Page 205 of The Final Cut

“If anyone makes this weird, I’m biting.”

Shiloh’s laugh brushes the back of my neck. “Sleepy green with teeth. Still my favorite shade.”

I’m too tired to tell him that makes no sense.

The mattress dips.

Deacon.

He lies on the far side of the bed, beyond Ever at first, stiff as a man braced for regret. Then Ever shifts again, practical and silent, and suddenly Deacon is close enough that his hand can reach mine where it rests on the blanket.

He doesn’t take it. I take his. His fingers interlock slowly with mine. Carefully. Like staying is a skill he has to learn by touch.

Nash leaves the chair at last. He gets into bed on Shiloh’s other side, one arm reaching over him to settle heavy and warm across my hip. Shiloh grumbles about being used as a bridge. Nash tells him he talks too much. Ever’s thumb moves once over my hip. Deacon’s hand tightens around mine.

Four men.

One bed.

No sex. No performance. No demand.

Just heat and breath and enough weight to keep me from floating away from myself.

I think of Delia in Isabel’s chair, making it hers by refusing to become the woman who left it empty. I think of Marisol on the terrace, writing names with shaking hands. I think of Cal in the hospital, stable and stubborn and not dead yet. I think of Homer, descended from an orange cat with the wrong name, somewhere downstairs probably committing a felony against curtains.

I think of Isabel bleeding on church stone.

Then I stop. For tonight, I let the living be louder.

Deacon’s thumb brushes my knuckle.

Nash’s voice is low in the dark. “Rest, little wolf.”

I could tell him not to boss me. I could tell them all this is too crowded, too much, too soft after a day with so much in it.

Instead, I hold Deacon’s hand harder and let myself sleep.

EPILOGUE

REVA

Cal comes home on a Tuesday.

He complains the entire way from the car to the terrace.

Technically, it’s Delia’s house now. Mari’s too. Cal’s, once he stops threatening to discharge himself from every room containing pillows, medication schedules, or people with opinions. The rest of us still slip and call it Isabel’s house sometimes, mostly because old ghosts take time to evict.

The punishment rooms are gone. Burned, stripped, sealed, then gutted again because Delia decided the first destruction didn’t feel complete enough. The rose wallpaper in Isabel’s private sitting room has been torn down. The chapel doors stay open now, though no one is forced to kneel inside. Half the staff left. Some came back. Some cried when Delia told them they could go.

Others stayed because freedom sounds simple until someone has to teach you what to do with it.

La Rosa still has teeth.

I’m less naïve than I used to be. Maybe that’s saying very little, because I came to New Orleans with a gun, a fake name, and the assumption that revenge had a finish line.

It doesn’t.

Revenge is a door. You open it, and there’s always another dirty room behind the first that someone has to clean.