Page 30 of The Final Cut

“Shiloh.”

“I’ve got you.”

“I’m so mad.”

“I know.”

“It hurts.”

The confession barely makes sound. It guts me anyway.

I touch my mouth to her hair, quick and soft enough that no one can accuse the moment of becoming something else.

“Use it,” I say.

Her finger moves, and the shot breaks, sound reverberating over the bayou around us.

The middle plate explodes. Porcelain snaps into white fragments, scattering across the dirt in a bright little burst.

Reva freezes. Then she laughs.

It is not pretty. It is wet and furious and half-choked, but it is a laugh, and for one second the marsh gives it back to us like an answer.

“There,” I say.

She fires again. Another plate breaks.

The next shot misses. Ever moves in with a quiet adjustment to her elbow, one hand touching only as long as necessary.

“Less tension here,” he says.

Reva’s mouth twists. “That’s ambitious.”

His eyes meet hers. “Try anyway.”

She does. The next plate shatters.

She aims again, her breathing changing under my hands. Still uneven. Still full of everything no one can fix. But better.

This time she shoots Aunt Mildred’s favorite gravy boat straight through its smug little belly.

Nash sighs.

Shiloh Lafitte, emotional genius and destroyer of heirlooms, wisely does not cheer.

By the time the last plate breaks, Reva’s cheeks are streaked with drying tears. Her hands have stopped shaking as badly. Mine are still over hers, though I could have let go three shots ago. She knows. I know. Neither of us mentions it.

She lowers the gun, and I step back. The absence of her body against mine feels colder than the morning has any right to.

She turns and offers me the pistol grip-first, muzzle down like she promised. “I’m done.”

“You did good.”

Her eyes warn me not to make that soft.

I take the gun. “Aunt Mildred is devastated.”

That earns me a glare with the tiniest bit of life in it.