20. Reva #2
My jealousy has no clean shape. It is not romantic exactly, though Deacon’s mouth has ruined my ability to pretend he is still a suspect. It is not sisterly either, because I do not know this version of Delia well enough to claim her.
It is worse. It is the feeling of arriving late to my own life and finding everyone else already living it.
After dinner, I last three minutes in the drawing room before I need air. No one stops me when I step through the French doors onto the pool patio. That means they are either learning or figure they can watch me from a distance.
Possibly both.
Out of spite, I walk beyond the pool, into the garden separated from the pool by a low brick wall and iron gate.
The garden behind Blackwood House is too manicured to be wild and too old to be tame. Brick paths curve between hedges, roses, iron benches, and trees draped in moss. Dim lights line the foot paths, and beyond the low wall that borders it, the marsh spreads dark and flat beneath the evening sky.
I walk until the house noise dulls behind me.
Then I stop near a stone fountain that probably costs more than my ambulance salary and press both palms against the edge.
My sister is alive, but it still feels like a piece of me is missing.
My foster father is here.
Deacon is (still) a problem.
I stare into the water and try to find one feeling I can identify without needing a chart.
The French doors open and close somewhere behind me with a distant click, and footsteps sound. I don’t turn.
“If you’re here to tell me I’m being irrational, save your breath.”
A small, furious meow answers. I turn at that.
Deacon Cross stands on the path holding Homer. The kitten wears a tiny black harness with a thin leash clipped to it. He looks both regal and personally betrayed.
For three full seconds, my brain refuses to process the image.
Then I say, “What are you doing with my cat?”
Deacon looks down at the kitten. “Walking him.”
“That’s not a thing people do. Put him down.”
“It’s a thing I’m doing.”
Homer lets out another offended chirp and tries to chew the harness strap. I stare at Deacon.
Black shirt. Dark pants. Scar through his brow. Rosary ink at his wrist. Murderer vibes. Kitten on a leash.
My life has become deeply weird.
“Why do you have a kitten harness?”
“I bought it.”
“When?”
“Today.”
“Why?”
His eyes meet mine. “Nash told me you worry when he disappears.”
That answer punches the air out of me with embarrassing efficiency. I look away first.
“That’s manipulative.”
“No. Just practical.”
“You brought my cat outside to try to make me like you. It’s not going to work.”
“I brought your cat outside because he was scratching at the door, and Nash was threatening to make him into a hat.”
“Nash would never.”
“No. But the kitten believed him.”
Despite myself, I reach for Homer.
Deacon hands him over carefully, then gives me the leash. Homer immediately climbs my shirt like his life has been hard and unjust. I cradle him against my chest, and he buries his wet little nose beneath my chin.
“He’s not even mad at you,” I mutter, scratching the white cross on his forehead.
“He has taste.”
“He fell in the shower this morning.”
“That seems on brand for an orange cat.”
The corner of my mouth moves before I can stop it.
Deacon notices. I know because his expression shifts by almost nothing, and somehow that almost nothing is unbearable.
I look down at Homer. “You should go back inside.”
“The kitten?”
“You.”
“No.”
I sigh. “I’m not in the mood, Deacon.”
“For me?”
“For men who lie to me.”
“Don’t ask me anything I’ll have to lie about.”
I scratch Homer between the ears and keep my eyes on him. “Delia trusts you.”
“She has reason to.”
“She looks at you like she knows you.”
“She does.”
My fingers go still in Homer’s fur.
Deacon steps closer, then stops beside the fountain, leaving a careful amount of space between us. “Not the way you’re thinking.”
“You don’t know what I’m thinking.”
“I know exactly what you’re thinking.”
His mouth curves faintly. It is not a smile. It is worse because it suggests amusement without giving me enough to attack.
“You’re very smug for a man who should be nervous around me.”
“Who says I’m not nervous around you? I’m so nervous.”
I snort. His gaze drops to my mouth and lingers long enough to ruin the joke.
“Nerves don’t always look like fear,” he says.
Heat moves under my skin.
I shift Homer higher against my chest. “You and Delia seem close.”
“We are close.”
The answer is too clean. Too easy.
My chest tightens. “Great.”
His brow lifts. “See, there it is.”
“What?”
“Jealousy.”
I laugh because the alternative is admitting he struck bone. “Do not flatter yourself.”
“I wasn’t.”
“You absolutely were.”
“I said you were jealous. I didn’t say of what.”
I open my mouth. Nothing comes out.
Deacon steps around the fountain, slow enough that I have plenty of time to leave. I don’t leave, which will be something to yell at myself about later.
“I protect Delia,” he says. “That is the relationship.”
“Strictly protective.”
“Yes.”
“Like the same protective relationship you had with me?”
The jab lands.
I see it in the minute tightening near his eyes, the way his hand stills at his side.
Good.
I wanted it to.
Then I hate myself a little because hurting him does not feel as clean as it should.
“No,” he says.
I shift my grip on Homer. “No?”
“No.”
“That’s all?”
He looks toward the house, then back at me. “Delia was a child taken into a machine I understood too well. Protecting her meant…means…keeping her useful enough to survive and distant enough from me that no one could use my concern against her.”
“She was a child,” I say. “Useful to who?”
His jaw tightens. “The Syndicate.”
“And I guess…I was more useful…dead?”
He looks down. “You were not about being useful. You had to become a ghost.”
My breath catches.
“On paper,” he adds. “In the system. You had to be dead where it mattered. That made protecting you different.”
“Easier.”
His eyes sharpen. “No.”
“Cleaner, then.”
“No.”
“Safer for you.”