Page 176 of The Next Lie

Reva walks toward me slowly. Bare feet on black mats. Hair coming loose around her face. She stops close enough to put one hand on my chest.

My pulse is wrong. She feels it, her expression changing.

“I’m not going alone,” she says.

“You are going somewhere I can’t get to you fast enough.”

“You’ll be outside.”

“Outside is not beside you.”

Shiloh comes to my other side, not touching me, which is smart. “Nash will be beside her.”

“I know.”

“He is very large.”

“I know.”

“And rude enough to ruin a charity event if required.”

“I know this, damn it.”

Reva’s hand presses firmer against my chest. “Do you trust him?”

“Yes.”

“Do you trust me?”

The question does what she meant it to do.

It forces me to look at her instead of the ballroom I’ve built in my head. Her eyes are steady. Not fearless. Reva is rarely fearless. She is afraid and moving anyway, which is harder.

“Yes,” I say.

She doesn’t let go of me.

Her hand slides down from my chest to my wrist, and for one stupid second, I think she is only touching me because she wants to. Then her fingers press over my pulse.

I go still, but she feels it. The too-fast beat. The wrong rhythm. The part of me I can hide from everyone else because no one gets close enough to check.

Her expression changes, just a little.

“In for four,” she says.

My jaw tightens. “Firefly.”

“Don’t Firefly me. You started this annoying breathing shit.”

Shiloh makes a quiet sound beside us. Smart man that he is, he doesn’t try to turn it into a joke.

Reva keeps her fingers on my pulse. “In.”

I could refuse. Instead, I breathe in.

“One,” she says. “Two. Three. Four.”

The air moves into my lungs wrong at first. Too tight. Too shallow. Then deeper, because she is watching me and because, somehow, disobeying her feels worse than letting her see I need this.