Page 43 of The Final Cut

Faces fade. Smells don’t. I remember his cologne, too.

And voices don’t. Maybe because the dead live in sound before they become photographs.

Isabel says grief is useful for a little while, then indulgent.

Mother doesn’t say anything when Isabel says things like that. Sometimes, though, when we pass in the hall, her fingers brush mine.

It’s never an accident.

But it’s never enough.

CHAPTER EIGHT

REVA

Ever sleeps like he is still on duty.

That should not surprise me. The man probably monitors exits in his dreams. Still, there is something strange about waking under the weight of him, pinned in place by an arm across my ribs and one heavy leg hooked over mine.

I am a sprawler. I learned that about myself after sharing beds with men who made comments about knees, elbows, and my talent for colonizing every available inch of mattress. Left alone, I turn sideways, steal blankets, and somehow end up with one foot hanging off the edge like I’m perpetually prepared to flee into the night.

Ever has solved this by turning himself into a human lock.

My face is tucked into the hollow of his throat. His heartbeat moves slow and steady against my cheek. His arm is firm around me, palm spread over my stomach. The heat of him wraps me from behind and over and under, leaving no loose edge for the world to grab.

I should feel trapped, but I don’t. That might be the most confusing part of what’s admittedly a super-disorienting morning.

The bedroom is dim, the wall of windows still covered by the blinds Ever lowered…yesterday? I think it was yesterday. From the fuzzy feeling of my mouth and the stiffness of my limbs, I think I’ve been asleep a long time.

Gray light pushes around the edges, soft and wet from the marsh outside. Homer sleeps on the foot of the bed now, his paws tucked under him and his tail over his nose, pretending he did not spend part of the night knocking something off a counter.

The cabin is quiet.

No hospital monitors. No sirens. No gunshots. No ballroom music bleeding into screams.

Just Ever’s breathing.

In sleep, his face loses some of its severity. The hard line between his brows is still there, because peace does not know what to do with him either, but the rest of him is softer by degrees. His lashes lie dark against his cheeks. A faint scar cuts through one brow. There is a shadow of stubble along his jaw and a small mole near his mouth—a Marilyn mark, I think they’re called.

I want to touch it, but I don’t move.

Growing attached feels too mild for the thing happening inside me. Attached is a note on a refrigerator. Attached is a button, a receipt, a leash clipped to Homer’s tiny harness.

This feels like roots finding places in me I didn’t grant access to.

Nash. Shiloh. Ever. Deacon.

The thought of any one of them gone makes the room tilt.

I lie there in Ever’s arms and understand, with a deep and inconvenient certainty, that my heart is no longer dividing itself into safe pieces. It is giving itself away with both hands, messy and uneven and reckless.

That scares me.

The thought of losing them scares me more.

Ever’s breathing changes.

His arm tightens before his eyes open, body waking before the mind. His hand flexes over my stomach. His lashes lift, and for a second he only looks at me.