Page 188 of Chaos Kills

Not anymore.

Not in my world, my head, my heart, my soul, or my fucking sanity.

It’s all a lost cause.

“Bay.” Ozzy sounds like an innocent boy when my name rolls off his lips, bringing out whatever sort of motherly-big sister shit out of me. I force myself to lift my head, coming face-to-face with a man I don’t know—him or his intentions. “Are you scared?”

“No.”

It’s defensive because it has to be.

I’ll never openly give myself away again.

I’m looking to clear my name.

I’m trying to get Torin off my ass and find someone else to terrorize. Reeve will have to find his own way out of this, and I’m afraid it’ll kill him with the amount of substances he seems to be under every time I see him.

“I won’t…hurt you.”

He’s trying…but I can’t make his words stick.

He’s not going to fool me and make me believe I don’t need to be on my guard with him.

And that’s the problem.

My mind mostly buys the fact that wherever he is, I’m not going to be harmed, and I don’t get it.

I’m over here about to shove this dude out of my life, but even right now, if there were a gun between us, it wouldn’t be him grabbing it.

What the fuck is going on with me?

I think I need to get my head examined or schedule an appointment with a therapist. There’s something not stable with my headspace, and it needs to be.

Mae, Ellie, Levi—I don’t have to say anything more than that. Nothing else matters.

Ozzy’s hand shows up within my line of sight again, and in it, is a long blade with almost an extra amount of jagged edges along one side.

The handle is closest, offered as a peace offering to show me he’s giving me the only weapon he has to exhibit how allegedly safe I am.

I take it so he can take back his hand, but I’m not fully convinced while my little heart sings how sweet that was.

You’re losing your edge, Astor.

He will come back for that knife.

Just to show you that he can—then use it against you.

FORTY-THREE

cairo

A musclein my jaw keeps ticking as I stand down the hallway from Ozzy’s room, listening to the two of them talk.

He’s speaking, that’s the thing that fucking shocks me the most.

Apparently, he’s also not rocking back and forth on the floor, curled up in his bed to shove away the memories of Vivian and everything that transpired when I wasn’t paying enough attention.

Everything that just happened is because of me.

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