Page 146 of The Final Cut

REVA

Shiloh drives me back to the hotel.

Deacon stays at the hospital.

That’s the official version, anyway. Watch rotation. Cal needs someone there. Nash’s men are good, but they are still Nash’s men, and Cal is still mine in the way that makes everyone careful when they explain the logistics around his hospital bed. Deacon tells me he’s taking the next shift because Shiloh has been up too long and because the ICU floor has changed nurses and because he wants his own eyes on the stairwell for a while.

All very reasonable.

All very Deacon.

All very convenient.

He stands beside Cal’s door while I leave, black hoodie shadowing his face, gun hidden somewhere under the loose fabric, grief and secrets locked so far behind his eyes I want to claw them out with my fingernails. He knew my mother was alive. He knew enough to step into that chapel like the room belonged to a past he had already survived, and now he’s staying behind with Cal while Shiloh takes me back to the hotel, which feels less like a rotation and more like a man with a bullet graze and survival instincts choosing distance before I turn my mouth loose on him.

Fine. He can have his distance—for now.

Shiloh doesn’t speak as we leave the ICU floor. He keeps one hand light against my lower back through the service hallway, guiding without pushing, every bit of charm stripped from him until only the watchful part remains. His hair is rumpled from too many hours spent awake. His eyes are tired in a way he tries to hide with movement. When we pass the nurse’s station, one of the nurses gives him a small nod, and he returns it without a smile.

That, more than anything else, tells me how bad the night has been. Shiloh without a smile looks like a house with its lights turned off.

The SUV waits beneath the hospital in the same dim service area where Deacon brought me in. Rain has started again, soft but steady, streaking across concrete and dripping from the low ceiling near the exit. I get into the passenger seat because the back feels too much like being transported, and if one more man silently relocates me tonight, I may become a felon.

Shiloh doesn’t argue. He only waits until my seat belt clicks before pulling out.

For the first several blocks, the city slides past in wet silence. Hospital lights smear across the windshield, and the reflection of streetlamps ripple in puddles. My own reflection ghosts against the side window: hood down now, braid coming apart, eyes hollow, mouth too tight. I look like what I am: a girl who walked into a hospital to see her father and found a dead mother instead.

I turn away from the glass.

Shiloh’s hands rest easy on the wheel, but his knuckles are pale. He keeps checking mirrors with small movements, not enough to make a civilian nervous, but enough for me to notice because I now live with men who teach paranoia by osmosis.

I stare out the window again, trying to line up everything that happened in an order that makes sense.

Cal worsening. Deacon waiting in the elevator. The woman in Cal’s room. Her hand on his.

You promised me you would live long enough to bring her back to me.

The chapel. Her face.

Reva?

Because I gave it to you.

My chest tightens so hard I have to breathe through my teeth, and Shiloh reaches across the console and takes my hand. The touch sends a jolt through me, pulling me back to the vehicle, to the here and now, to the man sitting beside me.

He does not tug hard. Just enough to ask without words. When I do not pull away, he draws my hand to his mouth, presses a kiss to my knuckles, then keeps it trapped in his as he drives. A minute later, at a red light, he shifts closer and pulls me gently against him until my temple rests in the hollow between his shoulder and throat.

It’s awkward with the seat belt, but I stay there anyway.

His shirt smells like hospital soap, rain, and Shiloh beneath both, warm and familiar and alive. I close my eyes for three seconds because the dark is easier against him than it is alone.

“I guess you know everything,” I say.

His thumb moves once over my hand. “Some.”

“Deacon told you?”

“Enough to keep me from making a mess in the wrong hallway.” His voice is low, careful. “Then I went to the chapel.”