Page 38 of Chaos Kills

Ozzy slides the Coors bottle in my direction, expressing exactly how he feels about how I’m acting.

I need to chill.

Reaching for his silent gesture, I twist the cap off and take a generous swig of the slightly bitter, earthy flavor. Those dark cobalt orbs stay bolted onto me as though he’s not able to do anything else.

My nerves soften as I take my first draw of gentle air into my lungs. As intense as he is, this man somehow can inaudibly calm my ass down.

And the moment is great.

Until the click of a hammer from a gun clips through the air and sends my focus reeling to Levi.

Oh my God, thank fuck.

Then my eyes bulge from my head, and my hand shoots out to stop him. “Wait.”

“I wanna know why you’re here.”

It takes me a milli-second to register Levi’s comment, before I ask, “Hold on, you know him?”

Levi levels a primal glower onto the man sipping on a damn juice box in my makeshift house.

I can’t fully take it seriously.

“Yeah. I fought this fuck underneath the college on fight night.” Levi steps closer but doesn’t put down the gun. “Why it is that, everywhere I turn, I see a fucking Wildes?”

“I’m a Ryland,” Ozzy retorts in his raspy octave and…holy shit.

“Still not supposed to be here.”

“Levi, the girls are here. Let’s not?—”

He inches forward some more. “Why are youhere?”

Ozzy goes back to shutting down when I erase the space between me and my best friend, laying a gentle hand on his forearm. “Hey, there’s something you need to know.”

“In a minute, Astor.”

“No, it has to berightnow. Before you pop a blood vessel.”

Levi doesn’t bother acknowledging me with a look. “When I’m done imprinting his fucking face into the floorthenyou can tell me.”

Oh, for the love of God…

Then, I don’t know why, but a random-ass question pops into my head before I blurt, “Who won that fight?”

Levi slowly—very slowly—cranes his neck in my direction, and that answers my question.

This is interesting because he has at least three inches on Ozzy and more body mass. After all, I’m still swearing on the idea that he took steroids as a teen.

“Why does that fucking matter?” he hedges, quirking an eyebrow as if I’m baiting him purposely.

“Because Ozzy…” I steal a look at him, but nothing about him changes to tell me to stop, so I continue. “I’m married to Ozzy, Lev. Not Ramsey.”

My best friend immediately spins to launch himself at my new husband.

Husband. Husband.

Yeah, I’m still not a fan of that word.

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