Page 168 of Chaos

“Everyone was right.” Eliza grimaces at whatever my face is doing. “Youaresickening.”

I snort again, throwing an elbow into her ribs.

She throws one right back. “Whereislover boy?”

“What’s a lover boy?” a little voices chimes in before I can explain that Finn is driving his friends to the airport because, unlike him, they’re flying home for the holidays.

Both Grace and I turn around, both of us smile at a sleepy-eyed Alex, both of us get a smile back, but it’s me he crawls to. Arms slinking around my neck, he flops out of bed and into my lap, yawning against my collarbone. “I’m hungry.”

I slip a hand beneath his pajama top to tickle his back. “Hi, Hungry. I’m Lottie.”

A drowsy giggle makes my hearthurt.

Securing Alex against me with one arm, I help myself push to my feet with the other, shifting his weight to my hip as he wraps his legs around my torso.

Still seated, Grace drops her head back to rest against the bed, smiling up at me. “The curse looks good on you.”

I flick her on the forehead before leaving the room.

Well-aware that the kid will probably be asleep again before I even get to the kitchen, I still make my way through the quiet, dimly-lit house. And even though, sure enough, soft snores tickle my neck, I still squint at the pantry shelves in search of the homemade applesauce pouches Alex loves—I’m reaching for one when I hear footsteps on the porch.

“The boy was hangry,” I explain quietly as the ceiling light flicks on, assuming it’s Lux getting home from whatever work emergency required me to babysit tonight, and anticipating a motherly reprimand for her son being awake past his bedtime.

Distracted by a sweet, sluggish protest that makes me chuckle because I don’t even think Alex knows whathangrymeans enough to so vehemently insist that he isn’t, I don’t notice the approaching footfalls are heavier than they should be until they stop. Until lips brush the top of my head and fingers slip into the pocket of my sweats and I inhale a lungful of smoky oud, and I realize I assumed wrong.

Twisting to the side, I crane my neck up right as Finn stoops down to kiss me. “You’re back.”

He hums against my lips, gentle fingers stroking my nephew’s hair.

“There’s dinner in the oven,” I tell him as he backs up, and as he smiles and stoops to get it—as I smile when I investigate the sudden weight dragging one side of my sweats down and find a wooden figurine bearing a remarkable resemblance to Grouch, gashed with seven strikes—the domesticity of the scene doesn’t escape me.

Man comes home after a long, hard day’s work to a homemade dinner and his woman cradling a toddler. Granted, my day was just as long and hard, I didn’t make the dinner, and it’s not my toddler, but still. It paints a picture. Plants one in my head. Makes me imagine things I haven’t imagined in a long, long time, but that I used to think about a lot. Used to want a lot.

Out of nowhere, I find myself asking, “Do your sisters have kids?”

If he’s caught off-guard by the question, he doesn’t show it. He just finishes a mouthful of mashed potato and shakes his head. “Nah.”

“Hm.” Maybe that’s why he doesn’t go home for Christmas. I asked and he just shrugged and said he went home last year, like that was any kind of an answer, like that didn’t raise more questions. But maybe it’s just as simple as the holidays are more fun when tiny humans are around to enjoy it—I know my past two without any haven’t been anything close to merry.

I could ask again. Could ask him about his own wants.

Instead, something else comes out of my mouth. “I used to want five.”

That has him missing a beat. A forkful of roast chicken poised halfway to his mouth, he crooks a brow—surprised by what I said or the fact I said it at all, I’m not sure. “Yeah?”

“Hm. My mom always used to say that I was just like her, and for a while, after she left, I wanted nothing more than to not be.And for some reason my brain saidokay. You’ll have five kids, and you’ll love them all the same, and you’ll never leave them.”

“You don’t think she loved you all the same?”

I drop my gaze, chuckling quietly. “I know she didn’t.”

In my peripheral, I watch Finn set his cutlery down. My nose crinkles as he stands and walks to where I still linger in the doorway of the pantry. That tattooed hand rises and I shift to evade it only to realise Finn isn’t reaching out to comfort me, but to rummage around on the shelf behind me. Snagging a bottle of hot sauce, he finds the applesauce I never actually grabbed too, uncapping it with his teeth and tucking the pouch between the little fingers of the barely-awake boy in my arms before returning to his seat.

He doesn’t look at me, he doesn’t press me to continue, but I can tell he’s listening—I can feel his attention.

And while once upon a time, the weight of it might’ve made me shut the hell up, it only seems to spur me on now. “She, uh, changed her mind a lot. About who her favorite was. Sometimes it was Jackson because he was her only son, or it was Lux because she was the oldest girl or it was Eliza because she was the youngest, or it was Grace because she was the sweetest.”

“And you?”

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