Page 246 of Chaos Kills

She’s just like Torin.

But prettier and she smells good.

Hesitantly, I’m aware that if I don’t follow what she wants me to do, she’ll continue to speak more on it, and I won’t win, so I move forward.

I study her expression and find nothing.

No hidden agenda.

No gun to punish me for what I did to my cousin.

Nothing.

Slowly, and with a few feet between us, I take a seat on her floor and patiently wait.

For her to stop.

Bay doesn’t drop her arm. She doesn’t say another word.

She openly gives me the option—sorta—of touching or not touching her.

Inhaling, I lift my finger, and it barely grazes hers, hoping it’s enough to get her to leave this alone and stop making me do this.

It’s not.

Her long finger with the hot yellow nail polish at the end is still pointed and aggravating me to no fucking end.

Nostrils flared, I push the tip of my finger into hers and hold it there. My body buzzing with so many things that I can’t fully describe them all.

It’s not all anger but a need to see what it feels like to touch her whole hand and how I feel like I’m fourteen again with Vivian.

Physical touch makes my skin crawl. No one has put their skin on mine since Vivian, and it did things. It made me do unspeakable shit by society’s standards. I was looked at like afreak and a nut job because I mutilated that kid who allegedly raped Vivian; I didn’t just shoot him.

Her touch and attention ruled over my rational decision-making. The attention I was given by her and her alone, screwed things up. Instead of going to Cairo to handle and talk about it, I picked Vivian over my brothers.

Never again.

Meanwhile, Bay doesn’t give up, and her finger is starting to piss me off. My immediate thought is to snap and break it, but my brain computes that it knows who lies on the other end of it and who would suffer.

I abruptly drop my arm, expecting a peeved Bay at the other end, but she doesn’t waiver nor does she complain.

Instead, she rises and steps around me in a wide circle. “I’m going to go get a dishcloth. Stay put.”

I glance to where she was previously sitting, pondering if she’s aware of what occurred and if Cairo has already reached out about it.

He probably already has.

I’m the ticking time bomb, and my brothers idly stand by and wait for me to lose my shit. For me to release all the pent-up aggression that I must have accumulated over the years.

It’s handled.

Or, I thought it was.

However, now Bay is in danger, and Levi has been on me about taking and talking to my wife. That the position shouldn’t be taken lightly, and if I make her unhappy, he’s going to make me very unhappy.

I’m not sure what he had in mind.

I didn’t ponder too much about it nor was there anything he could conjure up in his head that could make me afraid.

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