Chapter 6
CHAPTER SIX
REVA
I wake up too early, too aware of my own skin.
The place between my legs throbs with the expected soreness from Shiloh—his girth, the way I’d taken him, the way I’d wanted him. But something else lingers too. Something deeper. An unsettled wrongness that doesn’t match the simple math of sex.
Like my body physically holds a secret my brain wasn’t invited to understand, let alone accept.
I stare at the ceiling for a long time, trying to recreate and reconstruct the night before, the way I’d write an EMS report for Captain Lange.
Writing an incident report involves a structured set of procedures for clarity. Timeline. Sequence. Cause and effect. You don’t let emotion run the call—you let the facts build the picture.
The bathroom is a black hole, though. It swallows the logic whole, leaving only sensation behind. And questions. So many fucking questions.
I can’t make the report take shape.
The space beside me on the motel mattress is empty. Cool. A depression in the pillow where his head isn’t. A shallow valley shaped like memory.
My jaw clenches.
I stretch until the yawn loosens the knots in my tongue, then I lie still again, because if I move too fast, I’ll think about it. And if I think about it, I’ll remember the part that matters.
I’ll remember asking Shiloh if we’d done something. If the darkness in the bathroom had been shared with a face I’d been getting to know instead of a stranger.
I’ll remember his answer—we kissed. That’s it.
At first, I didn’t believe him.
My mind reached for the easiest explanation—he had some kind of ulterior motive, whatever it might be. He wanted to keep the fantasy intact. He wanted to protect my pride. He wanted to keep me wanting him.
Then the second explanation slammed into me like a door kicked in. He was telling the truth.
And if he was telling the truth…then the guy who fucked me in the bathroom wasn’t him.
My stomach turns.
I curl onto my side, shrinking without meaning to. Tightening. Constricting. Folding in on myself until I’m nothing but angry introspection and too much skin.
Okay. So. It wasn’t him.
Which means I let a stranger put his hands on me in the dark, and I didn’t even know. Not until right now, when the truth I conveniently ignored last night comes barreling forward to demand legitimacy.
For a split second, I hate myself for the way my body enjoyed it—like it was some kind of twisted betrayal. I should’ve fought harder instead of swooning like the whole setup was a scene in some sexy dark romance novel.
I should’ve screamed. Kicked. Scratched.
It was my mind’s job to be smarter than my body, and it failed. They both failed.
I hate the stranger more than I hate myself, though, and I hate the truth most of all. The truth is clean. Clinical. It doesn’t care what I deserve.
A stranger controlled the room, the light, the lock.
Me.
And I let him. Worse than that…I lived…I breathed…every second of what he did to me.
My hand goes to my wrist. The three rubber bands are still there. I snap them hard enough to sting.
Snap.
Snap.
A final, violent snap—punishment. Reset.
I refuse to be a victim. Not again. Not when I know better. Not when I’ve come this far. Not when I didn’t learn anything the first time other than how to survive.
That’s why I’m here now. I have to make the past…my survivorship…mean something.
I need revenge.
The sting clears my head. It doesn’t erase the wrongness, but it gives it edges. Something I can hold.
When I open my eyes again, everything is clearer. I can see the room. See myself. And I see the slip of paper on the nightstand.
Shiloh’s phone number sits there like a dare.
You won’t call, but I’ll leave this anyway.
My mouth goes sour. I push up, locked in a staring contest with the paper and not sure which one of us is winning.
He’s right; I’m not going to call. I got everything I needed last night, and I don’t need him. I don’t need anybody.
My body disagrees immediately, traitorous and loud. My breasts tighten with the memory of his hands. The drag of his calluses against my flesh. The scrape of his tongue. The heat. The way his mouth found my throat. The way his cock filled me like it had always belonged there.
Anger burns brighter than the instant lust, scalding the inside of my skull alongside its sibling, shame. I squeeze my fists against the rioting emotions.
I decide what happens in my life, damnit. Not all of these…feelings.
I catch my reflection in the mirror over the dresser, wild-eyed and just this side of feral. “I decide,” I tell the woman in the mirror. “Not you.”
She scowls back, a familiar stranger. I turn away from her, setting my mouth in a determined line, and begin gathering up my clothes.
I decide.
* * *
I’m no calmer by the time I step into Murray’s shop to pick up Lucille.
The man himself points me toward a cramped office while he finishes up a phone call. The place smells like diesel and hot metal and old pride. Faded pictures of NASCAR racers peel away from tape and tacks, and a vinyl chair crackles with complaint when I sit.
Murray leaves the door open, and the low hum of hydraulics fades beneath the snarl of a pneumatic wrench. My knee bounces. I settle the surge of nerves with another snap of the rubber bands.
I’ve got to get to Noir. Get a new lead on Deacon, maybe finally hire someone who might be able to take care of him for me. Do something other than sit here and watch a drooping ceiling fan make halfhearted circles in air so thick it feels like it’s choking me.
It’s barely eight in the morning, and the atmosphere is hot, moist, crushing. How do people survive this in the summertime, if it’s like this in November?
“Didja hear bout the girl they found out on the highway…?” Murray’s voice cuts through the garage, rising then falling in volume.
I go still.
He isn’t just outside the office anymore. His voice carries from somewhere out in the bay.
A pause. Then another voice—gruffer, slower—answers. “I don’t know if I wanna know—”
Murray chuckles. “This one? Yeah. ’Nother body…dumped on the side of the road like trash. Ain’t safe to be out there anymore.”
My skin prickles.
“Ain’t old men like you got anythin’ to worry about.” The second voice spits. “You think he’s gonna come after you? You ain’t young or pretty. I think that one was Midnight, if you ask me.”
My blood goes cold in a way the heat can’t touch. If I’d been eavesdropping with half an ear before, I’m using both now.
“If you know what’s good for you, you’ll take his name out your mouth,” Murray warns. “Midnight doesn’t do shit like that. He ain’t…common like that.”
Someone spits. A sharp ping hits metal. The wrench screams again and chews up the next part of the conversation.
Murray’s voice rises over it. “—always sniffin’ around. Nothin’ new there. You’re jumpin’ at shadows, Bobby.”
My fingers curl around the rubber bands until my wrist aches. The anger that had nowhere to go in that motel room finally finds a target. My teeth grind down to sand by the time Murray returns and tosses my keys at me.
I catch them automatically and squeeze. The ridges bite my palm.
“You’re all good to go, darlin’. Bill’s already taken care of.” His smile stretches his cheeks.
My skin goes hot, then cold. “What do you mean, my bill’s been taken care of?”
He waves a hand. “Nothing to fret over. No strings or anything; just paid up.”
“But I—”
“Done’s done, miss. Now…” he smiles to take the sting out of the words, but it’s clear the conversation’s over. “Hope you don’t have too much further to go…she’s definitely on her last pins.”
I just barely manage to restrain myself from stomping my foot and huff a breath through my nostrils, then stand and roll my shoulders. “Only a little bit to go. I’m looking for a job in New Orleans.” The lie arrives on instinct. Smooth. Practiced. “Fresh start kind of thing.”
Something that doesn’t smell like revenge.
Murray hums. “You be careful, then. Pretty thing like you shouldn’t have too much trouble findin’ somethin’.”
I give him a nod, then walk out before either of us can say anything else. Paid my bill! It had to have been Shiloh.
And that’s just obnoxious, because it makes me feel like he’s saying thank you for services rendered.
Fuck that.
By the time I’m back on the road, I’m running on caffeine, spite, and the kind of hope that gets people killed.
The highway stretches out like a promise. Retribution. Retaliation. Control.
I shift in the seat and reach for my coffee again, bitter and bland, both at once. The air conditioner belches lukewarm air, the sun shining in through the open window hot and relentless. My skin stretches too tight over nerves already at a tipping point.
“Steady,” I tell myself out loud.
My wrist is banded in red lines from snapping rubber. I flex my fingers on the wheel until the ache settles.
When New Orleans traffic comes into view—barely an hour down the road—the world changes as though somebody flipped a switch.
The highway fattens and snarls, lanes braiding together with no warning.
Brake lights bloom red in the heat shimmer.
A beat-up sedan cuts in front of me, and a horn blares from somewhere I can’t see.
I roll my bottom lip between my teeth and ease off the gas, letting Lucille crawl with the flow, my knuckles whitening around the wheel.
This isn’t Chicago chaos. Chicago is sharp edges and rules you can predict if you’re paying attention.
This is…alive. In a different sort of way.
The air turns heavier the closer I get, wet with a storm that I just managed to miss. The city smells different—hot asphalt, river funk, fried something, and jasmine growing wild in the cracks.
I follow the signs into the Quarter, and if the interstate was a snarl, the French Quarter is a maze.