Page 102 of The Final Cut

That one lands deep enough to make me quiet.

She looks at the mug anyway. Doesn’t touch it, but doesn’t shove it away. With Delia, I am starting to understand, those may be the same thing as progress.

Nash steps in before the silence grows teeth. “This is what happens now. Deacon gets bandaged. Delia gets cleaned up and decides what, if anything, she is ready to tell us. Shiloh stays at the hospital with Cal until we rotate him out. Ever keeps the perimeter sealed and watches for a response from Isabel. Reva does not interrogate her sister while she’s bleeding.”

Delia lifts her chin. “Tis but a flesh wound.”

The joke startles a snicker out of Ever, and I almost laugh. It comes out as a breath and nothing more. Pressing his lips together, Ever finishes wrapping her palm. “Knees next.”

Delia’s shoulders lock.

Everyone sees it. The room holds still around her response.

Ever sits back. “Or Reva, or you can do them yourself. Your choice.”

Her gaze moves from him to me, and the look in it is so sharp I feel it under my ribs. She is waiting for me to push. Waiting for me to claim sister as a right to her skin, her story, her pain. I want to grab Delia and hold on until the years between us stop screaming, but that would only prove every ugly lesson Isabel ever taught her was true.

“The bathroom at the end of the hall has no exterior window,” I say. “There’s hot water. I’ll leave clothes and bandages outside. If you need help, ask. If you don’t, don’t.”

Her expression does not soften, but something tired passes through her eyes.

“Fine.”

Ever rises and steps back, leaving her the path. Delia stands slowly. Her face tightens, but again, she makes no sound. I hate every person who taught her silence was useful.

As she passes Deacon, her gaze drops to the bandage at his side.

“You should have moved faster,” she says.

He looks up at her. “You should have ducked sooner.”

For a second, the old familiarity between them flashes too clear. Then she walks away.

Jealousy is an ugly, embarrassing thing to feel when my sister has just been dragged out of Isabel’s correction room. I know he doesn’t think of her that way.

I feel it anyway. It curls low in my stomach and makes me press the tape over Deacon’s bandage harder than necessary.

He catches my wrist.

“Little Ghost.”

“Don’t.”

He releases me at once. That helps. It also makes me feel worse.

I finish taping the wound with careful, professional hands. “You said you’d get her.”

“I did.”

“Thank you.”

His eyes lift.

I cannot hold the look for long. Gratitude toward Deacon is complicated. So is anger. So is every room he enters. I leave him with the unused gauze and take Delia’s clothes down the hall, stacking them outside the bathroom door with antiseptic, tape, and scissors. Water is already running inside.

I stand there longer than I should.

The door between us is just wood, but it feels like fifteen years, like a closet, like a chapel, like every adult who made choices around us and called the damage necessary.