Chapter 13 Reva
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
REVA
I tell myself I can handle anything, and then the past crawls out of the dark and proves me wrong.
It always comes slick and silent, clinging with sharp, silken claws. I’ve lived with it long enough that I know its shape now. It doesn’t bite the way it used to.
That would almost be worse.
Pain you expect becomes a companion. It’s not comfortable. Never welcome. But it’s familiar enough that you stop flinching before it strikes.
This, though…Ever and Shiloh have knocked me so off-balance I don’t know what I’m doing anymore. I don’t even feel like myself.
I keep my head down through the rest of closing, say as little as possible, and let the noise of Noir wash over me without sticking. By the time we get back to the house, the weight of the night is pressing behind my eyes.
The house itself feels wrong in a way that still tugs at me.
It’s too southern-grand. Too old. There are too many rooms and shadows and polished surfaces holding onto secrets. White columns. Broad porches. Long hallways that creak in places as if they’re warning you. It isn’t a home so much as an inheritance with teeth.
This was me, a long time ago, but it’s a me I don’t even remember, and it’s a me I don’t want to remember. I buried that little girl when we buried my parents and my twin sister, and the only resurrection I’m looking for now is the ghost of their killer.
Him I’ll happily look in the eye—right before I lay him to rest again, this time for good.
The guest room they put me in is bigger than the apartment I had with Cal growing up, after he took me to Chicago.
That thought alone is enough to sour my stomach.
I told Sonny I was from Virginia, but I was born here, right outside New Orleans. I’ve caught myself several times slipping almost unconsciously into the unique rhythms of my childhood accent.
As long as it’s been since I’ve been here, it still feels like home.
I shut the bedroom door behind me and slide the lock, even though I know it’s more decorative than defensive. The old brass latch clicks into place with more ceremony than function. A hard jiggle would send it loose again.
It’s a courtesy lock. A pretend boundary. It won’t stop anyone in this house if they decide they want in. But it gives me one thing I can still claim.
Choice.
“Damnitall to hell.”
The words come out in one thin breath as I lean back against the door. Emotional overload is a real thing.
I drag my fingers through my ponytail, trying to loosen the knots the humidity and bar heat turned into a snarl. The elastic catches. I yank it free anyway, hissing when it takes hair with it.
I’m shaky all over. My shirt clings to my skin from the shift, from the kitchen heat, from the not-kiss with Ever that absolutely counted as a kiss no matter how I try to frame it.
“Such a fucking idiot,” I mutter, toeing off my shoes. “You kissed the boss on the clock.”
I stop.
“No.” I scrub both hands down my face. “No. He kissed me.”
The correction feels better for all of half a second. Then I remember Shiloh, standing in the shadows, watching. It was like he liked seeing us kiss.
Confusion knots my belly, and I start pacing the length of the room—bed to dresser, dresser to windows. The old wood floors are cool under my feet. My body is too hot. My thoughts are hotter.
I hate the restless energy.
I hate that it feels too much like wanting.
Giving in to motion is the only thing that keeps me from splintering when I get like this. If I move, I don’t have to think. If I keep my mind on the next turn, the next step, maybe I don’t have to sit with what it meant for Ever to kiss me like that. Like a threat and a promise.
What it meant that Shiloh let it happen right in front of him.
“I’m just using them,” I whisper, stopping to brace my hands on the dresser and stare at my own reflection in the mirror. “That’s all this is.”
The woman in the glass looks wild-eyed and unconvinced.
“I’m here for information. I can leave whenever I want.”
That feels and sounds even worse. Because I’m not sure it’s true anymore.
I strip out of my clothes and leave them in a neat pile on the upholstered bench at the foot of the bed—some ridiculous antique thing with claw feet and faded floral fabric that probably cost more than I made in a month as an EMT back home.
Everything in this room feels inherited. Curated. Chosen by someone who never had to choose between groceries and gas.
Wrapping a towel around me, I peek into the hall, find it empty, and tiptoe across to the bathroom. I shower fast, letting the hot water pound against my shoulders while I try not to replay the night in pieces.
Ever’s mouth. Shiloh’s eyes.
The memory of a faceless man in a dark bathroom in a different town, with a different version of me.
I cut the water before I can spiral and go through the motions after—teeth, face, hair twisted up and pinned, sleep shirt dragged over still-damp skin.
A cloud of steam trails behind me when I leave the bathroom, more than likely the reason I fail to notice Ever before I crash into him. His hands grab my biceps in an automatic gesture as I careen into his chest, and a little squeak escapes me.
I can’t look at him. My gaze fixes on his cotton-covered chest, and all I’m aware of is the space between us.
Or the lack thereof.
“I-I’m sorry—”
His fingers flex in my flesh, tightening almost painfully before he slowly, with painstaking deliberation, sets me away from him.
He stares at a point over my head, a muscle in his jaw clenching, then walks around me. I stand there for another moment, then move into my room, feeling strangely rejected.
The storm has been building for an hour. I noticed it on the drive back in, the way the sky kept lighting up behind the trees, all silent flashes and brewing menace. Now thunder rolls heavy across the property, close enough to rattle the window glass in its frame.
I cross to the nightstand and touch the lamp. Not because it needs adjusting, but because I always do, just before I turn it on.
The lamp is old—real old, not department-store fake vintage.
Heavy porcelain base, cream once upon a time but crazed now with hairline cracks.
The shade is silk and hand-stitched and faintly yellowed at the seams. One side sits a little lower than the other, just enough to notice if you’re paying attention.
I turn it on and watch as the warm pool of amber spreads over the bedside table and the carved headboard.
There. The knot in my chest eases by a fraction. I leave this lamp on when I sleep.
Always.
No one here knows that. No one asked, and I’m not about to volunteer that I need a light at night because the dark still reaches inside me and finds the child locked in a closet with her hands over her ears while gunshots pop through the house like kernels in hot oil.
Pitch-black is a sinkhole memory I haven’t quite figured out how to swim my way through, other than by leaving a light on.
My fingers rest on the cool porcelain base for one extra beat. A stupid ritual. A silent count. Then I pull back the covers and slide into bed.
The mattress is too soft for me, the linens too expensive, the whole room too quiet in that eerie way big houses get at night—like they’re listening.
I fold my arms beneath my head and stare at the ceiling while thunder walks across the sky.
The irony doesn’t escape me. I came here to hunt a killer and somehow ended up in a bedroom fit for a debutante, trying to convince myself I can still tell the difference between strategy and weakness.
Rain starts in earnest, drumming the roof and pelting the windows. It’s a hard Southern storm, the kind that comes in mean and fast.
I count breaths. Count the beats between thunder. Count reasons to keep my head clear. At some point, exhaustion drags me under anyway.
The thing about sleep is that it never asks permission.
The first crack of thunder is close enough to feel in my teeth. The second comes with a bright white flash behind my eyelids. Then everything goes dark. The light doesn’t just dim—it disappears entirely.
Gone.
The lamp cuts out so fast the room vanishes whole, as if the house opened its mouth and swallowed me. My eyes snap open into pitch.
No more amber glow. The softened edges of the room are non-existent, void of any dresser or bedpost or curtains.
Just…nothing.
And just like that, I’m not here anymore.
I’m small.
I’m shaking.
I’m folded in on myself in a closet that smells like cedar and dust and Daddy’s shoes.
I can’t see my hands. I can only hear my own breaths—too loud, be quiet!—and the lady talking on the other end of the phone.
And the pops.
Pop.
Pop-pop.
My mother screaming. Something—a body?—hitting the floor.
Good men don’t do this. Good men don’t—
I come up choking, tangled in the blanket and the hem of my sleep shirt twisted high around my armpits and throat. For one animal second, I think someone’s got hands on me.
“Nooo—!”
I claw fabric away and bolt upright, lungs burning.
Dark. Total dark. Thunder rattles the windows hard enough to make the glass sing. My heart slams so fast it hurts.
No light no light no light—
I fumble for the nightstand, fingers slapping wood where the lamp should be. The dead bulb stares back at me in silence.
The power is out. That thought—rational, logical—should help.
It doesn’t.
My skin goes slick with sweat. I can taste panic in the back of my throat, copper and acid and old fear. My fingers find the three rubber bands on my wrist and yank one.
Snap.
Again.
Snap. Snap.
The sting gives me something real to anchor to. Present pain. Present room. Present body.
I keep going, faster, harder, pacing before I even realize I’ve stood up. Bare feet on cool floorboards. The room flashing white every few seconds with lightning, then plunging black again before my eyes can adjust.
It’s the worst kind of rhythm. Just enough light to remember where I am. Just enough dark to walk the line of losing it.