“I understand plenty?—”
“No,” I cut in, and my tone is flat because flat is safer than everything I’m feeling right now. I motion toward the parking lot and Shiloh’s truck. “You don’t. Now get in the fucking truck before I make you. And trust me, Reva, I really want to make you.”
Reva’s breathing goes shallow. Her gaze flicks toward the stairs. Toward the parking lot. Toward the spot where those men came from.
Reality catches up in small bites.
She swallows again. “Where are you taking me?”
Shiloh opens the door. “Home.”
“But I barely know you.”
“That’s true,” Shiloh says. “And yet here we are. You’re coming with us.”
After another moment of indecision, Reva steps out onto the walkway, still clutching her bag. Shiloh goes behind her. I go in front.
“I’m only doing this because I want to,” she snips. “You’re not making me do anything I don’t want to do.”
Shiloh twists his head to look first at her, then at me over her head. The spark in his eyes could be construed as amusement if you didn’t know him.
I know him.
“That’s real good, sweetheart.” I lean forward, so I’m whispering directly in her ear. “Keep telling yourself that, because the world is a dangerous damn place, where men are gonna take what men want to take, and if you’re alone, you lose.”
Two bright spots of color flush her cheeks. “You might want to sleep with your door locked…” she returns. “…sweetheart. Because fuck that noise.”
We work our way down the stairs, across the lot, and into Shiloh’s truck.
Reva climbs into the back seat clutching her backpack like it can protect her from us. Shiloh slides behind the wheel and starts the engine while I climb into the passenger-side seat.
Reva’s voice comes from behind me, tight and furious. “If you think you can just?—”
“We do,” Shiloh says, and pulls out of the lot before she can finish.
Silence snaps tight.
A block later, her voice drops lower. “Why do you even care? You fired me tonight.”
Shiloh laughs once, humorless. “One, we didn’t fire you. That was just…a warning. Calling a timeout. And two…that’s what you think this is? Caring?”
Reva doesn’t answer. She doesn’t know what to call it either.
Neither do I. And neither does Shiloh.
All I know is that she walked into Noir looking for something she shouldn’t know exists.
Then she walked into a motel like a lamb to the fucking slaughter, and for some reason we felt compelled to fucking rescue her like she was…ours—which makesnosense. Zero. Zilch. Nada.
And now she’s in our truck, headed to our house, with her anger filling the back seat like a summer storm cloud.
I don’t glance in the mirror. I don’t need to. I can feel her back there—small, rigid, furious. Uncertain.
And when we turn down the street toward home, the tension shifts, worsens. Because now the question isn’t whether she’s safe.
It’s what happens when she realizes we’ve decided we’re keeping her, and there’s no escape.
How old are you, anyway? Are you as old as my dad or Cal?
