She shakes her head, but there’s no real heat in it. That’s the difference now. She still fights. Still bristles. Still flashes that sharp little edge at me like she’s daring me to grab hold of it and bleed.
But she’s softer now, too.
Not broken. Never that. I don’t think I’d know what to do with Reva if she were broken. She’d be some pale imitation of herself, and I’m not interested in pale things.
She hasn’t been humbled, either. She’s just…softer.
More willing to lean against one of us instead of stand there trembling under the weight of every damn thing by herself.
I let the silence settle a beat before I set my glass down.
“Now,” I say, and put enough steel in my voice that her gaze lifts to mine, “we need to discuss your appalling behavior.”
Her eyes narrow immediately. “My behavior.”
“Yes. Atrocious. Deeply offensive. Very disappointing.”
She folds one knee up and hooks an arm around it. “I was under the impression you enjoyed my bad behavior.”
“In bed? Certainly.” I point at her with my glass. “In general? Mixed results.”
The corner of her mouth twitches. “You’re impossible.”
“And you,” I say, more quietly, “failed to trust us.”
That stills her. The humor doesn’t vanish entirely, but it retreats. Her fingers tighten around the stem of the glass.
I don’t let up.
“You ran,” I say. “You went tearing off on your own because Nash said he would not kill Deacon, and instead of understanding what we were trying to tell you, you decided none of us were worth trusting at all.”
Her chin tips. Defensive. “He said no.”
“He said he wouldn’t kill him.”
“That is a no, Shiloh.”
“No,” I say, sharper than before, “it’s a boundary. There’s a difference.”
Something flickers across her face at that.
I sit forward, forearms on my knees, and keep my voice level because this part matters. “All we ever asked forwas your trust. That’s it. We told you we would protect you. We told you we would take care of your problem.”
Her laugh is soft and bitter. “You were awfully vague.”
“Deliberately.” I don’t apologize for it. “Because how we take care of it is up to us. Not you.”
Her brows rise. “That sounds controlling.”
“It is controlling,” I say. “And then you went trying to throw yourself at a monster with half a plan and a motel key, leaving our new kitten to potential danger. We were not going to let you do that. So we brought Homer home, just like we brought you back.”
“Maybe I wanted to do it myself.”
“Maybe doing it yourself and being so goddamn strong isn’t always the point.”
She looks away, out over the dark grass and the low glimmer of marshwater beyond. The moon catches in her lashes.
“You don’t understand,” she says after a moment, quieter now. “If I hand it over—if I let somebody else do it—then what was all of this for? What was all the anger for? What was surviving for?”
