Page 151 of Chaos

I’d be offended he needs the clarification if it weren’t demanded in such a desperate pant. Palming either side of his neck, I lean into him even more. “I told him if he touched me again, my pussy-ass cowboy would put him in the ground.”

Finn laughs. Groans. Kisses me again. “Pussy-ass cowboy?”

“His words, not mine.”

“You don’t wanna put him in the ground yourself?”

I grin. God, he really does know me.

Got someone else fighting your battles for you now, Lottie?Ricky had snarked, and I’d snapped my fingers before flashing the middle one and correcting.Touch me again and my pussy-ass cowboy will keep watch while I put you in the ground.

“Jesus.” Finn groans again when I relay the encounter. “Fuck, baby. How could I ever change my mind about you? In what fucking universe would I not likeyou?”

I decide not to answer that.

Finn doesn’t tell me we’re not going to work so much as he just doesn’t let me. I try, and he just drags me back to bed, keeps me there with kisses and sweet murmurs and wandering hands that never wander as far as I want them too.

More than once, I wonder if it’s a manipulation tactic. If being needy makes me mouthy in more ways than one—if that’s what makes me spill my guts without so much as a nudge.

Because spill, I do. I tell him everything. Every last dirty detail. How I grew up and how I ended up in Serenity and why I left, things I think he might already know, but he lets me rehash it all anyway. I tell him things he definitely doesn’t know, the thing that only one other person knows, and as my eyes water, he holds me close until that last, secret memory of my mom doesn’t hurt quite so acutely.

I roll onto my stomach when I tell him about Ricky, not quite able to meet his eyes as I regale how we met in rehab, how we relapsed together, how I thought that he was the kind of guy I deserved. That that life we had, that listless, nothinglife, was what I deserved too. And while I manifest the mattress swallowing me whole, he connects the freckles on my upper back with his mouth, waiting until I’m done before murmuring that he’s really, really going to enjoy teaching me exactly what I do deserve.

It’s why I’m back that I struggle to articulate the most. Not because of the accident or the unexpected reunion, but the deal I struck. Not the shallow, monetary part of it all, but the time limit that I half-forgot about until I bring it up—the six months that I’m halfway through now.

The fingers lazily tracing the tattoo on my lower back stutter, but Finn doesn’t comment on the revelation. If he has any kind of thoughts about it, he doesn’t share them. If he has a question, he doesn’t ask.

I have questions. I have desperation. I am downright feral to know how he feels about the prospect of me leaving in a matter of months, but I keep quiet too. I stew in my curiosity—I still stew in it now, hours later, as I sit on the kitchen counter and watch Finn cook.

“Open.”

Lips parted as requested, I make a real show out of licking the creamy yogurt dressing smeared on the spoon he extends towards me. I smirk when he groans, squirming when he squeezes my thigh before he forces his attention back to the dinner he hasn’t let me help with even a little. Not that I’ve really tried—I’m more than happy with my role of Head Taster. With my spectator’s position.

Not for the first time in my life, I wish I had my brother’s artistic capabilities. I wish I could draw like he can because Finn, in this moment and in every moment, surely deserves to be memorialized on paper. The concentration creasing his brow as he chops a bundle of herbs. The purse of his lips as he whistlesalong to the low music playing. The round, perfect ass he flashes when he turns away to flip the halloumi grilling on the stove.

When he faces me again, I can’t help but smile. I laugh a little too because he looks like he’s fresh off a murder scene, his white shirt ruined with red droplets—the consequences of taking the back of a knife to a ripe pomegranate.

“You should just take it off,” I quip, and it’s not the first time I’ve done that either.

Nor is it the first time he grins and kisses me and mumbles, “You’d like that, wouldn’t you?”

My lips quirk and my heart jumps, and itisthe first time I’ve felt like this. Whatever the warm comfort embedding itself in my bones is called. Whatever it is that makes me curse the five fucking feet of distance between us when Finn moves to grab something from the backpack hanging off one of the stools on the other side of the island. What makes me clingy when I’m usually not, what makes me miss someone who’s still in my direct line of sight when I rarely miss anyone, what renders me speechless when God knows that’s not a common affliction of mine.

The latter, I’m a little more of when I realize Finn hasn’t returned empty-handed.

“Not quite mylittle broken heart,” he quotes my own words back to me as he nudges my thighs apart and slots between them like he belongs there. A hot palm coasts over my skin so distractingly, I almost don’t notice the other brandishing something right beneath my nose.

With an uneven swallow, I accept the offered token, the delicate carving that’s so much simpler than its predecessors yet entirely too complicated. Flipping over the mahogany red heart, I thumb the two marks marring the otherwise smooth surface while mine, weathered and withered beyond its years, throbs.

I curl my fingers around it tightly and hold it to my sternum, as if I’m scared he might just snatch it away. “Day’s not over yet.”

My other hand, Finn finds a heart for too—one that thuds rapidly beneath our interlocked fingers. “Not planning on letting you out of my sight.” He stoops to kiss my knuckles, nipping them playfully. “So I think it’s safe to celebrate.”

Snuffing a spark of irritation before it can ignite, I stare at the thumb that follows the curve of my own. “Because you don’t trust me?”

That thumb freezes. Retreats. Disappears as Finn drops my hand—as he plants both of his on either side of me, any trace of playful tenderness abruptly erased as he drops his forehead against mine. “Because you scared the fuck out of me the other night, Lottie, and the thought of leaving you alone right now scares the fuck out of me too.”

I swallow thickly. As thick as the apology I choke out that makes Finn shake his head and huff.

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