Page 104 of Chaos

My breath lodging like a sharp, foreign object in the back of my throat, I watch Serenity’s farrier hang up his apron and saunter our way. “Yourhorse, huh?”

“Uh-huh. He might die though.”

As dark eyes and quirked brows flit to me, I rush out, “I did not say that.”

Completely deadpan, Alex backs me up. “Mama said animals die sometimes and that’s okay because it’s the circle of life.”

I cover my mouth to stifle a snort.Jesus.

As Finn uses a cough to cover his own reaction, he pokes the little boy who worships him. “Are you sure you’re really three-and-a-half? Not thirty?”

Alex pulls a horrified face. “Thirty is old.”

Hiding my smile against his temple, I whisper, “Ask Finn what age he is.”

As his mouth drops open, the poor kid looks genuinely distressed. “Are youthirty?”

“Not quite.” Chuckling, Finn smoothes a hand down the back of Alex’s head only to abruptly rip it away when it grazes mine where it lies flat between his shoulder blades.

And that right there represents the past month of my life.

No, not a month—nineteen days.

Nineteen days since the white, whittled rose. Nineteen days sinceof course we are.Nineteen days since a palpable shift occurred in mine and Finn’s relationship.

We’re friends. Of that, I am abundantly sure. Because he treats me the same way he treats Yasmin. The same way he treats Theo and Adam. The way he treats my sisters and my brother and everyone else we work with or run into.

The problem is he never treated me the same way he treats everyone else before. And I didn’t realize that until he stopped.

I didn’t realize that sure, he’s a tactile person, but he was a special kind of tactile with me. It was careful and considerate, but it was frequent and it was affectionate and it was… intimate. I didn’t realize that he does understand the concept of personal space, he just didn’t apply it to me. I didn’t realize that I woke up every morning wondering what facet of my being he woulddecide to compliment—I didn’t realize I cherished the random praise so much, until it stopped coming. Until it shifted from posture and fingernails and the length of my fucking neck and becamegood jobandgreat workandnice one.

I don’t like it. I don’t like that I don’t like it. I don’t like that the absence of all that casual touching I used to bat away has left me bereft, that him not doing something as simple as sitting beside me on the sofa leaves me cranky, that a mere man has such power to alter my mood. I hate that I lie in bed at night, wondering what I did yet devoid of the fucking balls to just ask.

To askhim. I have asked Yasmin. More than once.

“What’s his damage?” I gripe at her almost daily, and every time she just shrugs, changes the subjects, makes it abundantly clear that I’m not imagining things yet doesn’t do shit to clear anything up.

And as I grunt that question again now, after returning my nephew to his mother and joining Yas in warming up a couple of horses for a trail ride, her response is no different. “So he hasn’t told you anything?”

Tugging on the lead rope connected to a docile old mare named Lady, Yasmin shakes her head. “Nope.”

My fingers close tightly around my own rope, making my own mare snort, and I scratch Bowie apologetically behind her ears before asking, “But you know?”

She purses her lips unhappily, but she relents. “I suspect.”

“Share with the class.”

“I’m not one for gossip.”

I bark a laugh. “Since when?”

Dipping into the cloth bag clipped to one of her belt loops, she tosses a carrot at me. I catch it, feeding it to Bowie before dipping into my own treat bag for an apple to throw at my fellow hand.

“Did he…” I throw out at the same time, the words a whole lot heavier than any piece of fruit. “Did he tell you?”

There’s no need to clarify. Yasmin knows what I’m asking, she knows about the nothing that could’ve been something if it were to have happened, but itdidn’t. “He was a little…” she starts apologetically, cautiously, almost as if she thinks I’ll be mad that they discussed the closet non-incident. “Rattled.”

“Is that why he’s being like this?” I seek clarification I know I won’t get. “Fucking hell, if almost kissing me sends him into such a spiral, imagine what would’ve happened if we actually did.”

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