Page 109 of The Next Lie

“It was purely consensual retail, I promise.”

The corner of her mouth moves.

She studies the closet again, and I can see her trying to categorize the gift so it hurts less. Practical. Strategic. Manipulative. Anything except kind.

Kind is harder for her. Kind has hooks, and Reva doesn’t like hooks. She doesn’t understand that she’s had us hooked since the first day we saw her.

A knock sounds against the open bedroom door.

Reva’s spine stiffens, and we turn. Cal stands in the doorway.

He hovers in the doorway rather than entering, perhaps the first smart thing he has done since landing in New Orleans.

His gaze moves from Reva to the closet. He sees the clothes. The boxes. The tags still hanging from some of the sleeves. His expression shifts before he can stop it, and for a moment he looks older than he did downstairs.

“I don’t want to interrupt,” he says.

“You are,” Reva answers.

I glance at her. Her face has already closed. Whatever softness the closet pulled from her is gone, bricked and mortared behind a wall so fast I almost hear a lock sliding into place.

Cal looks at the clothes again, then at me.

“Looks like you’re taking good care of my girl.”

The words are gentle. That makes them worse. Cal realizes his mistake a second too late.

Reva’s fingers fall away from the dress. Her chin lifts.

“I’m not your little girl.”

CHAPTER TWENTY

REVA

Family dinner at Blackwood House should come with weapons instead of cutlery.

At the very least, assigned seats.

Possibly both.

I pause in the doorway and take inventory, not at all sure I’m ready for this. I’ve been a brat all day, and I’m not ready to not be a brat. The dining room, where we never eat, actually looks like something designed by dead people with generational wealth and a flair for intimidation—from beyond the grave. Long mahogany table. High-backed chairs, behind one of which Nash stands, tapping a finger along its edge. Dark wood trim polished to a shine. Lots of candles, because apparently normal lighting is for people without murder in their family trees.

I look beyond Nash, to the door on the other side of the room. “Is this where a housekeeper bustles in with a warming tray of horse dervers?”

A vein in the center of his forehead twitches. “Sit down, little wolf.”

With a wink, I sit in the chair between Shiloh and Ever, because that is where Nash has decided where I will sit. He doesn’t announce it. He simply pulls out the chair, waits, and looks at me until I sit in it.

Cal sits across from me.

He has changed since this afternoon, though not significantly. Different dark-colored button-up shirt. Same controlled face. Same careful hands. Same man who showed up in New Orleans after I told him not to, then looked at a closet full of clothes and called me his girl like nothing inside me had changed.

I am not your little girl.

The sentence still sits in the room with us, even though no one has remarked on it since.

Cal has not tried to touch me. He has not called me kid. He has kept enough distance to prove he heard me, which makes me feel terrible and righteous in equal measure. I hate that. I hate how easily love can turn into a trap if the person holding it has lied long enough.