Page 197 of Chaos

Finn.

“Jackson found Ruin,” Lux murmurs, slow and quiet and cautious like I’m the horse she speaks of, like I might bolt or bite or worse. “He made his way to the A-frame. Calmed right down, he said.”

Good. That’s good. One less thing for my mind to fixate on.

More room for me to spiral about something else.

“Shut up,” I rasp.

Lux jerks. “What?”

“That’s the last real thing I said to him. He told me he loved me, and I told him to shut up. And now he might be—” A dry sob scratches my throat and I cover my mouth. “I didn’t say it back.”

A quiet, trembling voice says my name, fingers graze my arm and I jolt, side-stepping the attempted comfort, shaking my head frantically.

“Let’s go sit down for a bit, okay? You should get something to eat.”

“No.”

“Lottie—”

“Ican’t. This is all my fault.”

“It’s not,” Lux gently protests, but she’s lying. She was there when I told the sheriff everything. She knows as well as I do that it all comes back to me.

“If he’s okay—”

“Whenhe’s okay,” Lux corrects firmly.

“—he’s not gonna love me anymore. I got him shot.I did this.”

Lux mouths my name and reaches for me again. I bat her away harder than necessary, stepping away again too, almost barrelling someone over in my desperation. I whip around, not to apologize, but to snap, to let loose on whatever poor bastard happened to stumble into my path, to ease a little of the maelstrom making my bones ache.

I take one look at Silas, and my anger dries up.

When I rasp, “What the hell are you doing here?” it isn’t sharp. It’s panicked, dulled by a different vein of the guilt that’s been plaguing me for hours. Cloying failure coats my tongue as I drop my gaze to the floor, fearing he might see my cravings reflected in it.

A pointless fear—of course, he knows.That’swhy he’s here.

“You tricked me into being your sponsor,” he grunts. “And now you’re mad when I actually be your sponsor. Typical.”

I don’t say anything. I just stare at the ratty old slippers on his feet that, under any other circumstances, I’d mock. Right now though, they make me want to cry. Especially when one of them nudges the tip of my mud-and-blood-stained boots, as uncharacteristically gentle as the voice that mutters, “Let’s go.”

“I don’t wanna go anywhere.”

He has a cane, I suddenly realize. I didn’t know he used one, I’ve never seen it before, but I briefly become intimatelyacquainted with the wooden aid when it thwacks me on the shin. “Did I ask?”

No. He didn’t. And he doesn’t as he turns on his heel and starts shuffling down the hall, his cane tapping the floor in a slow, steady rhythm.

And for some reason, my feet choose this moment to work.

As Silas pushes through a set of double doors and flips his cane, using the hooked end to drag me in after him, I frown. “I’m not religious.”

“Me neither.” He drops onto a pew, huffing as he tries and fails to get comfortable on the unforgiving wooden seat. “But I don’t sit on hospital floors, little one.”

“You could’ve sat in the waiting room.”

“There arepeoplethere.”

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