Page 49 of The Final Cut

“Where are we going?” I ask again.

Deacon’s gray eyes stay on mine.

“Just sit your ass down and be quiet, Little Ghost, before I spank it.”

CHAPTER NINE

DEACON

Reva does not just sit down and be quiet. She has to glare at me first.

That’s fine. I expect as much. She looks better than the way she looked on the mats with Ever, her eyes too bright, her thoughts tearing themselves wide open behind her face.

It’s her anger that keeps her here. Her anger that keeps the blood moving. Anger gives her teeth when grief wants to make a meal of her.

I take the glare and hold my hand out until she steps into the boat.

She refuses my help getting down. I let her have that much. The flat-bottom skiff shifts beneath her weight, rocking gently against the dock. Her hands fly out for balance, but she catches herself before I can touch her. Pride straightens her spine a second later.

Ever stands at the edge of the path behind her, arms folded, mouth hard. He does not ask where I’m taking her. He knows I wouldn’t move her without a reason. He also knows I wouldn’t take her far.

Not yet.

Reva drops onto the middle bench with all the grace of a woman making a point. “If this is a kidnapping, you’re doing a shitty job.”

I untie the rope from the cleat. “I will try harder next time.”

Her mouth tightens. She looks away first, toward the water. The skiff drifts a foot from the dock, just enough to separate us from land. Ever remains where he is, watching until I start the motor.

The engine coughs once, then settles into a low hum, and I guide us away from the cabin.

The house slides back through the cypress, glass and concrete hidden beneath rough siding and morning mist. From the water, it becomes what Nash intended it to be: a suggestion of shelter and little more. Reeds swallow the angles. Branches break the roofline. The dock disappears behind a screen of green and gray.

Reva watches it go, her jaw locked.

I steer into the narrow channel behind the property, keeping the motor low. The skiff cuts clean through dark water, nosing past cypress knees and floating mats of green. Spanish moss hangs in long, damp strands from branches overhead. Mist clings to the water. The air smells of mud, rain waiting to fall, and the faint rot of living things becoming fuel for other living things.

The bayou has no interest in hurry. It dwells, living, lingering within each moment. That’s why I brought her here.

The cabin has too many people inside it. Too much love. Too much fear. Too many men trying to hold themselves back from reaching for her at once. Reva is smart enough to know why she is there and wounded enough to feel the cage wrapped around protection.

The swamp does not explain itself. It doesn’t soothe because someone asks it to. It just is.

Water and wood. Insects and birds. Roots sunk deep in muck and still reaching. It’s worked for me before, when I needed to calm the demons crying out for blood and vengeance and other things.

It didn’t make me better. It just gave my mind fewer walls to break itself against. It has this way of turning noise into a kind of weather, letting the worst of it pass through.

Reva sits rigid on the bench.

Her fingers work at the rubber bands on her wrist. She has not snapped one since we left the dock, but her thumb rests under the edge of the nearest band, ready. A weapon no one else would recognize.

My little ghost wants to be fierce. And she is. She just doesn’t believe it yet.

She thinks fierce should feel clean. Righteous. Unshakable. She thinks it should look like marching straight into Isabel’s house and taking her sister back by the throat of the world.

Fierce can be quieter than that.

Fierce can be a girl with blood under her nails sitting in a stolen slice of morning while the men who love her strategize around the damage. Fierce can be staying alive when death calls your name. Fierce can be saying no even when it comes out of panic.