Page 211 of Revv

I stare at him for another long second, then loosen my grip on the door just enough for it to swing inward.

Revel steps inside, dripping rainwater across my floor, but he doesn’t move any closer. For once, he seems to understand that pushing me right now would be a spectacularly bad fucking idea.

I back away until there’s a few feet between us and fold my arms tightly across my chest, partly because I’m pissed and partly because if I don’t hold myself together somehow, I’m pretty sure every emotion I’ve spent the last five hours choking down is going to spill out all over the place.

“Okay, so talk.”

His chest rises with a slow breath, water still running from his hair down the side of his face. He glances toward the door behind him like he’s making sure it actually closed, then looks back at me.

His jaw tightens. “I didn’t ignore you.”

“Really?” I gesture toward him with both hands because apparently looking like he got jumped in an alley is supposed to magically erase the entire night. “Because from where I was sitting at my mother’s house, watching dinner get cold while everybody waited for you, it felt a whole fucking lot like being ignored.”

Something in his expression cracks.

“Cece—”

“You said—” My voice comes out sharper than I intend, but once I start, I can’t fucking stop. “You promised. You looked me in the face and promised me you would be there. That you would always be there, and like a fucking idiot, I believed you.”

“You weren’t an idiot.”

“Don’t.” I point at him, eyes already starting to burn. “You do not get to walk in here and tell me how I’m allowed to feel.”

His hands curl at his sides, busted knuckles flexing before he forces them open again.

“I couldn’t text you.”

I laugh, but there’s nothing funny in it. “Right.”

“I mean it.”

“Then explain it, Papi, because whatever the fuck happened better be incredible.”

He stares at me for a beat, and for the first time since he walked through the door, the stubbornness drains out of him.

His shoulders drop slightly, his eyes flick toward the floor, and when he speaks again, his voice sounds rougher.

“I got arrested.”

The anger inside me stutters.

I blink. “You what?”

“I got arrested.”

My gaze immediately drops to his hands again, then travels back up over the bruise spreading along his cheek and the cut near his mouth. Suddenly all the blood and swelling I was too furious to process starts fitting together in a way I really don’t fucking like.

“What the fuck happened?”

Revel drags a hand over the back of his neck, then winces like even that hurts. “I stopped at the store before dinner. I was getting flowers for you and your mom, and wine. I spent twenty minutes standing there wondering what the fuck you’re supposed to bring when you meet your girl’s mother.”

Despite myself, my chest squeezes.

“Revel.”

“I saw someone there that I didn’t expect to ever see again.”

The way his voice changes makes my anger pull back another inch.