18. Reva
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
REVA
My sister is in the kitchen.
That is the whole shape of the morning.
Not the rain tapping against the windows or the marsh lying silver and gray beyond the glass.
Not the fact that Cal is still in the hospital, stable but unconscious, with Nash’s men and Shiloh watching over him in shifts.
Not the fact that Isabel is alive somewhere in New Orleans, probably smiling over coffee while calculating how to punish everyone who took something from her.
Delia is here.
At the table.
In my clothes.
Alive.
She has both hands wrapped around a coffee mug and turns it slowly against the wood, clockwise, then back, then clockwise again.
Her damp hair is tucked behind one ear, her wrists bandaged, the sleeves of my shirt pulled down over the edges like she can hide the evidence by covering half an inch of gauze.
She sits with her back to the wall and her eyes on the room, tracking every door, every window, every shift of shadow, but she is here.
She did not vanish in the night. She did not decide the cabin was another trap and demand to be taken back to Isabel.
She did not exactly fall into my arms, either, but we watched half a horror movie together after midnight with Homer purring in her lap like a traitor, and at some point she fell asleep sitting upright with one hand buried in his fur, her head lolling forward.
I’ll take it.
I will take the bad coffee, the silence, the space between us on the couch last night, the fact that she still looks at me like I might turn into another wound if she blinks too long.
I will take all of it because twenty-four hours ago, my sister was behind Isabel’s walls, and fifteen years before that, she was dead.
Now she’s at the table, frowning into a mug of coffee I made badly because apparently survival skills and basic kitchen competence do not overlap.
I stand at the counter with a mixing bowl tucked against my hip and stare down at batter that looks like spackle.
The box says muffins. The bowl says…structural repair.
I scrape a spoon through it anyway, because I need something to do with my hands and pacing seems to make Delia’s shoulders tense.
Cooking—or the pretense at it—is quieter than pacing.
Less likely to alarm all the heavily armed men in the house.
Less likely to end with me stealing a boat and trying to personally murder an old woman in pearls.
Probably. Maybe.
“Do you think these are supposed to bounce?” I ask.
Delia’s mug turns once more between her palms. “Before or after baking?”
“That’s a bad sign.”
“I assumed as much.”
“I followed the directions.”
“Did you?”
I look at the box.
There were directions. I remember seeing them. There were also hospital updates, a security briefing, and the growing suspicion that Delia was pretending not to watch me ruin breakfast. “Mostly.”
Her mouth moves by a fraction. It is not a smile, but it is close enough to make me stir with renewed purpose.
The batter fights back.
I add a splash of milk, then immediately regret it when the mixture turns from paste to swamp. I make a small, private sound of distress and keep stirring as if confidence might thicken it.
Delia watches the bowl. From beneath my eyelashes, I watch her watch the bowl.
This is what we have instead of a reunion. One of us bleeding through bandages. One of us making inedible muffins. Both of us pretending the table between us is normal furniture and not a bridge we don’t know how to cross.
Footsteps come down the hall.
I recognize them as Ever’s before he appears, heavier than Deacon’s, quieter than Nash’s when he wants to be. He steps into the kitchen in a black T-shirt and dark jeans, damp hair pushed back, eyes moving first to the windows, then Delia, then me. His gaze drops to the bowl in my hands.
He crosses the room without a word, bends to kiss me, and takes the bowl.
The kiss is warm and brief and steadier than my pulse. The theft is smooth enough that I do not process it until the bowl is already in the sink.
“Hey.”
He turns on the water. “Yeah, no.”
“You don’t know what I was making.”
“Regret.”
Delia’s eyebrow lifts.
Ever catches it and gives her a solemn wink before opening the refrigerator. He pulls out a package of bacon, a carton of eggs, and a container of strawberries that look much safer than anything I have touched this morning.
My face heats because Delia saw him kiss me. Because she saw me soften under it. Because there is no version of explaining my life that does not sound crowded and impossible, especially to a woman who has spent fifteen years under Isabel’s rules.
Ever does not seem bothered. He sets a pan on the stove, calm as anything, as if making breakfast for my rescued twin sister is an everyday part of his morning routine.
As if it could be.
Maybe that is why I love him. Runaway, rescue, or apocalypse, he can make it look effortless.
I slide into the chair across from Delia because Ever has removed my last excuse to hover. The table feels too wide and too narrow at the same time. I pick up my own mug, take a sip, and nearly choke.
Gah-damn. I set it down without a word, stand, pick up the whole pot, and pour it down the sink.
Delia watches me with grave attention. Then she makes the sign of the cross and pushes her mug one inch farther away.
The laugh bursts out of me before I can stop it.
It is small, rusty, and too loud in the quiet kitchen, but it is real. Delia looks down into her mug as if she had nothing to do with it. Ever’s mouth curves while he lays bacon in the pan.
“Wise,” he says.
“It tasted like punishment,” Delia says.
“It was brewed by a woman in crisis.”
“I could tell.”
“I am sitting right here.”
“Yes,” she says. “That was part of the crisis.”
The bacon begins to sizzle, and for a few seconds the sound fills the places where conversation might have been. I start another pot of coffee with exaggerated care, measuring like the future of the family depends on grounds and water. Maybe it does. Stranger things have happened this week.
“Shiloh is still at the hospital,” I say, because logistics are safer than feelings.
“Cal was stable at the last update. No change. Nash is going to rotate with him after breakfast, I think, unless Shiloh refuses to leave, which he might, because he has been refusing to leave Cal without one of you there up to this point.”
Ever flips a strip of bacon. “Nash is checking the exterior sensors first, and then he’s on his way. Deacon is asleep.”
“He sleeps?”
“When bleeding.”
Delia’s gaze moves to the hallway, concern etched into her features.
Ever cracks eggs into a bowl. “Delia, how do you like your eggs?”
She turns her mug again. “I’m vegan.”
The kitchen goes silent. Ever freezes with an egg in one hand and half a shell in the other.
I look at the bacon, then the eggs, then my sister’s now completely untroubled face. My brain tries to place veganism inside Isabel’s house and fails so thoroughly that nothing comes out of my mouth.
The front hall opens before anyone recovers. Shiloh walks in with damp hair, a hospital visitor badge still clipped crookedly to his jacket, and Deacon strides in behind him looking pale and irritated in the way men do when they have been ordered to rest and are ignoring the order.
Shiloh stops at the edge of the kitchen. “Why are we all staring at breakfast like it made a threat?”
Deacon’s eyes sweep the room. “What happened?”
Ever points the spatula at Delia. His expression is offended in a way I have never seen before. “That one is a damned vegan, and now I need meat substitute so she gets enough protein and shit.”
Homer chooses that exact moment to leap onto Delia’s lap.
He lands badly, all elbows and entitlement, and she sucks in a breath through her teeth as his weight bumps her knees. Before I can stand, her hand comes down over his back. Not grabbing. Not pushing him away. Just holding him in place, startled by his warmth.
Homer looks at Ever and meows. Accusingly.
I stare at Delia. “I don’t see how it’s possible that wretched woman allowed you to be vegan.”
Delia sighs.
“I’m just fucking with you.” She strokes Homer once, slow and careful. “I’d like my eggs poached, please.”
Ever’s face changes. “You want them poached?”
Delia looks up at him, perfectly composed. Then she giggles.
It is not much at first. A small break in her breathing, a sound she seems as startled by as the rest of us. Then it slips out again, clearer this time, young and high-pitched and entirely at odds with the bruises around her wrists.
Everyone stops.
Shiloh’s smile fades into something softer.
Deacon looks away as if the sound costs him to hear.
Ever stands at the stove with the spatula still raised, cheeks going red because Delia Hart has somehow defeated him with eggs.
Even Nash, appearing silently in the hall with his phone in hand, pauses before stepping into the room.
Then Shiloh laughs.
He cannot help it. It comes out low and delighted, and that is all it takes.
The pressure in the kitchen cracks. Ever mutters something about poached eggs being an unreasonable ambush.
I laugh harder because his ears are red now, and because Delia is still petting my awful cat with one bandaged hand, and because for one minute no one is bleeding fresh.
Delia’s giggle disappears quickly, tucked away the second she realizes the room has noticed, but the sound stays behind.
It changes the air.
Shiloh crosses to me first, presses a kiss to the top of my head, then drops a paper hospital bag on the table. “For the record, Cal is stable, the night nurse is terrified of me in a fond way, and the cafeteria coffee is a war crime. Also, I brought muffins made by professionals.”
I look toward the sink where my bowl is drowning in shame.
“You told him?” I ask Ever.
“I had concerns.”
“I was making breakfast.”
“You were making grout.”
Shiloh peeks into the sink. “That could tile a bathroom.”