The guest room door opens with a soft click.
Toile curtains. Velvet bedding. A lamp with a shade that looks expensive enough for someone’s mama to scold you for touching it. The kind of room you’d expect a woman to sip tea in while pretending the world isn’t ugly outside her doors.
I cross to the bed and lower Reva onto it as carefully as I can manage.
Her eyes flutter open. For one second she looks at me like she doesn’t know where she is. Like she can’t place the shape of the room. Then awareness slides in, sharp and sudden.
Her gaze snaps around. “What?—”
“You’re at our house,” I say.
She pushes up onto her elbows, hair falling into her face, breathing shallow. “Your house?”
Shiloh steps into view behind me and drops her backpack near the dresser. The sound makes her flinch.
“You’re safe,” Shiloh says, too gentle.
Reva’s eyes narrow. “I didn’t agree to this.”
“You did,” Shiloh says, then grins when she glares. “Kinda. You said, and I quote, ‘you’re not making me do anything I don’t want to.’”
Reva swings her legs off the bed, preparing to stand. Her knees wobble for a split second—sleep still clinging to her—and she covers it with anger.
I speak before she can get fired up, pointing toward the hallway. “Bathroom’s right outside, in the hall. Your door locks if that makes you feel some kind of way. Get some sleep.”
Hermouth opens like she wants to argue. That stubborn line in her jaw shows up even half-asleep.
Shiloh moves around me, and before I can stop him, he leans down and presses a kiss to her forehead.
“Night, Yank.”
Reva goes still. So do I. It’s not jealousy. Not exactly.
It’s irritation. Heat. Something I don’t have a name for, and I don’t want to come up with one.
I step back, then out of the room, shutting the door with more force than necessary.
Shiloh follows me into the hallway with that same easy grin.
“You’re welcome,” he murmurs.
“I didn’t ask you to do that.”
“You don’t ask me to do a lot of things.” He leans his shoulder against the wall, unbothered. “You carried her in like she weighs nothin’. Didn’t know you had that in you, big guy.”
I stare at him until his grin fades a notch. I rub a hand over the back of my neck. My skin feels too tight.
“She’s not stayin’ here long,” I say.
Shiloh’s smile returns, faint and irritating. “Sure.”
I turn away before I say something I can’t take back. Because the truth issimple, and I don’t like simple truths. I should have sent her packing.
And yet…
I didn’t.
* * *
