Page 122 of Chaos

Fingers encircling my wrist stop me halfway.

Again, Finn asks, “What’re we doing, Lottie?”

Something tells medancingis not the answer he wants. “I’m trying to make sure your little broken heart doesn’t mess with my brother’s wedding day.”

The body almost flush with my own stiffens.

I close my eyes for a breath, for long enough to metaphorically smack myself in the mouth for letting it run so freely. Braced for anger or hurt or both, I look up only to find neither.

To find something soft and bemused and mildly self-deprecating. “You say something like that and it makes me wanna kiss you, yet you really don’t believe that I like you?”

I stumble a step, saved from the embarrassment of falling on my ass by a hand returning to my lower back. “Still on that, huh?”

“Been on it, baby.”

“Finn.”

“Sorry.” He doesn’t sound it. He doesn’t look it either. He looks… determined. He looks himself again. Not the wary, skittish version of himself I’ve become accustomed to lately. Not the one I can tell is holding his tongue half the time—he certainly doesn’t hold it now. Doesn’t keep his hands at bay either as the fingertips of one get dangerously close to discovering just how impossible it is for me to wear underwear with this dress while the others tangle themselves up in my hair, and Finn sighs like he missed the sensation.

Like he really, really means it when he murmurs, “I miss you.”

“You’re the one avoiding me.”

“Has anyone ever told you you’ve got a real twisted perception of reality?”

“You barely talk to me,” I protest because I’m not imagining it all, I can’t be. “This is the first time you’ve touched me in, like, a month.” If we’re excluding that night,thenight. “You don’t even come watch Carmen train Ruin anymore and I know it’s not because of her, I know you guys are fine, I saw you talking.”

“I never came to watchCarmen,” he huffs and he’s doing that thing again, that inflection, talking in a way that makes it sound like he thinks he’s stating the obvious. “I come for you.”

Naturally, my mind takes that a way it isn’t supposed to.

Tracking the hot flush that creeps up my neck, Finn sinks his teeth into his bottom lip. “Didn’t mean it like that.”

Oh, hell. I can’t resist. “Like what, cowboy?”

Finn doesn’t indulge my crooned question. Not verbally, at least.

That prologued lip biting, though, says a whole fucking lot. He doesn’t answer, but heanswers, hestares, and now I’m squirming, I’m bothered, I’m grappling to steer the conversation back on track. “So it’s all me, then? Everything’s my fault.”

“Shit comprehension skills too.”

“Oh, keep going. I’m really starting to believe you.”

“Youdobelieve me. You just don’t want to.”

Frustration scratches the back of my throat—or maybe that’s just panic. “Can we not talk about this?”

“You’re the one who brought up my little broken heart.”

“I was joking. Your heart is not broken.”

“Only a little bruised.”

“Finn,” I huff again, I fucking plead with him to stop.

This time, he obliges. With a soft sigh, the hand on my back travels up the length of my spine, cupping the back of my head to guide my face to the crook of his neck before it retreats.

As he holds me close, he doesn’t say anything else. The song ends, and he doesn’t let me go. Another starts and finishes and still, his grip remains steadfast.

---