Page 150 of The Next Lie
“They had supervision,” I say.
“Cal does not count.”
“He left.”
“Convenient.”
“Yes.”
She huffs a laugh into my chest, then goes quiet. I feel the shift before she speaks.
“Did you mean it?” she asks.
“What I told him?”
“Yes.”
I tip her chin up. Her eyes are guarded again, but less than before.
“I meant every word.”
She searches my face. Whatever she finds there makes her look away first.
“Okay,” she says.
Just ‘okay.’ A small word, but it’s huge.
I reach for her shirt from the bench and help her into it, then her jeans. She lets me, which is its own kind of surrender. When she is dressed again, I take her hand.
She looks toward the house, then back at me.
“Are we going to talk about Delia?”
“Not yet.”
“Good.”
“Soon.”
She groans. I kiss the top of her head because it irritates her and because I can.
She pulls her hand free and starts down the path ahead of me, walking like her legs are perfectly steady.
They aren’t. She has noodle legs.
My intentions, as Cal called them, are becoming less theoretical by the hour.
Keep her alive.
Give her choice.
Build her a home solid enough to withstand whatever truth tears through it next.
And if anyone tries to take her before she decides she wants that home, I will remind them why Blackwood men built walls in the first place.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
REVA
