Page 2 of Chaos

Jackson barely registers the hit, too focused on sliding out my bank cards and shoving them into his back pocket. “You’ll get a new card in my name. I’ll give you enough for some basic living expenses, and that’s it. Everything else, you pay for yourself with the job you’re going to get.”

I blink. “Are you kidding?”

He is most definitely not kidding.

“You dropped out of college, I didn’t say a word. You do the bare fucking minimum around here, I let it slide. You piss your life away and I make excuses for you every damn day. But this, this is too much. You’re twenty-fucking-years old, Charlotte. You need to grow up.”

I flush, embarrassment curdling my gut as his words strike something vulnerable. But instead of dulling my temper, the hit only stokes it. I don’t care about the money, I never have, I don’t want it, but I don’t stop fighting either—Ican’t, and that’s always been my problem. “You think cutting me off is the best thing to do, Oscar? Really?”

“I think teaching you that your actions have consequences is the best thing to do.”

“You’re not my fucking dad.”

“And thank God for that, huh,” he snaps, and if I had a heart that worked, it would probably shatter. “Because as disappointed in you as I am right now, I can’t imagine how I’d feel if you were actually my kid.”

“I hate you,” I shriek, perfectly playing the part of the petulant younger sister, of an unruly child, but that’s how he’s treating me so I guess it fits.

“I know,” he shrieks right back. “Weknow. Are you trying to get us to hate you too? Is that what you want? Because fuck, Lottie, if that’s your goal, then you’re pretty damn close.”

“Oscar.” A hiss interrupts our screaming match, both of us red-faced and panting as we spin to glare at Lux standing in the doorway, arms tightly crossed and lips pursed. “Enough. Both of you.”

My older siblings lock furious gazes, a silent, mental conversation transpiring between them, one only they’re privy too. God, with the odd mental link those two have, you’d swear they were the twins, not me and Grace.

Though I don’t hear their argument, I know Lux wins. Without sparing me another glance, Jackson storms out of the room, taking my freedom with him, and leaving me to drown in an awful, stifling silence with our sister.

My gaze hits the floor as I shift uncomfortably. Jackson, I can handle. I can take his anger because I can give it right back, because I have a shit ton of anger to spare, a whole childhood’s worth.

What I can’t take is Lux; this quiet brand of reproach she’s adopted, her unfaltering control of her emotions, the perfectly passive look on her face as she clears her throat. At the silent demand, I reluctantly meet her gaze.

Crooking a brow, she cocks her head. “Need help packing?”

To counteract the panic that tightens my chest, my temper flares. “You’re kicking me out?”

“I’m telling you,” she corrects, perfectly calm, “that if you brought drugs under my roof, in the same house as my son, you need to get out before I find them.”

Fuck. “I told you, they weren’t fucking mine.”

“Keep that tone up. See what happens,” she says so smoothly, so cooly, a deadly kind of warning in her voice, the kind you don’t see before it’s too late.

I’m fighting a losing battle, I know I am, but I don’t go down easy. I lock gazes with Lux for as long as I can handle before looking away, not showing a shred of emotion as I grab the first bag I can find and start filling it with random shit.

They don’t believe me,fine. They don’t want me,fine.

It’s not like they’re the first.

And I doubt they’ll be the last.

1

For six months, he sleeps in a room full of things he’s afraid to touch.

They don’t talk about the girl in the pictures, so he doesn’t ask.

“Make a wish.”

Rolling my eyes at the smirking, blond dumbass waving a lit Zippo in my face, I blow out the flame before he can spark up the joint in his other hand. “It’s not my birthday, and you can’t smoke that in here.”

Ricky pouts, and I steel myself against a nauseating wave ofick. Have I always found him so damn annoying? Obviously not or I never would’ve started dating him in the first place. Not that we’re dating; we’rehanging, as Ricky likes to say. Hanging in my apartment since his roommates kicked him out. Hanging in my car when I drive him to work. Hanging at my job because his shifts got cut and he’s got nowhere else to be, apparently. He has all the time in the world to pester me for free drinks I can’t give him, and make other customers uncomfortable, and piss off myboss to the point it’ll be a miracle if I walk out of here tonight with my job still secure.

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