Page 126 of The Final Cut

Then Reva does. She’s up before I can say her name.

She crosses the room fast, no hesitation, no performance. When she reaches me, she puts both hands on my face and kisses me. Hard. Too brief. Too full of all the things she has been holding back since I left the cabin.

I catch her around the waist and pull her in.

For one second, the room falls away. My face goes into her hair. I breathe her in, shampoo and rain and stress, the faint clean bite of hotel soap from whatever shower she used here, and beneath it Reva. Warm skin. Fury. Home, though I have no right to put that word on a woman.

“I was worried,” I say.

It comes out rougher than I mean it to.

Her arms tighten around my neck. “I noticed.”

She pulls back enough to search my gaze. “We’re okay.”

I kiss her again, softer this time, because if I do not, I may tell her about Cal in the foyer with everyone watching, and I refuse to do that to her.

She sees it anyway.

Her expression shifts. “What?”

“Eat first.”

“No.”

“Reva.”

“Don’t use the voice. What happened?”

The room goes quieter behind her.

I look past her to Ever, then Shiloh. Shiloh’s face loses what little ease it had. He knows. Not the details, but the direction of them. He spent enough hours at Cal’s door to recognize bad news by the space around it.

Reva follows my gaze and goes still.

“No,” she says.

“He’s alive.”

The words come first because they must.

Her hand grips my jacket.

“He’s alive,” I repeat. “But he had a complication.”

Her mouth opens. Closes. “What kind?”

“Blood pressure dropped. Labs are worse. They’re watching for slow bleeding or a post-surgical inflammatory response. If he destabilizes again, they may take him back to surgery.”

She steps away from me as if the floor moved under her.

Delia rises halfway from her chair, then stops. Shiloh stands fully. Deacon shifts from the wall. Ever stays still because he knows movement can crowd a panic before it has somewhere to go.

“I need to go see him,” Reva says.

“No.”

The word leaves me before she finishes.