Page 35 of The Next Lie

“She’s with Shiloh?” she asks.

“And Ever.”

Her face does something I cannot read. Maybe relief. Maybe jealousy. Maybe grief discovering another hallway.

“They’ll take care of her,” I say.

Delia’s eyes sharpen. “Do you believe that?”

“Yes.”

“Enough to stay away tonight?”

I look at the door. Nash’s warning sits there. Reva’s face sits under it. Delia’s tears. Cal’s silence. Fifteen years of decisions I made because every other option looked worse.

“No,” I say honestly. “But I will.”

Delia nods once, then walks to the door. With her hand on the knob, she pauses.

“Deacon. If she finds out what really happened…”

“She will.”

“What happens then?”

I think of Reva’s hand reaching for her sister. Reva’s face when Delia recoiled. Reva walking into Noir with vengeance in her bones and a question sharp enough to cut through fifteen years of blood and lies.

“I don’t know,” I say.

Delia opens the door.

This time, I let her go without another word.

When the door closes, I pick up the bourbon I poured and finally drink it.

Nash is wrong about one thing. I do need him to protect Reva from someone. Just not from me.

From Mother Superior. From Cal’s silence. From the truth I have kept alive in the dark for fifteen years, feeding it pieces of myself so it would not crawl out and find her before she was old enough to survive it.

I set the empty glass down.

Tomorrow, I will speak to Reva. If she lets me.

If the past gives us one more night before it starts collecting what it is owed.

I look toward the wall, toward the faint vibration of music and footsteps and all the hidden arteries of Noir Night.

Then I close my eyes and see her at nineteen again, throwing paper balls at a trash can and laughing like nothing in the world had ever broken.

That was the life I chose for her.

A life where she missed the trash and barked at neighbors and studied how to keep people breathing. A life with stupid socks and cold coffee. A life without me.

It was the only decent thing I ever gave her.

And tonight, she walked straight back into my hands.

CHAPTER SEVEN