7. Reva
CHAPTER SEVEN
REVA
Homer wakes me by landing on my face.
Not beside my face. Not near my face. Directly on it, with the full confidence of a creature who weighs roughly four pounds and believes gravity is for other people. One tiny paw smacks my left eyelid, the other gets tangled in my hair, and then he bites my eyebrow.
“Jesus Pete.”
I come awake swinging, which is unfortunate for both of us because I don’t actually want to punch the kitten, and he doesn’t actually want to die before breakfast. He launches backward with a startled mrrp, hits the pillow, and immediately attacks the corner of the blanket as if that was the plan all along.
I lie there with one hand over my eye, breathing hard.
The room comes together slowly. Shiloh’s bedroom.
Sunlight behind heavy curtains. Soft sheets twisted around my legs.
The faint smell of his cologne on the shirt I’m wearing...
and the tiny orange terrorist currently trying to murder expensive bedding.
My body remembers before my brain does. The bath. Shiloh’s hands. His mouth. The way I climbed into his lap because the rest of my life had gone up in flames and apparently my response to emotional devastation is to ride the nearest charming disaster with good cheekbones.
I close my eyes.
Mistake. Delia is there--not in the bed, not in the room, but in the dark behind my lids where every awful thing has organized itself, waiting. Delia standing in Noir Night, alive. Delia recoiling from my hand. Delia saying I shouldn’t have come.
My chest tightens. Nope. I open my eyes and stare at the ceiling. Homer pounces on my stomach, knocking the air out of me. I grab him around the middle and lift him up. His back legs keep pedaling, furious and useless.
“Sir. We need to talk about boundaries.”
He mews. It sounds suspiciously like a slur.
“Don’t take that tone with me. You attacked my eyelid. I don’t care if it was moving. Eyelids move. That’s not an invitation to commit a hate crime.”
He blinks at me with his sweet dumb face and his little white cross blazing on his orange forehead like he has been personally blessed by the patron saint of menaces. I set him down beside me. He immediately tries to climb onto my face again. I shove a pillow between us.
“Prison.”
He attacks the pillow. Good. We all need goals. For maybe thirty seconds, I let myself stay there, watching the kitten wrestle a pillow with the violent focus of a tiny drunk man outside a bar.
Then the house creaks somewhere below me. My body goes still, and I know. Deacon is here.
Part of me wants the coming confrontation.
That part is angry, awake, and wearing steel-toed boots.
It wants to march downstairs, plant myself in front of Deacon, and make him bleed answers.
It wants to ask him what happened to my sister.
Why that rosary tattoo survived in my memory when so much else turned to fog.
The bigger part of me wants to hide in Shiloh’s bed until civilization ends. Because now that the truth is finally close enough to put its hands on me, I’m not sure I can take it.
“You can’t handle the truth,” I mutter, my voice raspy from sleep. “Thank you, Jack Nicholson. Super helpful.”
Homer abandons the pillow and launches himself at my braid. I have to get out of this room. Not downstairs. God, no. Downstairs is where men gather with coffee and secrets and the emotional range of loaded firearms.
Not that I have any room to talk about emotional range. I am well aware that my own emotional range is...empty. Lacking.
But I need to get...out. Away. Somewhere with sun and noise and people who do not know my family tragedy came with its very own surprise ALIVE sister.
I reach for my phone on the nightstand. There are no messages from Cal, which is suspicious and also a blessing because if I see his name right now, I may throw up. Did he know? I don't think I want to know right now.
There is one from Shiloh from sometime early this morning. Still here if you wake up mean.
I stare at it for longer than I should. I wake up mean every day. Be specific.
Three dots appear almost immediately. Good. Wouldn't want last night to damage your brand.
I huff a laugh before I can stop myself. Then I set the phone facedown because if I keep texting Shiloh, I might accidentally feel something, and I am at capacity. My feelings are currently stacked in the hallway like boxes I refuse to open.
I pull up Sonny’s contact instead. Need rescue. Girls’ day? Food, drinks, books, bad choices, no murder if at all possible.
The response comes so fast I wonder if Sonny sleeps with her phone in her hand. On my way in thirty. Murder optional. Mascara mandatory.
Relief hits so hard it almost makes me cry, which is rude. I did plenty of crying last night. I should be dehydrated. At the very least, my tear ducts should have union rules. You’re my favorite person.
Naturally, she responds. That is settled, then.
I roll out of bed and immediately regret every decision I have made in the past twenty-four hours. My legs are unsteady. My body has that loose, used ache that makes my cheeks heat even though I am alone except for a kitten currently chewing the drawstring on Shiloh’s sweatpants from the floor.
“Do not judge me,” I tell him. Homer looks up with the string in his mouth. “You were there. You’re an accomplice.”
He resumes chewing. I shower quickly in Shiloh’s bathroom, trying not to look at the tub too long.
The floor is dry now. Someone must have cleaned up the water at some point.
The ruined dress is gone too. A clean pair of underwear is folded on the counter beside a stack of fresh towels and a note in Shiloh’s slanted handwriting.
Dress has been retired with honors.
I should not smile. I do anyway. In my room, I find my few pieces of clothes put away in the dresser like I am someone who lives here, which is a whole separate crisis I do not have time for.
I choose black jeans, a fitted tank, and a light button-down I can leave open.
I do my sparse amount of makeup with the focus of a woman going into battle or brunch, which are basically the same thing depending on who orders mimosas.
Mascara. Concealer. A little liner to make me look less like I spent the night being dragged behind a truck. A swipe of lip gloss.
I pull my hair into a high ponytail, then I take it down because it makes my face look too exposed. Then I put it up again because I am not hiding today. I settle for a messy twist.
A text from Sonny lights the screen. Outside. I wore sunglasses big enough for both of us. Come be dramatic.
I grab my bag. Homer tries to follow me out. “No. You are terrible at stealth. You landed on my face this morning. That’s not a field skill.”
He mews. He darts through the doorway anyway because apparently the kitten and I share a respect for rules, which is to say none. I scoop him up, kiss the top of his tiny head despite myself, and deposit him back on the bed. “Guard the fort.”
He immediately rolls onto his back and bites his own foot. Close enough.
I make it to the bedroom door and stop with my hand on the knob.
The house is quiet below. Too quiet. A trap kind of quiet.
I consider climbing out the window. It would be immature, dramatic, and probably unsafe.
Unfortunately, I am on the second floor, and while I do have many gifts, parkour is not one of them.
So I open the door. The hallway smells like coffee and beignets. Somewhere downstairs, a low male voice says something I can’t make out. Another answers. My stomach twists because I know that voice even before I reach the stairs. Deacon.
My hand tightens on the banister. For a second, the old fear opens beneath me. Not fear of him, exactly. Fear of what he knows. Fear of what he can say. Fear that he will look at me with those pale, steady eyes and rearrange the floor under my feet again.
I lift my chin. Then I start down. They are all in the main room.
Nash stands near the fireplace with a mug in his hand, looking like he has been awake for three days and would still win a knife fight against sunrise.
Ever leans against the far wall, arms folded, gaze moving to me the second my foot hits the lower step.
Shiloh sits on the arm of a chair, hair damp, shirt sleeves rolled, mouth curved like he knows exactly what I look like under my clothes and is trying very hard not to get murdered over it.
Black shirt. Black jeans. Boots. Tattoos peeking from under one sleeve, the rosary mark stark against his skin.
In the daylight, he is harder to turn into a nightmare.
Younger-looking than his age indicates, maybe, with dark hair pushed back from a face all sharp lines and bad decisions.
Cut jaw covered with beard. Full mouth hiding behind it.
The kind of bone structure that makes you angry on principle because nobody that dangerous should also be that hot.
His face is unreadable, but his eyes are not.
They find me and stay.
My body reacts like he touched me. I hate that.
I ignore him so pointedly it becomes a full athletic event. “Morning,” I say to the room at large.
Shiloh’s mouth twitches. Ever’s gaze drops briefly, probably checking whether I am armed. I am. Obviously. Nash looks at me over the rim of his mug. “Sleep?”
“Was there.”
“Eat?”
“Will do.”
“Talk?”
“Hard pass.”
Deacon steps away from the window. “Reva.”
Nope. Absolutely not. I walk past him toward the entry table, where someone has placed my sunglasses. How convenient. I pick them up.
“Sorry, gentlemen. Would love to stay and unpack generational trauma over coffee, but I have plans.”
Nash’s gaze shifts past me to the front window. Sonny’s car waits outside, bright and ridiculous and blessedly not full of bossy men who know too much. “With Sonny,” I add.
Deacon’s jaw tightens. “No.”
I pause. Slowly, I turn my head and look at him, head to toes.
It is the first time I let myself do it.
He looks worse in daylight. Physically, Deacon looks like someone built an assassin out of skin, smoke, and really bad decisions.
But the sun takes some of the myth off him.
Shows the shadows under his eyes. Tired. Human. Still extremely annoying.
“Did you just no me?”
“Yes.”
I blink. “Bold choice.”
“You and I need to talk.”
“Fake news, not happening.”
Deacon's eyes narrow. I turn back to Nash. “Are we doing hostage rules now, or can I leave?”
Nash looks at Deacon. Then at me. Then he shrugs, and there is something deeply satisfying about how much Deacon hates it. “I told him I wasn’t going to force you to talk to him.”
“Growth,” I say. “Love it so much.”
Nash’s mouth moves fractionally. “Shiloh will keep watch.”
My head snaps toward Shiloh. “Excuse me?”
Shiloh lifts both hands. “I am merely a decorative shadow.”
“You are not coming on girls’ day.”
“Wouldn’t dream of it.”
“But you just said--”
Ever pushes off the wall. “I’ll stay back.”
I heave a sigh. "You are all fucking ridiculous."
I start toward the door. Deacon moves. He is faster than he should be.
One second he is by the window; the next, he is in front of me, close enough that I catch the scent of smoke and soap and something darker beneath it.
My back hits the wall beside the entry arch before I have fully processed that he guided me there. Not slammed. Not hurt. But placed.
His arm comes up beside my head, palm flat to the wall, caging without touching. The room goes sharp. Nash’s mug hits the table with a quiet, dangerous sound. Shiloh stands. Ever moves one step.
Deacon does not look at them. He looks at me.
My pulse trips. Hard. Anger gets there fast enough to save me from whatever else tries to rise. “You have three seconds to stop being a cliché,” I say.
His mouth does not smile, but something flickers in his eyes.
Relief—like my anger is the thing he came looking for.
“There she is,” he says.