24. Nash
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
NASH
Breakfast ends with Reva walking out and every man at the table pretending he does not want to follow.
I let her go. I don’t want to.
The instinct is there, immediate and ugly. Stand. Catch her before she hits the hall. Put my hand at the back of her neck and keep her where I can see her. Demand she eat. Demand she breathe. Demand she stop using sharp little sentences to cut open wounds she can’t close.
I do none of that. She needs space. I just hate giving it to her.
Cal sits across from the empty chair she left behind, one hand curled around his coffee mug, staring at the pancakes on her plate. His face gives away very little. His knuckles, white and pinched, give away more.
Shiloh stays quiet, which means the situation is serious. Ever watches the doorway like he can track her heartbeat through plaster and wood.
I push back from the table after ten minutes. Cal glances up.
“I’ll find her,” I say.
He sets his mug down with a heavy sigh. “I know where she went.”
So do I. Reva is drawn to the garden.
She has been since the first time she walked out there, long before last night’s disaster with Delia.
I have watched her find that space over and over, even if she takes a circuitous route to get there.
When the house gets too loud, when the men in it get to be too many, when the past crowds her hard enough to show in her shoulders, she heads for the part of the property that can’t decide whether it wants to be cultivated or wild.
It suits her.
Cal goes one way; I go another. I’m not sure where he’s headed, or if he’ll find her before I do. I only know where I’m going as I take a meandering path toward the garden, still intent on giving her a little space before approaching her.
The garden beyond the pool is all old brick paths, hedges clipped into obedience, benches tucked under moss-draped oaks, and unruly green pressing at every clean edge.
Roses climb ironwork. Ferns and hostas crowd the bases of trees.
The marsh waits beyond the low wall, flat and quiet and patiently waiting its turn.
If you look hard enough, there’s probably a gator peering through the marsh grass somewhere. I’ve grown used to the feel of eyes on me.
I step through the side door and stop before the path bends.
Cal beat me to her.
I see them through the space between two hedges.
Reva sits on the stone bench near the fountain, knees drawn up, arms wrapped around them.
She has changed out of the shorts she wore at breakfast and into jeans, but she still has on the black shirt.
Her hair is loose around her face, and the fingers of one hand plucks those damned rubber bands around her other wrist with an endless rhythm.
Cal stands a few feet away with his hands in his pockets, giving her the careful distance of a man who has been asked not to come closer and is trying his best to listen.
I should leave, give them their privacy.
I stay.
“You don’t get to decide Delia’s dead because she hurt you,” Cal is saying.
Reva lifts her head. “Watch me.”
“She’s hurt and scared, Reva. Trying to drive you away.”
Reva huffs. “She’s doing a super-duper job.”
“She’s scared,” he repeats.
“Yeah, you said that already. You heard what she said, Cal.”
Cal’s jaw tightens. “I heard.”
“Then stop trying to explain her to me.”
He goes quiet for a moment.
Good. The man learns.
When he speaks again, his voice is softer. “I’m not explaining her. I’m asking you not to turn one fight into a grave.”
Reva laughs under her breath. “That’s poetic for you.”
“I’ve had a rough week.”
“You’ve been in New Orleans for twelve hours.”
“Twelve hours, one week.”
She looks toward the pool. The bruise on her cheek is faint this morning, half hidden by the angle of her face. Delia’s handprint could be gone by tomorrow.
The rest will take longer.
Cal shifts his weight. “Can I ask you something else without you biting my head off?”
“No promises.”
“What’s going on with them?”
Every muscle in my body stills.
Reva does not answer right away. Then—“Well, slot A fits into slot B, and sometimes slot C…”
His hand shoots up. “Reva, please.”
She drops her forehead to her knees for a second, then lifts it again. “I’m emotionally constipated, what do you expect?”
“Clearly.”
“They’re…” She stops, frustrated, and rubs both hands over her face. “I don’t know what they are.”
Cal waits. Smart man.
“I care about them,” she says finally. “All of them. In different ways, which sounds absurd, but it’s true.
Shiloh gets under my skin and makes it easier to breathe even when I want to strangle him.
Ever steadies me. He sees when I’m struggling, and he pulls me back without making me feel stupid for needing someone. ”
Her voice changes before she says my name. I feel it in my chest before I hear it.
“Nash scares me,” she says.
Cal’s head turns slightly.
Reva pulls at a blade of grass growing between the bricks. “Not in a bad way. Not because I think he’ll hurt me. I don’t. He scares me because he makes safety feel…like something I crave. He’s bossy and impossible and controlling and sometimes I want to hit him with my hairbrush. Fucking hard.”
Cal’s mouth twitches. Mine does too, against my will.
“That sounds healthy,” he says.
“Shut up.”
“And what about Deacon?”
Reva’s fingers tighten around the grass stem until it breaks. “He is a disaster, and sometimes I think I hate him.”
“That bad?”
“Worse.”
“But you care about him?”
She turns her face away. That is answer enough.
Cal exhales slowly. “And you chose this?”
Her head comes back around fast. “Yes. You should know me well enough that they wouldn’t get within spitting distance if I hadn’t.”
He nods. “I reckon that’s true enough. Okay, then. That’s all I needed to know.”
She stares at him. “You’re not going to tell me I’m making a mistake?”
“I mean, you probably are.”
“Cal.”
“I think you are standing in the middle of a burning house and calling it warm. But I also think you know that, and you don’t need me to tell you.”
Her mouth presses flat. Reva’s voice drops. “Do you think less of me?”
Cal looks wounded by the question. “No,” he says, immediately.
She looks down.
“Kid, look at me.”
For once, she does.
“There is nothing you could want or do that would make me love you less.”
Her face crumples for half a second before she saves it. I look away before I see too much. When I look back, Cal is walking toward the path. Toward me.
I consider stepping back—too late. He rounds the hedge and stops.
His eyes meet mine, and there’s no surprise in their depths. Damn him. He knew I was here.
“Eavesdropping?” he asks.
“Yes.”
“At least you’re honest.”
“When convenient.”
He looks past me toward the house, then back at my face. “Walk with me.”
“I’m not leaving her alone long.”
I glance toward the bench. Reva is still there, head bent, one hand brushing at her cheek like she is angry there might be tears on it.
Cal studies me for a moment, then he starts down the path with a nod. I fall in beside him because refusing would give him too much satisfaction.
We stop near the brick wall where the hedges open toward the pool. The house is behind us. Reva is still within sight if I turn my head.
Cal leans one shoulder against the wall. “I’m going to say something, and you’re going to hate it.”
“I already hate most things.”
“My intentions talk was awkward enough when I only thought I was having it with one man.”
I look at him.
He holds up a hand. “I know. She’s grown. She chooses. You all have apparently formed some kind of… coalition.”
I barely keep from smiling.
Cal’s eyes sharpen. “But I raised her.”
“Yes.”
“And I lied to her. I know that. She knows it. You know it. Everybody in this city probably knows it by now.” His voice roughens. “I still raised her.”
“I have not forgotten.”
“Then hear me.” He steps closer. “She has spent her whole life surviving other people’s decisions.
I don’t care how much money you have, how many men you command, how much power is attached to your name.
If you make loving you another thing that happens to her without her consent, I will put you in the ground. ”
I believe him.
“My intentions,” I say, “are for her to live long enough to decide whether she wants me.”
Cal’s eyes narrow.
“She will not be a prisoner here,” I continue. “She will not be a decoration. She will not be managed into silence. I will keep her alive, and I will give her something solid enough to push against while she figures out who she is with the truth in her hands.”
“That sounds rehearsed.”
“It isn’t.”
“What happens when she runs?”
“I follow.”
“When she breaks your rules?”
“Honestly, you don’t want to know.”
Cal’s mouth moves. A small sound comes from behind the hedge. I close my eyes.
Cal’s expression shifts into a smirk that makes me briefly understand why Reva threatens people. She steps into view, arms crossed, eyes blazing.
“How touching,” she says. “Two grown men in a garden discussing my agency like it’s a property line.”
Cal turns toward her. “Reva—”
“No.” She points at him. “You do not get to do the father-at-the-door-with-a-shotgun routine. I am a big girl. I have a job. I pay taxes. I have seen more naked strangers than a mortician. I do not need you asking anyone about intentions like my virginity is stored in a hope chest.”
Cal’s face goes through three emotions before landing on tired amusement.
“Noted,” he says.
“Don’t noted me.”
He holds up both hands. “I wouldn’t dare. Anymore.”
“You’re smirking.” She points at me.
“I am trying very hard not to.”
“You’re failing.”
Cal looks at me. “Good luck.”
“Coward,” she snaps.
“Yes,” he says, and walks away.
I watch him go, mostly to avoid laughing.
Reva turns on me.
“Do you have intentions for me?”
The question comes out like a challenge.
Her chin is up. Her cheeks are flushed. Her eyes are still wet from the conversation he had no business making her have and I had no business overhearing.