Page 126 of The Next Lie

She fights me. Naturally. She’s just like Reva.

“Let go of me.”

“Stop clawing at your sister.”

“She hit me!”

“You deserved it.”

That gets her attention. Her head whips around, hair plastered to her face, eyes dark with outrage. “Excuse me?”

I drag her the last few feet and lift her out of the pool. She lands on the patio in a wet heap, then scrambles upright with enough fury to power half the city.

Behind me, Nash has Reva. She’s mad enough to power the other half.

He pulls her out under the arms and sets her on her feet. She coughs, shoves hair out of her face, and immediately tries to move around him toward Delia.

Nash catches her around the waist. “Enough, little wolf.”

Her arm swings out, finger extended in accusation. “Did you hear her? She said I should have stayed dead.”

The words cut across the patio. Delia goes still.

We all do.

Reva is soaked, shaking, furious enough to burn the water dripping from her clothes into steam. Her cheek bears a red mark where Delia must have caught her. One elbow is scraped, her hair hangs in dark ropes around her face, and her eyes are full of something far worse than anger.

Hurt. It’s almost childish in how raw and unfiltered it is.

It hits me low in the throat and stays there, an uncomfortable lump. Delia sees it too. I know because she looks away.

Coward.

Nash wraps a towel around Reva’s shoulders and turns her toward the house. She resists for one second, then goes with him, stiff and silent. At the sliding doors, he stops and looks back at me.

Water runs from his hair into the collar of his shirt. He is breathing hard. The look on his face is not friendly.

“Keep on,” he says, voice carrying across the patio, “and you’re gonna lose her before you ever really have her.”

Reva turns her head, just enough to acknowledge hearing. Then she lifts her chin and lets Nash guide her inside.

I lift a hand in answer because anything else will start a fight I don’t have time to finish. Nash is right. That irritates me more than the warning.

Delia wrings water from the end of her hair and makes a sharp sound under her breath. “He talks too much.”

“He talks when someone needs to hear it.”

“I didn’t ask for a lecture.”

“You earned one.”

Her glare could peel paint. “She doesn’t belong here.”

“You don’t get to say where she belongs or doesn’t belong,” I say. “She belongs alive.”

“That’s not the same thing.”

I step close enough that she has to tip her head back to keep glaring at me. “You do not say that to her again. That was ugly, Delia.”