Chapter 15 Reva
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
REVA
For one wild, humiliating minute after Ever left me in the stockroom, I stood there trying to decide what had just happened.
I waited for him to come back. He didn’t.
I waited for someone to tell me to get back on the floor. That didn’t happen either.
So I do what I always do when the ground shifts under me and nobody will tell me where the fault line is—I run.
I’m done with this bullshit. I’m leaving this town. Leaving Noir. Leaving Shiloh with his sideways grins and his middle of the night comfort.
I can’t do it anymore. I’ll find another way to get my revenge.
The back door bangs shut behind me, and the night air hits like wet heat and old grease.
The gravel lot behind Noir is where whichever staff gets here earliest parks their dented trucks and tired sedans, where the dumpsters sit tucked behind a wooden lattice bolted to brick as if lattice can hide the smell of food scraps, coffee grounds, bleach, and rot.
I breathe it in regardless of its nastiness, trying to cool off.
My mouth still tingles from Ever’s kiss, which pisses me off all over again.
“You should really think about leaving.” I make a face and do a high-pitched mimicry of something that is definitely not Ever’s voice. As petty as it is, it settles something in me.
Without warning, without explanation, he kisses me, tells me I should leave, and disappears. No clarity. No answer. No yes, you still have a job. No no, get your shit and go.
It should not hurt my pride this much. It definitely shouldn’t feel like being shut out.
“Asshole.” I kick a rock, watching as it pings off the dumpster between the strips of lattice.
A hot, traitorous sting pricks behind my eyes. I blink hard and look toward the line of cars so I don’t have to admit I’m this close to crying over a man I barely know and a job I only took to hunt a killer.
This is harder than I thought it would be.
Not the working. Not the lying.
The waiting. The not knowing. The way these men pull me in and shut me out in the same breath until I can’t tell whether I’m getting closer to what I came for or losing the plot altogether.
I could finish my shift.
I probably should finish my shift—it’s the adult thing to do.
Or I could just get in my car and drive until the road runs out and tell myself I’m preserving my dignity.
“Mrreow.”
The sound is so small I almost miss it under the hum of the city and the buzz of the security light over the back door.
I frown and glance toward the dumpsters again. The lattice rattles faintly, like something brushed against it from the other side.
“Hello?” I mutter, because apparently this night hasn’t humiliated me enough yet.
Another tiny cry answers me.
I step closer, peering through the narrow gaps in the wood. A scrap of orange fur shifts in the shadows beside the dumpster wheel.
It takes a second for my eyes to adjust, then a kitten blinks up at me.
He’s barely bigger than my hand. Orange and scruffy, with white paws and a white blaze that runs up the center of his forehead.
No…not a blaze.
A cross.
My breath catches.
“Well… hey there,” I whisper, crouching slowly so I don’t scare him off.
The kitten wobbles toward me like his legs are still figuring out how they work. He lets out another pitiful meow and bumps his tiny head against the lattice.
The cross on his forehead is unmistakable. Bright against the orange fur.
Just like—
My stomach drops.
Mr. T.
The cat from my childhood had the same mark. Same orange fur. Same ridiculous white cross between his ears that made my mother insist he was blessed.
A sob rises in my throat. I never knew what had happened to Mr T. after the night my family was slaughtered.
I straighten slowly, heart thudding in a way that has nothing to do with Ever or Shiloh or Nash.
The kitten meows again and squeezes through a broken slat in the lattice. He pads straight toward my boot, latches his claws in my jeans-clad leg, and climbs it without invitation.
“Okay,” I murmur faintly, scooping him up before he can tumble backward. “Okay, I’m picking up what you’re putting down…”
He fits in my palm like he was designed for it. Warm. Fragile. Purring already.
And that little white cross staring up at me like a message I’m supposed to understand.
“Reva.”
Two syllables. Rough and low. My pulse jumps before I even turn.
Shiloh is crossing the lot toward me, eyes flicking from my face to the door and back again like he caught me at the exact second before a bolt.
There’s no easy swagger in him tonight, no lazy grin built to smooth things over.
He moves like a man handling something breakable he doesn’t trust himself to hold too tight.
“Where do you think you’re going?”
I almost laugh, because the answer to that question changes every five seconds. Home. Back inside. Nowhere. Anywhere. Fuck you.
“I just needed air.”
The kitten squeaks softly in my grip and curls against my wrist like he’s already claimed me. Shiloh’s gaze snags on the kitten, and for one infuriating second, gentles.
He stops a few feet away instead of crowding me. “Air usually doesn’t take you halfway to the staff lot exit.”
“I said I needed air, not a geography lesson.”
That almost earns a smile.
Almost.
“Nash wants to see you,” he says, chucking the kitten gently under the chin. “Whatcha got there?”
“He was over near the dumpsters.” I brush a finger over the kitten’s head. “I think he was abandoned or something.”
Then his statement slams through the mess in my head and lines my thoughts up by force.
I came here for Midnight. A killer for hire. I came here to find out what Deacon’s connection is to this bar. I’ve gotten nowhere with Shiloh and Ever, but maybe Nash can—or will—help me?
I square my shoulders and make my mouth work. “Does Nash personally greet every new hire?”
Shiloh’s mouth curves, but tension keeps it from becoming a real grin. “Only the ones who move into his house. You know you can’t take this little beastie home, right?”
“Then I’m not going.” My fingers find the rubber bands on my wrist as I hold the kitten, and I manage to snap one, soft and quick. He notices. He doesn’t miss a thing.
His gaze drops. When he looks back up, there’s something in his expression I don’t have a safe name for.
“You’re shakin’,” he says quietly.
“Wow. Nothing gets by you.”
“Reva.”
There’s no tease in it. Just my name and too much seeing.
“I’m not leaving him.”
I should keep the distance between us. I know that. Last night was already a mistake I don’t know how to file—comfort and sex and feeling all braided together until I couldn’t tell what I was allowing and what I was taking because I needed not to be alone in the dark.
He takes one step closer anyway, slow enough to let me stop him if that’s what I want. I don’t.
His hand lifts, hesitates, then closes around my wrist—the one with the bands. His thumb slides once over the angry red line I raised there earlier.
The touch is light but it lands like a strike. I suck in a breath and glare at him because glaring is safer than leaning in.
“Don’t,” I whisper, and I’m not even sure what I mean.
Don’t be gentle.
Don’t make this harder.
Don’t act like last night mattered.
His eyes drop to the cat, and he sighs. “It’s fine, Yank. I’ll take care of him. But you’re about to walk into a room with Nash looking like you’re one loud noise from breaking apart.”
Anger flares hot and immediate, mostly because he’s not wrong. “I’m not breaking.”
“I know. Heaven forbid.” His grip tightens a fraction, grounding instead of restraining. “That’s not the same thing as being steady, though.”
The words hit too close. I look away first.
The lot is humid and rank and dimly lit and suddenly too small for everything happening inside my chest. I can still feel the ghost of his mouth at my throat from the night before. I can still hear Ever telling me to leave before it’s too late. I can still taste my own humiliation.
The kitten shifts in my arms, letting out a soft, questioning chirp.
My voice comes out thinner than I want. “Did he tell you to come get me?”
Shiloh is quiet for a beat. “Nash did.”
Not what I asked.
I lift my eyes back to his. “That’s not what I meant.”
He studies me, jaw working once, like he’s deciding whether to lie clean or tell the kind of truth that causes trouble.
“Ever’s complicated. Don’t let him bother you.”
Then, because apparently he’s determined to ruin my life, he reaches up with his free hand and brushes his knuckles along my cheek.
Barely there. Just enough to catch the wet shine at the corner of my eye before I can turn away.
Humiliation burns through me so fast I jerk back. “I’m not crying.”
“Didn’t say you were.”
“Don’t do that.”
His brows pull in. “Do what?”
“Act like—” I cut myself off and laugh once, sharp and ugly. “Like last night means you get to handle me.”
For the first time since he came out the door, something flashes in him—hurt, maybe, or temper, gone too fast to trust.
He steps in anyway, close enough now that I can smell soap and smoke and him, and drops his voice to something only I can hear over the hum of the dumpster fan and the distant throb of music inside.
“Last night means I know what fear looks like on you,” he says. “And this ain’t fear. This is you trying to decide whether to run before someone can push you.”
The accuracy of it makes me furious.
It also makes me want to grab his shirt and kiss him just to shut him up.
My life is a joke. Here I am doing my damndest to push this weirdly considerate, sexy-as-sin man away and hurt to near-tears by another who’s doing the same thing to me.
I settle for a hissed, “You don’t know me.”
His gaze drops to my mouth and stays there one beat too long. “Maybe I want to.”
That look should be illegal. I hate the way my body answers it, heat curling low and treacherous in the middle of a panic spiral.