8. Reva
CHAPTER EIGHT
REVA
Oh, I do not like that.
The softness under it. The relief. The way he says it like my temper is preferable to last night’s panic. Like he has a right to be glad I’m still in here somewhere.
My chin lifts.
“You don’t get to there she is me.”
“I can wait,” Deacon says.
“Awesome. Practice somewhere else.”
“For a time.”
The room seems to hold its breath. Deacon leans in slightly.
Not enough to touch. Enough that his voice drops for me alone.
“You can be mad, little ghost. You can hate me. You can run out that door and drink fruity things with Sonny until you forget your own name for an hour. But you can’t ignore me forever. ”
The nickname hits wrong. Not bad. Wrong. It slips into some lock inside me I did not know existed, and for one stupid second, I want to ask why it sounds familiar in his mouth.
Instead, I tilt my head and lean forward, until my lips are a breath away from his. “Watch me.”
His gaze drops to my mouth. Only for half a second. My body, traitorous little disaster that it is, notices. So does he. His eyes lift again, sharper now. “Reva.”
“No.” My voice comes out steadier than I feel. “You had fifteen years to decide what to tell me. I get thirty minutes to choose brunch.”
His expression changes. There. A hit. Good. I duck under his arm before he can recover and slip past him. Nobody stops me. Probably because Nash enjoys being right too much.
I open the front door and step into the wet heat of morning, where Sonny is leaning against her car in massive sunglasses and a red sundress, holding an iced coffee like a weapon. She lowers the glasses enough to look me over.
“Oh, honey,” she says. “You look like you got murdered and laid.”
“Only one of those was on purpose.”
Her eyebrows shoot up. Behind me, Shiloh makes a strangled sound. I keep walking.
Sonny’s gaze flicks past me to the doorway, then back. “Do I need to drive fast?”
“Yes.”
We get in the car. The second my door shuts, I breathe for what feels like the first time all morning. Sonny pulls away from the curb with a cheerful disregard for whatever unspoken masculine drama is probably happening behind us.
“So,” she says.
“Nope. Not talking about it.”
“I didn’t ask anything.”
“You were about to.”
“I was going to say you look nice.”
“Liar.”
“Okayyyy. You look hot in a recently rode hard and put away wet kinda way?”
“Better.”
She grins. “Also, there are three men watching us from the porch and one of them looks like he wants to bite through a brick.”
“Which one?”
“The murdery one.”
“That does not narrow it down.”
“The murdery one with cheekbones?”
“They all have cheekbones.”
“The one who looks like he smokes at funerals.”
“Deacon.” I sink lower in the seat. “Drive faster.”
“I am already going ten over the limit, honey.”
"You can do better than that."
New Orleans slides around us, bright and damp after last night’s rain.
The city does not care that my sister is alive.
It has breakfast to serve and tourists to confuse.
Balconies drip with ferns. Delivery trucks block streets with the confidence of kings.
A man in a white apron smokes outside a kitchen door while a woman in heels walks past carrying a wilted bouquet at her hip, looking like she either had a great night or might need a lawyer.
I watch it all through Sonny’s windshield and let the city be louder than my thoughts. For twelve whole minutes, it works.
Then Sonny says, “Do you want to talk about it yet?”
“No.”
“Excellent. Do you want to talk around it?”
I consider that. “Maybe.”
“Good. Around is my specialty. Directly through is for therapists and men who think a text three days later counts as accountability.”
That gets an actual laugh out of me. She drives us to a café with outdoor tables tucked under a striped awning. Shiloh’s black SUV appears half a block back like a very expensive tumor. Sonny clocks it immediately.
“Decorative shadow?” she asks.
“Something like that.”
“At least they're hot. I hate ugly surveillance.”
We take a table outside because Sonny says sunlight is spiritually necessary after a dramatic night.
She orders two iced coffees, a basket of beignets, shrimp and grits for herself, and a croissant sandwich for me because apparently I look like I need carbs and butter.
She isn’t wrong. The first bite makes me realize I am starving.
The second makes me furious that bodies require maintenance during breakdowns.
“So rude,” I mutter around the food.
Sonny looks up. “What is?”
“Female metabolism.”
“Agreed. Very patriarchal.”
I almost choke. She smiles sweetly and pushes the beignets closer. I eat one because powdered sugar is cheaper than therapy and more available.
For a while, she talks about nothing. A bartender she hates.
A woman at Noir who keeps trying to start a feud over parking.
A tourist who asked if the Mississippi River was “the same one from history.” Her cousin’s new boyfriend, who apparently wears loafers without socks and therefore cannot be trusted.
I listen. I even laugh, and forget for a few minutes to snap the rubber bands on my wrist. Not because anything is fixed.
Nothing is fixed. My life is currently a haunted Jenga tower, and someone keeps removing pieces with a chainsaw.
But Sonny’s voice is easy to follow. Point A to point B to some wildly offensive conclusion about sockless men.
It gives my brain a path that does not lead directly back to Delia.
After lunch, we wander. Shiloh follows at a distance.
Ever is not visible, which probably means he's here, and I simply haven’t caught him yet.
Sonny takes me into a bookstore that smells like paper and dust and old air-conditioning.
It is narrow and crowded, with shelves stacked too high and handwritten recommendation cards tucked beneath paperbacks.
I touch spines as we pass. Dark romance. Romantic suspense. Fantasy romance. A whole display with discreet covers that are not discreet to anyone who knows what a dagger and a rose usually mean. Sonny stops in front of one shelf and gasps.
“Oh my God. They have it.”
“Have what?”
She pulls out a paperback with the reverence of someone unsheathing a holy relic. The cover has a dark castle, a woman in a red dress, and four men looming behind her in various stages of jawline. “This series,” she says.
“I’m afraid already.”
“You should be. It is unhinged.”
“Good unhinged or file-a-police-report unhinged?”
“Yes to both.”
I take the book from her and read the back cover. There are kingdoms. Curses. Blood bonds. A heroine who apparently has to marry all four heirs to break an ancient pact. Standard Tuesday. Then Sonny leans closer and lowers her voice. “All the men have pierced dicks.”
I look up. She nods solemnly. “All of them?”
“All. Of. Them.”
“That seems statistically unlikely, especially during..." I look at the back cover again. "This particular mythical time in history.”
“That’s what I said. By book three, I started wondering if there was a group discount.”
I bark out a laugh. I have the worst, braying sort of laugh when I really get going.
The woman near the fantasy shelf looks over.
I turn away, shoulders shaking. Sonny pulls the next book from the shelf.
“This one has a scene where she discovers the second one, and she’s like, oh, that one's different, and I was like, girl, how many magical jewelry displays were you expecting?”
“Magical jewelry displays?”
“What else would you call it?”
“I don’t know, but thank you for ruining both magic and jewelry.”
“You’re welcome.”
I flip through the book, stopping at a random page because I am nosy and lack discipline. Sonny peers over my shoulder. “Careful. You’ll open right to a scene.”
“I have survived worse.”
“Famous last words.”
I scan three lines and immediately snap the book shut. Sonny shrieks. The shopkeeper looks over his glasses.
“Sorry,” I say. “Cliterature happened.”
Sonny bends over laughing. The sound is so normal and stupid that it loosens something in me.
For a minute, I am just twenty-two in a bookstore with a friend, cackling about fictional men with coordinated genital accessories.
No dead sister. No living sister. No assassin waiting at the house.
No old 'assignment' sitting in my chest like a loaded gun.
Just this. I needed this more than I knew.
Sonny buys the first two books “for educational purposes,” which is how women have justified every questionable purchase since the beginning of time. Then we end up in a bar because she says book shopping requires hydration, and I say that is not what hydration means, and she says language evolves.
The bar is small and dim even in the afternoon, with ceiling fans turning lazily above dark wood tables.
Shiloh and Ever take a table near the back like they are not completely obvious.
Ever has appeared from wherever emotionally constipated shadows go during bookstore time.
Shiloh pretends to study a menu he has definitely memorized.
Sonny clocks them, then grins at me over her margarita.
“Which one do we make uncomfortable first?”
“Ever is harder.”
“Challenge accepted.”
“No.”
“Yes.”
“Sonny.”
She leans back in her chair, tilting her head. “So. Penis piercings.”
I choke on my drink. She's so loud.
Shiloh’s menu lowers by one inch. Ever does not move, which means he is absolutely listening. Sonny taps the cover of the book on the table. “I’m just saying, after four men in one series, it starts to feel less like personal expression and more like an HOA requirement.”
I press my fingers to my temples. “Please stop.”
“No. I have questions. Is there paperwork? A meeting? Do they bring snacks and discuss who is going with which piercing?”
“Obviously they bring snacks.” I roll my eyes.
“Do you think they compare? You know, like after a tattoo? Redness, swelling, pain scale?”
I snicker. “No.”
“Yes, they absolutely compare.”
Shiloh makes a sound into his glass. Ever looks at him, expression aghast. Shiloh coughs. Badly. Sonny’s eyes sparkle behind her sunglasses, which she is still wearing indoors.
“Reva,” she says.
“No.”
“I haven’t asked a question yet.” She leans forward and pulls her sunglasses down a smidge. “Have you encountered any suspicious jewelry?”
"No—" My brain, because it is a traitor and a whore for inconvenient detail, immediately flashes to the man at the bar in Noir Night. The one in the bathroom. I feel him sliding into me all over again, that unexpected bite of sensation.
My face apparently tells the whole story, because Sonny’s mouth falls open.
“Oh my God, you dirty bitch.”
“No!”
“Oh my God, you totally have.” Her mouth is open.
“I absolutely have not.”
“You made a face.”
“I have a face. It moves.”
“That was not normal movement. That was a memory.”
“Drink your margarita.”
She points at me. “Who?”
“No one.”
“Was it one of them?” She cuts her eyes toward Shiloh and Ever. Shiloh’s menu is all the way on the table. Ever is openly watching.
“No,” I say quickly. Too quickly. Sonny grins like the devil in lip gloss. “Interesting.”
“It was not interesting.”
“So there was an it.”
“I hate you.”
“No, you don’t. You’re alive because of me. I brought you beignets and penis literature. I am basically a trauma specialist.”
Shiloh loses the battle and laughs out loud. Ever closes his eyes like he is praying for patience or death, one or the other. Sonny turns in her chair. “You two have thoughts?”
Ever says, “Nope.”
Shiloh says, “Many.”
Ever looks at him. Shiloh lifts his drink. “None I’m foolish enough to share.”
“Coward,” Sonny says.
“Survivor,” Shiloh corrects.
I bury my face in my hands. For the first time since last night, embarrassment feels almost clean. Sonny reaches across the table and squeezes my wrist. The gesture is quick. Barely there. Her voice changes when she says, “Good?”
I look at her. The laughter is still in her eyes, but something softer sits behind it.
She knows. Not everything. But enough to understand this is not just about books or drinks or whether some poor fictional prince has a royal piercing.
This is about me needing a place where I can breathe without everyone watching to see which truth breaks me next.
I nod. “Good,” I say. Her fingers squeeze once more before she lets go. Then she ruins the moment immediately by opening the book again and saying, “Okay, but listen to this sentence.”
“No.”
“Yes.”
“Sonny, I swear to God.”
She reads it anyway. I laugh so hard I almost spill my drink. Shiloh groans from the back table. Ever says something under his breath that might be, “I should have stayed home.”
The afternoon stretches around us, warm and ridiculous and borrowed.
I know it will end. I know I will have to go back to the house.
Back to Deacon. Back to the conversation waiting with teeth.
Back to the sister who is alive and the men who knew just enough to make everything worse.
But for now, Sonny reads terrible dirty dialogue in a dramatic whisper while Shiloh pretends not to listen and Ever fails to disappear into the wall.
For now, my stomach hurts from laughing instead of dread. For now, that is enough.