Page 39 of The Next Lie

Oh, I do not like that.

The softness under it. The relief. The way he says it like my temper is preferable to last night’s panic. Like he has a right to be glad I’m still in here somewhere.

My chin lifts.

“You don’t get to there she is me.”

“I can wait,” Deacon says.

“Awesome. Practice somewhere else.”

“For a time.”

The room seems to hold its breath. Deacon leans in slightly. Not enough to touch. Enough that his voice drops for me alone. “You can be mad, little ghost. You can hate me. You can run out that door and drink fruity things with Sonny until you forget your own name for an hour. But you can’t ignore me forever.”

The nickname hits wrong. Not bad. Wrong. It slips into some lock inside me I did not know existed, and for one stupid second, I want to ask why it sounds familiar in his mouth.

Instead, I tilt my head and lean forward, until my lips are a breath away from his. “Watch me.”

His gaze drops to my mouth. Only for half a second. My body, traitorous little disaster that it is, notices. So does he. His eyes lift again, sharper now. “Reva.”

“No.” My voice comes out steadier than I feel. “You had fifteen years to decide what to tell me. I get thirty minutes to choose brunch.”

His expression changes. There. A hit. Good. I duck under his arm before he can recover and slip past him. Nobody stops me. Probably because Nash enjoys being right too much.

I open the front door and step into the wet heat of morning, where Sonny is leaning against her car in massive sunglasses and a red sundress, holding an iced coffee like a weapon. She lowers the glasses enough to look me over.

“Oh, honey,” she says. “You look like you got murdered and laid.”

“Only one of those was on purpose.”

Her eyebrows shoot up. Behind me, Shiloh makes a strangled sound. I keep walking.

Sonny’s gaze flicks past me to the doorway, then back. “Do I need to drive fast?”

“Yes.”

We get in the car. The second my door shuts, I breathe for what feels like the first time all morning. Sonny pulls away from the curb with a cheerful disregard for whatever unspoken masculine drama is probably happening behind us.

“So,” she says.

“Nope. Not talking about it.”

“I didn’t ask anything.”

“You were about to.”

“I was going to say you look nice.”

“Liar.”

“Okayyyy. You look hot in a recently rode hard and put away wet kinda way?”

“Better.”

She grins. “Also, there are three men watching us from the porch and one of them looks like he wants to bite through a brick.”

“Which one?”