Live in my punishment. Take my revenge. Even if I die along the way.
But it still feels like I just left something behind that I can’t get back.
Fine. Since you wanted something that belongs only to me?—
I started clinicals.
It smells like antiseptic and old coffee and panic in there. Everyone keeps acting like it’s normal to walk around discussing bowel movements and oxygen saturation over vending-machine crackers.
I watched a guy get six staples in his scalp today and didn’t even flinch, which probably says something terrible about me.
I like it, though.
Not the blood. Not the screaming. Not the way everybody assumes women are going to go soft at the edges when things get ugly.
I like that there’s a protocol. You do the thing in front of you. Then the next thing. Then the next. You don’t have time to fall apart because somebody else needs you not to.
Cal says I’ve always done better in a crisis than I do in regular life.
I think that was an insult, but I’m not sure.
Also, before you say it, yes, I’m sleeping enough. Stop asking like you know I’m lying.
—Reva
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
EVER
I can’t fucking sleep,and it’s driving me crazy.
That isn’t unusual. Sleep and I have never been on especially friendly terms, but tonight is worse than most. Part of it is the sound of Nash with Reva sometime around eleven—muffled through walls and distance, but not so muffled I can’t hear enough to know exactly what’s happening.
Blackwood House carries sound strangely. Old bones. Too many hallways. Too many secrets packed into the plaster.
Too much room to imagine things I’d rather not, because I’d give my right hand to be the one making Reva scream in pleasure.
The other part of it is the kitten.
The little orange traitor—Homer, I think she settled on—has decided my bed is an acceptable substitutewhen Reva doesn’t come back to hers, and sometime after midnight, after pacing across my ribs, kneading my side through the blanket, and curling into a vibrating ball of heat against my hip, it falls asleep as if it pays rent here.
I lie on my back in the dark, staring at the ceiling, one arm folded behind my head, the other trapped under six pounds of striped audacity, and listen to the house settle around me.
A creak. Pipes ticking. Wind scraping its fingers against the old glass.
Then something changes.
It’s small. So small most people would miss it. A shift in the air more than a sound. A subtle change in the rhythm of the house. I open my eyes, already alert, already knowing.
A few seconds later, the kitten’s head pops up. It lets out a questioning little chirp, then springs off the bed and trots toward the door.
Well. That’s interesting. I sit up.
I drag on a pair of jeans, step into the hallway without bothering with a shirt, and keep to the darker edge of the corridor. I don’t have to go far. From the bend near the back stairs, I can see her.
Reva.
She’s moving with care, but she’s not as quiet as she thinks she is. Shoes in one hand. Bag slung over hershoulder. The kitten reaches her ankles, indignant but quiet, and she stoops to gather him up with a small sound under one arm. As I watch, she sticks him in her bra, then continues walking.
