Chapter 25 Ever #2
He slips out of the car and saunters after her at a distance that would insult my intelligence if it belonged to anyone else.
Shiloh looks loose when he wants to. Forgettable.
Harmless. It’s one of his more revolting talents.
But I know better. He’s got the speed and skill to get to her in an instant if needed.
I wait until they’ve both disappeared around the corner before I cross the lot.
The motel corridor smells like hot concrete, stale cigarettes, and industrial cleaner that gave up years ago. I reach her door, glance once across the railing, then crouch at the knob.
The lock is garbage. I’m inside in under ten seconds. Shiloh could have done it quicker.
The room is dim, curtains half-drawn against the glare.
An air-conditioning unit hums weakly in the window.
The bed is unmade, covers kicked down, one pillow dented and another shoved sideways.
Her bag sits open on the chair. A paper cup is on the nightstand next to a cheap lamp and a Bible no one has touched in months if not years.
Homer lifts its head from the bed and blinks at me. I put a finger to my mouth. It yawns.
“Traitor,” I murmur.
First things first.
I move fast, sweeping the room with practiced eyes. Smoke detector. Good line of sight to the door and bed. Lamp base. TV housing. Vent near the bathroom. Mirror corner.
I plant what I brought with me methodically, efficiently, each device tucked where it belongs. One to catch audio near the bed. One angled at the door. One wide enough to take in most of the room. Another concealed near the little table by the window.
By the time I finish, I can sit three miles away and know whether she’s pacing, crying, sleeping, writing, or talking to someone she shouldn’t be.
That should be enough. It isn’t, though. I stand in the middle of the room for a moment, listening to the hum of the A/C and the dull thud of my own pulse.
Then I look at her things.
It starts innocently enough. Or that’s what I tell myself, anyway.
I’m checking for weapons. Burner phones. Notes. Names. Anything that tells me what she plans to do with this little bite of freedom she stole for herself. Any information that we didn’t already find of hers.
That’s still what I’m doing when I unzip her bag and start to sort through everything she packed in a rush last night.
Folded clothes. Toiletries. A small makeup pouch. Ibuprofen. A flashlight. A pen. An envelope thick with papers.
I sit on the edge of the chair and go through it.
Some of it I’ve seen pieces of before. Names.
Dates. Scrawled notes. Fragments of a life cut clean in half and then obsessively stitched back together in ink.
But there’s more here than I realized. Newspaper clippings softened at the folds.
Copies of reports. Handwritten timelines.
The same names circling back again and again like teeth marks.
Deacon.
The rosary tattoo.
Pieces of her family.
I find a small notebook beneath a sweater. Not quite a diary—she’d hate that word—but close enough. The cover is bent, pages swollen a little from use. I open it because I’m fully accepting my stalker era at this point and the more information I have, the safer I can keep her.
The handwriting changes from page to page. Sometimes precise. Sometimes slanted hard enough to cut through paper. Sometimes so angry the words look carved there.
I read anyway.
I learn more than I wanted about my precious little firefly.
Or maybe more than I was always going to take.
I knew the broad strokes. Girl survives massacre that kills her family. Girl grows up sharpened by grief. Girl comes looking for one monster and walks right into three others who will destroy her if they’re not careful.
But broad strokes aren’t the same as truth. Truth is in the details. Truth is the way she writes about the blood drying under her father’s fingernails.
The way she remembers the smell, before they ushered her out of the house.
The way she circles the word hidden in one margin so many times the paper is almost worn through.
Truth is the years after, too. The ones she doesn’t linger on but doesn’t have to.
A reference here. A sentence there. Foster care—the Jacobs.
A locked bathroom door. A hand she didn’t want on her.
Cal arriving before something worse could happen, or maybe after it already had.
The notebook doesn’t spell it out plainly. It doesn’t need to.
My jaw locks so hard it aches. I flip another page.
Revenge breathes through all of it.
It’s not a dramatic kind of thirst for vengeance.
Not wild. Not hot with the kind of heat that burns bright and dies off.
This is older than that. Colder. The kind that roots itself down in the marrow and waits with claws in her soul.
The kind that makes a girl keep breathing because dying would let everyone else off too easy.
I understand that sort of thing. Maybe more than I should.
Homer jumps down from the bed and winds around my ankle, then sinks his claws into my jeans and begins to climb. I absently scratch behind his ear while I keep reading.
There are entries about Noir. About us.
Nash is exactly what she thinks he is and somehow worse all at once.
Shiloh she doesn’t trust at all, which is the smartest thing I’ve seen in here so far. She sees his smirks and laughter as something to hide his truth.
Me—
I stop. Read the lines again. There isn’t much. Just a few observations.
Quiet. Watches too close and sees too much. Freaking stalker vibes. Dangerous in a different way. More patient. Does he even like me? Jury is OUT. I think he’s hurting where no one else can see it. I want it. His hurt.
My mouth tilts despite myself. She sees me better than I realized.
And yeah. I fucking like her.
A hell of a lot more than I’ve ever liked any other woman.
I rifle farther down into the bag and find another notebook, this one mostly logistical. Addresses. Questions. Routes. A map with several places marked. She’s been building something in that head of hers, and not all of it is as reckless as it looked from the outside.
Then I find a pair of panties tangled in the corner beneath a shirt.
Black.
Lace at the edges. Barely there.
I lift them without thinking.
Then, because apparently I’ve made peace with becoming exactly the kind of man she should fear, I bring them to my nose.
Soap. Skin. Her.
She’s worn them.
A strange, low heat moves through me—ugly and immediate.
“Jesus Christ,” I mutter to myself.
The kitten meows up at me like it agrees.
I stare at the scrap of fabric in my hand, then fold it once and slip it into the pocket of my jeans before I can decide against it.
That’s when my phone buzzes.
SHILOH
On our way back. She’s got coffee and beignets. Five minutes. Maybe less.
I go still. Five minutes is enough time.
Enough time to leave.
Enough time to stay.
For one brief, vicious second, I imagine remaining exactly where I am. Sitting in her chair with her notebook open in my hands. Letting her come through that door and see me in the middle of her private life. Letting her understand just how completely she’s failed to get away.
It would be easier than letting her play her little games. No more pretending she has room to maneuver. No more leash. No more games whatsoever.
I could take her by the wrist, sit her down on this ugly motel bed, and tell her precisely how this goes from here. She would fight. She would spit. She would say something sharp enough to deserve punishment.
And I would drag her back anyway…maybe after I fuck her senseless. Because there would be a before. And there damn sure would be a during. Maybe she’d squirt on my dick this time.
The image takes hold harder than it should. My fingers tighten on the notebook. Then I exhale, set it back exactly where I found it, and stand.
Not yet.
There’s more to learn with her loose than there is with her screaming.
I do one last pass of the room, making sure nothing looks disturbed. The envelope goes back in the bag. The sweater over it. The notebook beneath the same bent corner. The chair angled toward the bed just as it was. When I reach the door, Homer follows me.
I look down at him.
“No.”
That stubborn assed kitten sits back on its haunches, tail flicking, as if offended by the decision.
I slip outside, ease the door shut behind me, and lock it with the same pathetic little click.
By the time I’m back in the car, Shiloh is sauntering down the sidewalk a mere hundred yards behind Reva. All while she’s completely oblivious to the fact that she’s being followed already.
I sigh and shake my head and recline the seat slightly, watching through the tinted windshield as she climbs the stairs to her room with a tray of coffee and a white paper bag folded at the top.
She looks tired. Wary, but still oblivious. She looks like she still thinks she’s bought herself some kind of breathing room.
SHILOH
You get in and out?
Yes.
Anything interesting?
I glance toward her door as she unlocks it and disappears inside. Everything about her is interesting…and even everything will never be enough. Not of Reva.
Some.
Shiloh sends back a laughing emoji, which makes me want to break his fingers.
I don’t start the car.
I sit there with one hand loose on the wheel and her black lace panties tucked into my surveillance bag like a confession I’ll never make aloud.
Inside that room, she’s setting down the coffee. Probably talking to the kitten. Probably thinking she’s hidden herself in some anonymous little corner of the city where she can regroup and make a plan.
She has no idea I was just in her space, breathing her air, touching the things she thought belonged only to her.
No idea that I’ve read enough to know now that revenge isn’t just a story she tells. It’s the spine holding her upright, the cells holding her together. And we need to make a plan for the moment her revenge no longer becomes an option. Losing her isn’t a possibility.
That just makes her that much more dangerous. It just makes me want her that much more.
I watch her window as Shiloh opens the passenger-side door and slips inside, and I think of leashes.
That moment you let something run just far enough to make the snap back hurt. Somewhere under all of that, quieter but meaner, another thought settles in.
She ran from Nash.
But she’ll never run far enough to get away from me. She’s in my blood now, and there’s no escape.