There’s just the quiet and the weight of the place, all white columns and old-money bones and too many rooms.
I hesitate for a second as I cross the threshold, listening.
No tiny mews. No scratching. Which means either the guys haven’t gotten back with him yet or the kitten’s asleep…or the guys hid him somewhere so he wouldn’t wreck the house.
Or worse—he’s with Nash. The idea of Nash Blackwood holding a kitten is so absurd I almost laugh.
I go straight to my room, yank my duffel from the closet, and start throwing things in with both hands. If I’m leaving, I need everything I came with. Cash. My knife. Papers. Clothes. Charger. Keys.
I’ll have to wait until they get home to take my cat, but I’ll at least be ready to go when they get here.
I pack like an angry teenager about to run away from home. Jeans shoved in crooked. Shirts balled tight. Toiletries scooped by the handful. The old paperwork catches in my fingers and I freeze with it halfway to the bag, breath jammed inmy throat.
Louisiana. My placement papers. A name I haven’t answered to in years, my real one—Reva Leigh Hart. I wasn’t in the system long—maybe a month—just long enough to know it wasn’t anything I wanted to be a part of. Cal came and the state gave him guardianship of me pretty fast, which was interesting in retrospect, considering he was a young-ish single man and I was a little girl.
I guess the fact that he’d worked for my parents—their chauffeur or security guard or something like that, he said—acted in his favor. That, and I had no other family.
I cram it all down, zip the bag, and stand there shaking.
The room feels too small. Too warm. My skin still smells like fryer oil and whiskey and sweat from the shift. I need the heat off me before I climb out of my skin. I need one clean second to think before I drive. To pause, maybe long enough for someone to come home so I can steal my kitten.
I could take a shower, but the pool is a better option. I’ll see them arrive home.
Only problem—I don’t have a swimsuit.
I legit don’t care at this point. Let them see me in my undies.
I grab a bath towel and head down to the pool, duffel in hand.
The pool lights throw blue across the patio, the water lit from below like something out of a sci-fimovie. Off to the side, the hot tub hums with a low mechanical throb, steam lifting into the heavy night. The air wraps around me hot and wet, thick enough to breathe.
I drop the towel and duffel by a chair, strip down to my bra and underwear, and I dive in.
Cool water closes over my head, and the whole world shuts up.
No Nash.
No Ever.
No Shiloh.
No Deacon.
No tiny orange kitten with a cross on his forehead staring at me like a message I’m supposed to understand.
Just pressure and silence and the burn in my lungs. One I can’t hide.
Under the safety and security of the water, I scream. I scream as loud and as long as I can with the water closing in around me, waiting to stake its claim.
Once I’m finally out of air, I surface and slick my hair back so that I’m treading water in the deep end while my pulse pounds out the last of the bar noise.
It helps. A little. The anger doesn’t leave. It just sinks lower and hotter, becomes an emotion harder to name.
It might be hurt, but I’ll never say that out loud. Instead I drift toward the edge and hook my arms over the tile.
My duffel sits three feet away under the towel, zipper closed, my flipflops lined up beneath it. I’m ready to go as soon as I get out and get dried off.
Good.
