Page 127 of The Final Cut

Her eyes come to mine. “Nash.”

“Not tonight.”

“He’s in the hospital.”

“Yes.”

“He’s alone.”

“He is not alone. He has two of my men in the hall, one by the elevator, one near the stairwell, and a nurse I trust more than most priests watching his room.”

“I don’t care.”

“I know.”

Her breath turns ragged. “He could die.”

“Yes.”

It is the truth. I hate giving it to her, but lies will only make me another person trying to manage her fear with pretty poison. Her face crumples for half a second before she locks it down. That almost kills me.

“Then I should be there.”

“You cannot help him by walking into Isabel’s best chance to take you.”

The color in her cheeks rises fast. “So this is another cage.”

“No.”

She gestures at the penthouse, at the windows, the table, the security men visible in the hall beyond the open door. “Really? Because it’s prettier, sure. Better view. Better sheets, I’m guessing. But I’m still being told where I can go and when I’m allowed to see the people I love.”

Shiloh says, “Yank⁠—”

She whips toward him. “Don’t.”

He closes his mouth.

Her eyes come back to me, bright and brutal. “I stayed at the cabin. I let you go get Delia. I did what you asked when every part of me wanted to run. And now Cal is worse, and you’re telling me to sit here and eat room service.”

“I am telling you that walking into a compromised hospital at night, hours after Isabel found the cabin, gives her exactly what she wants.”

“She always wants something.”

“Yes. Tonight she wants you emotional enough to confuse love with exposure.”

That lands badly.

I see it before she moves.

Reva steps toward me, then stops, her breath breaking. For one terrible second, she looks at the floor. Then she lowers.

Not fully. Not theatrically. Just a desperate bend of her knees, as if begging is the last tool left in a body that has been stripped of every useful one.

“Please,” she says.

The word hits the room like a gunshot. I catch her before both knees touch the floor.

“Don’t you dare do that.”