Page 158 of Chaos

“I’m never mad at you.” With a rueful smile of his own, the hand not cemented to one of my ass cheeks sweeps my hair behind my ear. “Believe me, I try. It’s impossible.”

He doesn’t look happy about that. I don’t know what he looks like—I don’t know what that look is. I would ask, if the mere potential of his answer didn’t scare the shit out of me.

I might’ve bit the bullet and asked anyway, if a pointedly clearing throat didn’t draw both of our attention to the woman leaning against the door I didn’t even hear open.

“Really hate to interrupt,” Grace drawls, and the urge to make like my failed dinner and disintegrate strikes me. “But I desperately need to know who the hell you are and what you’ve done to my sister.”

Letting my legs drop, I hang in limbo for a whole ten seconds before Finn sets me on my feet. “Ha ha.”

“Were you justgiggling?”

“Weren’t you leaving?”

Grace tosses over keys that I recognize as Lux’s by the beaded keychain her son made, and Finn deigns to take his hand off myass long enough to catch them. “Lux got busy. I’m here to beg your man for a ride to the bus station.”

I don’t know what in the hell possesses me to sigh like the request is some huge inconvenience. I do, however, know that it’s the pouty, teasing simper my twin hits me with that has me stepping out of Finn’s grip, shrugging and muttering, “He’s all yours.”

“Uh-huh.” Grace hums, grinning like a little shit at the man behind me. “Did you call hersweetor was that an auditory hallucination?”

Out of nowhere, a Scrub Daddy sails over my head and hits my twin square on the forehead. “You wanna walk into town, Gracie?”

Grace meows like a fucking brawling alley cat.

And then she makes dramatic smooching noises like a dickhead as Finn dips to kiss me once more. “I’ll pick up some dinner on the way back.”

My eyes narrow, but I don’t exactly argue.

As he saunters out the front door, I only notice someone is watching me watch him go too late.

The look on Grace’s face makes me sigh. “What?”

“Nothing. Well,” she immediately amends, that smarmy grin back in place. “Lots of things, but you’re very flighty. Don’t wanna spook ya.”

I fake another laugh and flash her my middle finger.

“Permission to hug or does he have you all touched out?”

Just to prove a point, I let her yank me into her arms. “I still don’t get why you’re not just staying until Christmas. What’s the point in leaving when you’re coming back in, like, less than two weeks?”

“I have training. Games. A life outside of Serenity.”

“That exists?” I quip even though I know the answer all too well. And even though I can’t imagine wanting to get back outthere, I don’t question Grace anymore. I just give her a squeeze and pull away, expecting one last quip before she saunters out the door.

What I don’t expect, however, is her unnervingly serious expression. I don’t expect firm hands on my cheeks either. Nor the solemn, random proclamation that leaves my twin’s lips. “You deserve good things, Charlotte. Let them happen.”

38

What he feels for her makes him a little delirious.

As does the urge to feel her.

I trythe wholesweetthing on for size again at the crack of dawn.

Yawning so hard my eyes water, I use my elbow to knock on a closed bedroom door. A deeply unpleasant sense of familiarity washes over me when Finn doesn’t answer. That same relief I experienced the other night flushes it away when I awkwardly twist the doorknob and find it unlocked. I don’t, however, find Finn.

His room is empty, but the door to what I quickly realize is an ensuite—no wonder I never run into the lucky bastard using the communal one down the hall—is open. Setting down the mug of black coffee I watch him chug pretty much every morning, I’m deciding whether to scurry away like a sneak or linger like a creep when a noise from the bathroom makes me freeze.

A low moan, to be exact.

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