Page 43 of The Next Lie

“No, you don’t. You’re alive because of me. I brought you beignets and penis literature. I am basically a trauma specialist.”

Shiloh loses the battle and laughs out loud. Ever closes his eyes like he is praying for patience or death, one or the other. Sonny turns in her chair. “You two have thoughts?”

Ever says, “Nope.”

Shiloh says, “Many.”

Ever looks at him. Shiloh lifts his drink. “None I’m foolish enough to share.”

“Coward,” Sonny says.

“Survivor,” Shiloh corrects.

I bury my face in my hands. For the first time since last night, embarrassment feels almost clean. Sonny reaches across the table and squeezes my wrist. The gesture is quick. Barely there. Her voice changes when she says, “Good?”

I look at her. The laughter is still in her eyes, but something softer sits behind it. She knows. Not everything. But enough to understand this is not just about books or drinks or whether some poor fictional prince has a royal piercing. This is about me needing a place where I can breathe without everyone watching to see which truth breaks me next.

I nod. “Good,” I say. Her fingers squeeze once more before she lets go. Then she ruins the moment immediately by opening the book again and saying, “Okay, but listen to this sentence.”

“No.”

“Yes.”

“Sonny, I swear to God.”

She reads it anyway. I laugh so hard I almost spill my drink. Shiloh groans from the back table. Ever says something under his breath that might be, “I should have stayed home.”

The afternoon stretches around us, warm and ridiculous and borrowed. I know it will end. I know I will have to go back to the house. Back to Deacon. Back to the conversation waiting with teeth. Back to the sister who is alive and the men who knew just enough to make everything worse. But for now, Sonny reads terrible dirty dialogue in a dramatic whisper while Shiloh pretends not to listen and Ever fails to disappear into the wall. For now, my stomach hurts from laughing instead of dread. For now, that is enough.

Delia—

Today I laughed so hard I almost spit margarita through my nose. Elegant, I know.

My friend Sonny bought terrible romance novels and talked super-loudly about fictional men with pierced dicks, and for about ten minutes, I was just some girl in a bar with her friend.

Not a ghost. Not a mistake. Not the wrong daughter.

Then I remembered you.

I keep doing that. Forgetting for half a second, then remembering so hard it feels like getting punched.

I wish you had been there. I hate that I wish that, because, you know, you hate me and all. Don’t know WTF that’s all about, but there we have it, folks. Sisterly love at its finest.

I wish I’d pulled your hair harder when we were kids.

CHAPTER NINE

REVA

Ever stands by the kitchen window, his silhouette a heavy, unmoving shadow against the afternoon light. The sun is trying to burn through the New Orleans humidity, casting long, dusty fingers across the tiled floor of Blackwood House. He’s been quiet since we got back yesterday, the kind of quiet that feels like he’s cataloging every breath I take. I sit at the kitchen table, tracing the deep wood grain with my thumb, trying to ignore the way the air in this house has shifted. It’s no longer just a sanctuary; it’s a vault, and I’m the thing locked inside.

The smell of brewing coffee is thick, but it doesn’t mask the underlying scent of the house—old wax, lemon oil, and the faint, metallic tang of the weapons they all seem to carry. I watch the steam rise from a forgotten mug. My nerves are frayed, a wire pulled too tight, vibrating with the residual laughter from Sonny and the crushing weight of Delia’s ghost.

Nash enters the kitchen with that stride of his—controlled, dominant, like he owns the oxygen in the room. I flinch. It’s a small movement, an involuntary twitch of my shoulder, a physical rejection of his sudden, overwhelming proximity. I see Ever’s eyes track it. He notices everything—the way my pupils dilate, the way my heart hammers against my ribs. Nash stops near the island, his gaze landing on me like a physical weight, pinning me to the chair.

“We can’t keep you behind glass, Reva,” Nash says. His voice is a low rumble, devoid of the playfulness Shiloh carries. There is no charm here, only the hard-edged reality of a man who deals in consequences. “The Syndicate knows you’re here. They know you’re alive. New Orleans is a small city for people with their resources, and the Blackwood name only buys so much time before curiosity turns into an audit.”

I look up, my jaw tightening until it aches. “I didn’t ask to be kept behind glass. I came here to find a killer, remember? I didn’t come here to be a porcelain doll in your collection.”