Page 180 of Chaos

My mouth is bone-dry. My head swims.Myheart thunders something fierce, swells to a near-deadly extent. “And yours is here?”

His hand slips. Falls to my chest, fingers splayed wide. Just to the left of my sternum. “Yeah, baby. Mine is right here.”

When I start to shiver, Finn drags me back to civilization.

“We have plans,” he informs me ominously, and my poor, battered nervous system weeps, it doesn’t want plans, it wants a dark room and silence. But as my wet clothes are peeled from my body, as any lingering snow islickedfrom my body, it decides it wants Finn more.

He makes a real big show out of promising me that wherever we’re going is not a date, and I guess he tells the truth.

It’s worse than a date.

It’s adoubledate.

Well, a double date, and Adam. Or depending on how you look at it, a double date and me, considering my boyfriend andhisboyfriend are practically joined at the hip. I swear, I feel like the third-wheel, but I’m kind of okay with it. Finn splitting his attention between me and someone else means he doesn’t fully notice how much I like his littlenot datesurprise—means he can’t gloat like an asshole.

Really, though, it’s not awinwin for him.

Obviously, I was going to like the goddamn rodeo.

It’s cold and it’s loud and it’s busy, but there are horses. There are fried pickles. There’s a man wearing a red sweater and a matching red hat who keeps glancing over his shoulder to grin at my belt buckle, so really, I can’t find all that much to complain about.

That is, of course, until the conversation strays to places I wish it wouldn’t.

“You think it was random?” Yasmin muses around a mouthful of cotton candy, and my whole body tightens. “Or were we targeted?”

“If we were targeted,” Theo licks the back of his thumb and uses it to swipe away a sticky, sugary streak on his girlfriend’s cheek. “Wouldn’t they have targeted the main house? Or the barn, where the safe is?”

“Maybe we were the targets.” Adam pumps his brows, completely oblivious to how his joke has me paling. So unaware as to how right he is when he turns the joke on me. “You got any enemies, Lot?”

I laugh shakily, and I fucking pray that it doesn’t sound as damning to their ears as it does to mine. “Too many to count.”

Everyone chuckles. They think nothing of my response. They continue flippantly discussing the break-in as we wander between food stalls, and they don’t, for a single second, consider taking my words as anything more than the joke it unfortunately is not.

Everyone, of course, but the man who drops back to curl his fingers around mine. “You okay?”

“Yup,” comes out a little too quickly. A little too sharply. A little toosuspiciously, earning me narrowed, attentive eyes that I suddenly, desperately need to escape lest they see right through me.

Muttering something not entirely coherent about needing the bathroom, I duck out of Finn’s grip and dart away, getting lost in the crowd before he can even think to follow. Head low, I throw elbows at the people who don’t immediately make way for me and my dire scowl.

It’s apt, I think, that my stomping feet bring me all the way to the bull pen. I fit right in amongst the huffing, severe creatures. Fingers curling around one of the horizontal metal bars separating me from the beasts, I glare at the one closest, an enormous roan who glares straight back.

“Woah.” A pair of bare, tanned forearms stack beside me, a tattooed elbow brushing mine. “You’re gonna scare my bulls, girl.”

Fuck your bulls,I start to tell whatever dumbass mistook me as approachable only for the words to dry up in my throat when I recognize the dumbass in question. Aholy shitdies too, but only because I kill it at the last second.

“Everett James,” I say instead as I cock my head at the crown fucking jewel of Haven Ridge. God, the poster I used to have on my bedroom wall really did not do the champion bull rider justice—he’s even better-looking in person. “To what do I owe the pleasure?”

One inked bicep flexing as he lifts the black Stetson off his head, the other follows suit as he rakes a hand through chin-length, chestnut-brown hair that looks a little ruddy where the sun catches it. Everett flashes a grin that could stop traffic. “Do we know each other?”

“I’m a Jackson,” is the only explanation I offer, figuring it’ll be enough, and it is. Maybe we’ve never met, but it’s clear Everett knows all about the family that grew up on the ranch right next door to his own. Just like we knew all about him—just like a whole lot of people know all about him, about the small town bull rider who made it real big.

Big enough to never have to hang around a little rodeo like this one, yet here he stands.

“Ah.” Shifting to prop his hip against the pen, he cocks his head right back, lips curling at the edges as eyes that honest to Godsparkledrag down the length of me and back up again. “You look a little young to be the famous Lux.”

I snort—Luxis a little young to bethe famous Lux. “I’m Lottie.”

“Lottie,” he repeats, rolling my name in a way that would be dangerously seductive to anyone not versed in the art of cocky cowboys. “You sure we haven’t met? You look familiar.”

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