Page 119 of The Final Cut

Ever is in the doorway of his security room, eyes moving between the screens and the glass and all of us.

I look at him. “Okay. So what next, then?”

His expression doesn’t change. That’s its own answer.

“We move,” he says.

“To where?”

“Somewhere else.”

“That’s not an answer.”

“It’s the only one I have right now.”

I laugh once, a flat ugly sound that makes Homer pin his ears back. “Great. Perfect. We can’t go back to Blackwood House because it’s too open and not protected enough. We can’t stay here because the secret murder cabin with the magic windows isn’t protected enough. Cal is still in the hospital. Isabel knows Delia is here…and I’m here. So we run again.”

“We relocate,” Ever says.

“Run, relocate, strategically flee into the swamp. Pick whatever word you like.”

Delia’s gaze shifts to me. She says nothing.

I set Homer down because if I keep holding him, I am going to squeeze the cat into a loaf, and even he does not deserve that. He darts immediately toward Delia and plants himself on her foot as if he has chosen his side. Fine. Let him. My hands are free now, which is dangerous, because they go straight into my hair.

I grip hard and pull until my scalp stings.

“When do we stop waiting?” I ask. “When do we stop letting Isabel choose which room, which hour, which person who bleeds? We waited at the hospital. We waited here. We waited while you went to get Delia. We waited while drones knocked on the windows to see how scared we’d be.”

“Reva,” Shiloh says softly.

I shake my head. “No. I am so sick of hearing my name like it’s a leash.”

Deacon moves before the sentence finishes.

He does not grab my wrists or tell me to calm down. He steps in behind me, closes both arms around my body, and pulls me back against his chest with enough strength to stop the shaking without making it a fight. His side has to hurt. I know it does because I taped the wound myself, but he doesn’t flinch when I hit his ribs with my elbow by accident. He just tightens his hold and bends his head near mine.

“Breathe,” he says.

“I don’t want to.”

“Do it anyway.”

The simplicity almost undoes me.

My hands loosen in my hair. Deacon catches them, folds them down against my stomach, and holds them there under his own. His skin is warm. His grip is unyielding. I can feel his heartbeat against my back, slow and infuriating, while mine beats and bangs around my chest, looking for exits.

“I am tired of being hidden,” I whisper. “I’m ready to live.”

His mouth brushes the side of my head. “I know.”

“I am tired of people getting hurt because I’m alive.”

His arms tighten once. “That’s Isabel talking with your voice.”

I close my eyes. Delia makes a quiet sound, not agreement exactly, but close enough that I look at her.

She has tipped her head to the side, studying me in that unsettling way she has, like she is seeing the shape of the thought beneath the words. She looks composed again, pale and bandaged and too still, but there is something different in her eyes now. The drone fire did not rattle her the way it rattled me. Or maybe she is only better at locking the rattle behind her teeth.