Page 10 of The Next Lie

I breathe because his chest rises beneath my cheek and some animal part of me copies him.

Shiloh says nothing from the front seat. That scares me more than if he filled the truck with words. Shiloh always has words. Pretty ones. Sharp ones. Useless ones. Tonight he has none, and the absence sits heavy between us.

I don’t ask if Delia will still be there when he turns around, or if she will vanish again into whatever grave everyone built for her and forgot to tell me was empty.

My palm throbs. I open my hand and look at the marks my nails left. Four red moons. I press my thumb into the deepest one until pain flares.

Ever catches my wrist. “No.”

My eyes burn, but no tears fall now. Maybe I used them all. Maybe my body has moved past crying into some colder place.

“It hurts,” I say, my breath hitching on the words. “I’d rather feel this than that⁠—”

His face is half-shadowed by the passing streetlights. For once, he does not hide from me. He lets me see the anger there. The fear. The helplessness he would probably rather cut out of himself than admit.

“Then let me do it.”

The words are rough. Almost angry.

Then he lowers his face, blotting out the streetlights, and kisses me, hard. One hand twists tightly in my hair, pulling it almost cruelly and stealing a gasp. His mouth opens over mine, rough enough to stop the shaking for half a second, and when I try to drag in another broken breath, he catches my lower lip between his teeth and bites.

The truck turns, jostling us apart and carrying us farther from Noir Night.

Farther from Delia, and farther from answers.

Closer to the house that has started to feel dangerous for an entirely different reason. Not because I think the men inside it will kill me, but because I am starting to understand they might be the only thing keeping me from breaking myself apart on the truth.

I relax a fraction, settling into Ever’s hardness.

Ever’s arm tightens around me.

I do not know if he feels the change or if he is holding on because he needs to. Either way, I let him.

For now.

Just for the drive.

Just until the house.

Just until I can stand on my own again.

Outside the window, the city blurs.

Inside my head, Delia turns away from me again and again and again.

You should never have come.

You don’t know what you’ve done.

I press my wounded palm against my chest and try to hold myself together around the hole she left behind.

But the truth is already inside me.

Moving.

Breathing.

Deedy—