14. Deacon
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
DEACON
Blackwood House does not like me.
Old houses have opinions. Anyone who says otherwise has never spent enough time breaking into them. They settle differently when they want you gone. The boards remember the weight of men who belong and men who do not.
Tonight, every inch of Nash Blackwood’s ancestral mausoleum knows exactly which category I fall into.
I park beyond the main drive, under a live oak old enough to have watched several generations of good ole boy Blackwoods make poor moral choices and call them legacy.
The house rises through the dark, white columns silvered by moonlight, windows black and watchful. A fortress dressed as inheritance.
I do not knock.
Knocking would imply I am here as a guest.
I am not.
I slip through the side entrance the way I have done twice before, once with permission and once without. The alarm system acknowledges me with a low, obedient blink. Nash has not removed my access.
Interesting.
Either he trusts me less than he should, or more than I deserve.
Both are possible.
The hallway is quiet. Blackwood House has a different silence at night. During the day, there are footsteps, voices, doors opening and shutting, Shiloh’s laugh drifting from one room to another like smoke. At night, the place turns inward. It holds its breath around the people sleeping inside it.
Around her.
I should have waited.
That is the polite version of the truth.
The more accurate version is that I have been waiting for fifteen years, and I am finished with it.
I have let Nash stand between us. I have let Ever watch me like he is deciding where to put the knife. I have let Shiloh smile with his pretty mouth while measuring how far he would get before I broke his jaw.
I have let Reva look at me like I am a loaded gun left on the table.
Enough.
She came to New Orleans. She walked into Noir. She said my name like a sentence she had been carrying since childhood. She saw Delia. She went back to the Hart house. She remembered enough to make this dangerous and not enough to make it useful.
She is done orbiting the truth.
So am I.
The kitchen light is on.
Not the overhead. A smaller light under the cabinets throws a warm strip across the counters and leaves the rest of the room in shadow. I stop in the doorway before I step fully inside.
Reva sits at the island with a banana in one hand and a small dish of thumbtacks in the other.
I have seen strange things at three in the morning.
This is new.
She is wearing leggings and an oversized hoodie that is not hers.
Shiloh’s, judging by the way it hangs off her shoulders and the unfortunate amount of satisfaction the bastard probably takes in that.
Her hair is twisted into a loose knot that has surrendered in several places.
Her face is bare. Tired. Too pale in the soft kitchen light.
Her hands are steady.
That worries me more than shaking would.
She presses one thumbtack into the peeled banana. Then another. And another.
A careful line down the length of it, each tack placed with slow, deliberate precision. At the top, she adds two more, side by side.
I tilt my head. No one has ever accused me of being stupid. Reva Leigh Hart may be the first woman alive who can make me wonder whether I’m a little thick sometimes, though.
She studies her work.
A peeled banana covered in a single measured row of thumbtacks. With two at the top.
Christ.
I understand what I am looking at one second before she lifts the thing toward her mouth.
“Reva.”
She looks up. There is a moment—small, sharp, bright—where she realizes I am in the doorway.
Then she does it anyway.
She slides the banana into her mouth with such solemn, fuck-you intent that my entire body forgets how to function.
I choke on my own spit.
Reva’s eyes widen around the banana. Then she chokes too.
The fruit slips too far back, her body jerks, and the dish of thumbtacks clatters against the counter and to the floor as her hand flies to her throat.
Every ounce of amusement leaves me. I am across the kitchen before the dish stops spinning.
I catch her by the shoulder, turn her, and strike the center of her back with the heel of my hand. Controlled. Hard enough to move air, not hard enough to bruise anything useful.
Once.
Twice.
On the third hit, the banana launches out of her mouth, hits the tile, and skids beneath the island in a wet, obscene smear of fruit and metal.
Reva folds over the counter, coughing like she is trying to expel both lungs. I keep one hand between her shoulder blades, rubbing slow circles.
She tries to shrug me off, and I ignore it.
Her coughs turn ragged. Then wet. Then air moves properly, and she sucks in a breath deep enough to reassure the part of me that had already begun calculating how long it would take to put her over my shoulder and get to the nearest trauma bay.
“Welp. As icebreakers go,” I say, “that was ambitious.”
She coughs again, then glares at the counter. “I had it under control.”
“Reva…you nearly died deep-throating produce.”
Her head snaps toward me. Her eyes are watering, and her throat is red. Her dignity is in critical condition.
I’m struggling not to laugh. “If you wanted—”
“Do not even.”
“Look, I was not the one with a banana with strategically placed hardware—”
“It’s called psychological warfare.”
“Against whom? You didn’t even know I was going to be here.”
She points vaguely toward the floor where the banana disappeared. “The patriarchy.”
I stare at her, eyebrow arched.
She wipes her mouth with the sleeve of Shiloh’s hoodie, which will please him so much when he notices. “And possibly you.”
“Then congratulations. I am deeply unsettled.”
Something that resembles a smile flickers in her face. I shouldn’t want it as badly as I do. She clears her throat and immediately winces.
“You’re such an asshole,” she rasps.
“Guilty.”
“I could have died.”
“Possibly, but probably not at fault.”
Her eyes narrow. “Why are you here?”
“To speak with you.”
“Can’t, I’m busy.”
I glance toward the ruined banana under the island. “Clearly.”
She slides off the stool and starts for the doorway. “Great talk.”
I step into her path, and she stops short and looks up at me with every ounce of hatred she can gather while still sounding like she swallowed sandpaper.
“Move.”
“No.”
“Deacon.”
That is the first time she has said my name tonight. I keep my face still.
“I am not waiting anymore.”
Her mouth tightens. “That sounds like a you-problem.”
“It became an us-problem when you left Chicago.”
“There is no us.”
“There has been an us for fifteen years. Just not an…us-us.” He looks flustered, then shakes his head. “Never mind about that. You simply lacked the relevant information.”
The hit lands. I know because she goes very still. Then the fury comes, fast. Bright.
“You arrogant son of a bitch.”
“Yes.”
“You wrote me letters.”
“I did.”
“Years of them.”
“When I could.”
“Oh, well.” She laughs once, sharp and ugly. “That definitely makes the stalking pen-pal situation less creepy.”
“It was not stalking you, Reva. I was watching over you. Making sure you were okay.”
Her eyebrows lift, and she crosses her arms over her chest.
The sleeves of Shiloh’s hoodie swallow her hands. It makes her look younger than she is, which irritates me—not because it makes her look innocent. She does not. Reva can look like trouble in anything.
It irritates me because she came here with almost nothing of her own.
A duffel bag. A handful of clothes. The name of a man she wanted to kill.
Nash should have handled that by now. Shiloh would make it a production. Ever would buy five of the same T-shirt in different colors and call it sufficient. Nash would close a store and terrify the employees.
I would burn Chicago to the ground before sending her back there for anything she left behind.
“Stop staring at me like that,” she says.
“Like what?”
“Like you’re mentally adding more bars to my cage.”
“I have no interest in caging you.”
“Liar.”
I don’t answer because she’s not entirely wrong.
She shifts her weight. “Fine.”
I wait.
Her jaw works. Then she throws both hands up. “Fine. You want to talk? Let’s talk. But I want to know everything.”
“No.”
Her eyes flash. “Excuse me?”
“You do not want everything.”
“I promise you I do.”
“No. You want clean answers. Villains in the correct places. A story with a beginning, middle, and end. You want to know who to hate so the rest stops hurting.”
For one second, her expression opens. I see everything, all the hurt, all the anger, all the fear. Then she slams it shut.
“I want to know why my dead sister walked into Noir Night with rosary beads tattoed on her wrist and looked at me like I ruined her life by still having one.”
Ahh. That’s the real rub. It isn’t me. It’s not Cal. It may not even be her parents; I’m not sure.
It’s Delia, or more precisely, Delia’s reaction to her.
I say nothing, just tip my chin in response.
Reva steps closer. “I want to know who is trying to kill me. I want to know why. I want to know about ‘Ash.’ I want to know if that was you in the bar that night. I want to know why Cal knew you and never told me. I want to know why you let me come here if you already knew who I was.”
“I did not let you do anything.”
She smacks a palm on the countertop. “Do not split hairs with me right now, Deacon.”
“I am not. Let implies control. If I had control over you, Reva, you would still be in Chicago.”
Her mouth opens and closes. That one bothers her.
“I would have left you alone,” I say.
Her voice lowers. “No, you wouldn’t have.”
“Yes, I would have. I would have let you live out your happy little unbothered, snarky little life.”
“Then why did you bother with the letters?”
Is that…hurt…I hear?
“I just wanted to make sure you were happy, I guess.”
“And why did you feel the need to watch me? I’m sure you had Cal sending you reports? Or updates?”
I keep it brief. “To keep you alive.”
She steps closer, eyes shining now. “You keep saying that like it’s gonna make it less insane.”
“It does not make it less insane. Just…necessary.”
“Necessary for whom?”
The question finds bone because unfortunately, there’s only one answer. I could have walked away at any time. I didn’t.
I don’t answer fast enough.
Her laugh is small this time. Meaner because of it. “That’s what I thought.”
“You were safe in Chicago.”
“No, I was lied to in Chicago.”
“You were breathing, Reva. That’s all that mattered.”
“That’s not all that mattered. I was mourning.”
“You were alive.”
“I may as well have been dead inside! My family was gone! I was alone.”
The refrigerator hums behind us. Somewhere in the old house, wood settles with a faint groan. Beyond the kitchen windows, the dark presses itself against the glass.
Reva’s chest rises and falls too fast.
“You weren’t alone in Chicago,” I say.
Her expression shutters, and she holds up a palm. “Don’t.”
“You had Cal. Cal loves you.”
“I said don’t.”
I blow out a breath through my nostrils. “Reva, I’m not going to placate you and pussyfoot around like the others do. Did you ever feel unloved?”
“Excuse me?”
“Did you?” I ask again.
Her mouth opens. Nothing comes out. That is answer enough.
I step closer, careful now, because this is the kind of truth that cuts worse when it’s handled gently. “You were loved. You were protected. You were watched over by a man who would have burned Chicago to the ground before letting anything touch you.”
“He lied to me—”
“Yeah, well, sometimes we have to be cruel to be kind. You already know this. You just hate that Cal is the proof.”