Page 173 of Chaos

As if my thoughts aren’t only so loud in my head, Finn stirs, a sleepy frown creasing his handsome face as he reaches for me. He tugs and I go, plastering myself to his side and sighing contentedly when his mouth finds the harsh lines etched across my forehead and tries to smooth them out. “Whatcha thinking so hard about, honey?”

I see no reason to lie—like I’ve said so many times before, he’ll probably know anyway. “You.”

“Good things, I hope.”

Good. Confusing.A lot. “You make me different and I don’t know if I like that.”

“I’m not trying to make you different.”

Groaning, I flop onto my back so my frustrated scowl focuses on the ceiling instead of on Finn. “That makes it even worse.”

Finn grants me a whole ten seconds of sullen silence before erasing the sliver of space between us. Rolling onto his stomach, he throws an arm across my abdomen, tangles a leg with one of mine, nuzzles the curve of my neck and oh-so-patiently asks, “What’s different, Lottie?”

I think about it, and I feel silly. Because it’s simple. It’s little things, lots of little, inconsequential things, like not flinchingwhen people touch me and actually listening when people talk to me and waking up not dreading the day ahead, and it all boils down to, “I’m really, really happy.”

“And that’s a bad thing?”

“It’s a new thing,” I correct quietly, a sad little contradictory weight settling on my chest. “I don’t think I’ve ever actually been happy before.”

The arm slung over me stiffens.

I dance my fingers along sharp shoulder blades, splaying them wide where I know a heartbeat lurks beneath dark skin and strong bones. “I don’t feel like nothing anymore.”

A blustering exhale skitters across my skin.

Finn doesn’t say anything. For once,I’velefthimspeechless, frustrated, eyes half-shut and gleaming with a kind of agony I don’t quite understand as they roam my face.

“Sorry,” I whisper before his tongue can untangle itself—before he can say more things that are almost too lovely to withstand. “Just got in my head for a sec.”

“I like being in your head.” Rising on an elbow, Finn presses his mouth to my temple. “Wish I could get in there more often.”

I grunt. I wish I could getoutof there more often.

Finn shifts again, planting a hand against the mattress on either side of me, the top half of that unreal body hovering over the top half of mine. “I like that you’re happy,” he murmurs, dropping just enough to brush his nose against mine. “And I liked you just the same when you weren’t. Maybe you feel different, but you’re not different to me.”

The space behind my eyes itches.

Finn drops a little lower, kissing the corner of one. Dragging my nose along his jawline, I nudge him pointedly until he gets the hint and kisses where I want him the most.

Lazy, leisurely kisses that go nowhere because they aren’t meant to, they’re just for the pure pleasure of kissing, they end with my back to his chest and my mind quiet, sated, drowsy.

I don’t realize I’ve fallen asleep until movement stirs me awake again. Finn quietly shushes my protests as he slips out of bed, evading my blind grabs and muttering something aboutladdersandbathroomsandsleeping in his damn bed from now on. Smiling at… fuck, I don’t even know what, smiling just to smile, I hug a pillow to my chest while I wait for the man it smells like to return.

And it’s right as sleep is tickling the edges of my mind again that this odd, preternatural sense ofwrongwashes over me.

Peeling my weary eyes open, I push myself upright, and that feeling only intensifies when a loud bang sounds. When, despite the early,earlymorning hour I find stamped across my phone screen, I squint against the bright light filtering in through the thin curtains drawn across my windows. Headlights, I realize, when I tiptoe across the room and peer outside, careful to stay as out of sight as I can—a difficult feat, considering the entire fucking wall is made of glass.

A foreboding feeling settles in my gut when I don’t recognize the truck idling out the back. It intensifies when I can’t make out whoever’s behind the steering wheel, nor the shadowy figure in the passenger seat, and it damn near bowls me over when I hear the back door slam shut and a handful more intruders rush out into the night.

All except one throw themselves into the rumbling truck. That single person dips into the backseat, and as they strut back to the house, I forget about hiding—I damn near hang out the window, trying to figure out what the hell they’re doing.

It’s right as I realize they’re holding something that they throw whatever it is at the house, and I jolt at the sound of breaking glass and raucous laughter.

And it’s that jolt, the instinctive backstep I take, that stops the brick that sails through my window next from shattering more than just glass.

I scream. Shriek, really. Equal parts terror and outrage fuelling it—because an airborne, rock-hard hunk of clay hurtling towards you is pretty damn terrifying, and becausean airborne, rock-hard hunk of clay just hurtled towards me.

What the fuck?

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