My control snaps.
There is no finesse left in it. No distance. No careful line between punishment and want. There is only Reva shaking in our hands, and the brutal relief of knowing she’s here.
Safe.
Ours.
I brace myself on the bed and lose the last of it with her name caught low in my throat, the force of it dragging me under hard enough that the room blurs at the edges.
After, for a second, all I can do is breathe.
Reva is still trembling. Ever is still behind her, touching her because he can’t seem not to. Shiloh looks half wrecked himself, staring at her like he’d drag this night out until dawn if I let him.
“Reva.”
Her lashes flutter, but she doesn’t answer right away. She looks boneless in Ever’s hold, breathing like she had to fight her way back to the surface.
My chest tightens with the residue of fear I still haven’t fully burned off. I touch her face, gentler now. Brush damp hair back from her temple.
“Stay with me.”
Ever shifts behind her, changing his hold so it feels less like restraint and more like support. One hand slides up her side, warm and grounding. Shiloh, for once, doesn’t joke. He grabs the blanket tangled at the foot of the bed and drapes it over her hips and thighs, covering her without making a ceremony of it.
That’s the thing about us. However cruel we get in the taking, we will not leave her alone in the wreckage after.
“Now we talk,” I say.
Reva’s chin lifts on instinct, battered pride trying to reassemble itself.
“You mean,” she says hoarsely, “now you lecture me even more.”
Nothing wise, then.
Only this: no one should have to apologize for needing help. Not at seven. Not at seventy.
You crying in your car afterward does not make you weak. It means you haven’t gone numb in the places that matter. Keep that.
As for the second job, I dislike it on principle already. Not the work. The men.
I know the type. They mistake access for invitation and a tired smile for permission. Be rude if you need to be. Rudeness is cheaper than repair.
And no, before you get smart with me, this is not jealousy. It is experience.
There’s a difference. Probably.
—Ash
CHAPTER THIRTY
SHILOH
The moon hasthe power to turn everything honest.
That’s what I decide as I sit in the bed of my truck with a thick, puffy blanket thrown over the ridged metal, a bottle of wine breathing between us, cheese and fruit and crackers arranged on a wooden board I absolutely did not steal from Nash’s kitchen.
Moonlight is cruel that way. It strips the edge off a thing while somehow making it clearer. Softer, but truer.
Reva sits cross-legged across from me, her dark hair silvered at the edges, one bare shoulder slipping out of the oversized sweater she stole from somebody in the house. Probably me. The back yard behind Blackwood House slopes toward the trees and the marsh beyond, all dark grass and breathing night and the occasional chorus of frogs too stupid to know they’re singing into a world full of teeth.
