seams.
The shed is built into the side of the property, half-hidden behind wax myrtle and cypress, its rough exterior matching the cabin’s lie.
I key in the code, open the door, and breathe in the smell of oil, cut wood, damp rope, and metal.
Tools line one wall in locked racks, and fuel cans are locked in a vented cabinet.
Stacked firewood sits along the back, most of it old, dry, barely touched.
Nash had the stove put in because the first winter after he bought this place, a storm knocked power out along half the coast for two days.
The generator handled most of it, but Nash does not like relying on one solution when five will do.
The wood stove in the main room has been used maybe three times.
There is enough wood stacked to heat the place for a month, if we even needed a fire. We don’t need a fire. I just need to vent some frustration.
I pull my shirt off and toss it to the floor, then take the axe from the wall.
The handle fits my palm with the relief of something honest. Weight. Balance. Impact. A task with a beginning and an end. A body can understand this. Lift. Swing. Split. Repeat until the noise in the head gives up.
I carry the axe to the chopping block behind the cabin and set the first log upright.
The cabin glows ahead, every window a rectangle of warm light against the still-pale light of the early-morning marsh.
Reva is inside by now with a hospital sweatshirt on her skin and Cal’s blood still in places soap will not reach quickly enough.
Nash will be making calls and forming strategy.
Shiloh is cleaning porcelain from the dirt because he’ll know well enough to avoid everyone right now.
I lift the axe.
Bring it down.
Wood cracks open.
The sound goes through my chest. Good. I want to break things. I want clean splits, sharp edges, damage I can stack and carry and put to use.
Another log. Another swing.
The muscles in my shoulders burn before my head starts to clear. Sweat gathers around my hairline, slides down my spine. I keep going. The axe rises and falls, steady enough to become a count.
The feed from the gala tries to come back. Reva on the terrace. The guard looming over her. The angle of the gun. The never-ending delay between seeing danger and reaching her.
I swing harder.
The log splits crooked, one half bouncing off the block and rolling into the grass.
I set another in place.
The axe comes down.
I saw her shoot a man tonight. I saw the first shot go wide, the second hit, the third finish what the second started. Her hands shook, and she still survived. That should settle something in me. It should help.
It doesn’t.
Because Reva surviving one moment does not make the next one safe. It means she has learned the cost of breathing in our world, and my first instinct is still to pull that cost out of her hands and take it into myself.
She would hate that. She should hate it. She’s not weak. She’s fucking strong enough for all of this, for anything. I know this.
I swing again.
Ten minutes pass. Maybe fifteen. Enough that my breathing changes. Enough that my anger is no longer clawing at the inside of my ribs. It has turned into something heavier. More useful. I line up split wood beside the block in a neat pile and reach for another log.
Movement catches my attention from the bedroom window, and I look up to see Reva standing behind the glass.
She is framed by warm light, one hand near her hair, the other resting at her side.
The distance between us should make the details soft.
It doesn’t, though. I see every bit of her.
The line of her throat. The set of her mouth.
The way she looks at me as if anger and apology and want have gotten tangled together and she’s decided words might not be the first thing she wants from me.
My hand tightens around the axe.
She lifts both arms and gathers her hair back.
The movement raises the sweatshirt, exposing a strip of bare skin. My body reacts hard and fast, stupid-simple in the middle of everything that is far from simple. She twists the hair up with one of those rubber bands Shiloh found for her, and something in my chest pulls tight.
Then she takes off the sweatshirt, slow enough for me to know she wants me watching. My mouth goes dry.
The gray fabric slides over her ribs, her breasts, the torn lace beneath. She lets it fall. Her gaze never leaves mine. The borrowed sweatpants follow, pushed down over her hips until she steps free of them. She stands there in lace and bruises and the kind of defiance that ruins men.
This is not a performance.
She’s not teasing because she wants to be chased. She is showing me the only truth either of us can reach without bloodshed. She’s alive. She is angry. She wants me. She chooses that in a room full of choices already taken from her.
I set the axe down. Carefully, because I still know what my hands are for.
Then I move.
The back door opens before I reach it. Shiloh stands in the kitchen, one hand on the frame, expression sharpening the second he sees my face.
“Ever—”
I pass him. Nash says my name from the living room. I keep walking.
Shiloh does not follow. Neither does Nash. They can be smart every now and then.
Reva’s bedroom door is open. The clothes she stripped off are still on the floor near the windows. Homer sleeps in the center of the quilt, unbothered by the humans in crisis, one orange paw over his face as if he has seen enough of us for one night.
Steam clouds the bathroom glass.
Reva stands under the shower spray with her hands braced against the tile, head bowed forward, water running over her shoulders and down her back.
The glass door hides nothing important. Her body is all pale skin, dark hair, bruises, shadows.
She looks up when I step inside the bathroom, and our eyes meet through the steam.
Neither of us speaks.
Words are waiting outside this room with the rest of the night. Cal. Delia. Isabel. Plans. Fear. All of it can wait for one goddamn minute.
I pull the belt through the loops of my pants and drop it. My boots come next. Socks. Pants. Every movement deliberate because if I move too fast, I will look as wrecked as I feel. Reva watches every move, her tongue darting out to taste her lower lip.
When I open the shower door, warmer air rolls over me. She straightens, water sliding down her throat. Her eyes are red-rimmed. Her mouth is soft and stubborn and still trembling faintly at the edges.
I step in and close the door behind me.
The shower is large enough for two people to avoid each other. Fuck that.
I crowd her back until her spine meets tile. My hands brace on either side of her head. Her chin lifts. She’s breathing fast now, and so am I.
“Want me to leave?” I ask.
Her hands come to my waist. Fingers digging in. “No.”
The word shoots heat straight through me. I lower my head and take her mouth.
She opens under me with a sound that hits every raw place I have left, and my control fractures in one clean line.
I kiss her hard, my body pinning hers, my hands sliding into wet hair and along the side of her throat.
She kisses like she is angry at needing anything.
Teeth. Tongue. Fingers biting into my skin.
Her knee hooks against my thigh, trying to drag me closer.
I give her weight, enough to make her shudder.
I pull back only far enough to see her face. “Words. How do you want it?”
Her eyes flash. “Hard.”
My jaw locks. “I don’t know if I can be gentle today.”
Her hands slide up my chest, nails scraping through water. “Good.”
That breaks the last vestige of my hesitation.
I kiss her again, then move down her body because I need my mouth on more of her. Throat. Collarbone. The curve of one breast. A bruise near her ribs that makes me slow for half a breath before she grips my hair and tugs me back to task.
So I go to my knees.
Water beats against my shoulders. Her hand flies to the tile for balance. I hook one of her legs over my shoulder and put my mouth between her thighs.
She cries out, sharp and broken, then clamps her other hand over her mouth.
I pull it away and press it to the wall.
“No hiding.”
“Someone will hear.”
“Let them.”
Her laugh turns into a ragged moan when I press her leg open further for me and spear my tongue in her pussy again.