Page 202 of Chaos

“She knows that too.”

My heart skips a beat. I can only pray the arm clutched to my chest doesn’t notice.

Plastic creaks, and I picture the Akello matriarch leaning back in her chair, spine straight, arms folded, chin lifted. “I take it this means you won’t be coming home any time soon.”

“Depends what home you mean, Momma. We don’t have the same one.”

Silence. Loaded looks are exchanged, I imagine, and then, “She’s not what I pictured for you.”

Despite my best efforts not to, I tense.

The arm slung loosely across my hips does too. “Enough, Momma.”

More creaking sounds before footsteps approach, bringing Mrs. Akello to Finn’s side—she leans down to kiss his forehead, I think. “I’m gonna go find your father,” she says before doing just that.

The door closes, and a long exhale brushes the top of my head.

A nose nuzzles my cheek. “I know you’re awake.”

Sighing, I drop the charade, reeling back to take in the face barely an inch from mine. I don’t want to talk about what I just overheard, and it seems futile to ask how he’s feeling—I know the wordfineis more likely to leave his mouth than an honest response—so I study him intently instead. All things considered, he doesn’tnotlook fine. His eyes are bloodshot and a little droopy from the medication they’re pumping him with, but he doesn’t look like he’s on death’s door. He doesn’t even look like he’s on death’s driveway.

He looks alive and something akin to okay, and he’s smiling that beautiful, lovely smile, and I trace it with my thumb, thanking a god I don’t believe in for its existence.

Finn nips the tip, tutting at the destroyed nail before kissing my bandaged palm, sweet actions that are so at odds with a soft, “Get up.”

I jerk, that pesky, familiar dread returning for a second, suffocating round. “Why?”

“‘Cause if I get up, a silent alarm will go off and my mom will storm in here, and I’ll probably end up needing surgery again.”

“That’s not funny.” I poke the hollowed dip above his collarbone. “Why does anyone need to get up?”

His sleepy expression turns a foreboding kind of soft. “Because I can’t be mad at you when you’re being so sweet and clingy.”

My heart jumps to my throat as that tingling familiar numbness settles in my extremities once more. Careful not to jostle him, I untangle myself from him and slip out of bed. My stomach hits the floor the same second my feet do.

For once, I’m looming over him. I’ve got the technical upper-hand, he’s horizontal and wounded and quite literally beneath me. But when that handsome face turns to stone, I feel about two feet tall.

“Don’t you ever do something like that again, do you hear me?”

“I’m sorry.”

“You put yourself in danger like that again…” he trails off. “You don’t. Okay? You stop that shit or else…” Again, he pauses, his head dropping to the pillow behind it as he huffs. “I can’t think of a consequence right now, but I promise it’ll be really bad.”

My thoughts move like mud, trying to make sense of his words, momentarily getting caught on how different our expressions ofmadare. “You’re… you’re mad, right?”

He nods stiffly.

“Because I got you shot.”

“Becauseyougot shot, Lottie. You got shot a little, but you almost got, like, really fucking shot too.”

My frown deepens. I… maybe it’s the painkillers. He’s confused. He doesn’t get it, what happened, not properly.

I repeat, “I got you shot.”

“Better me than you.”

“Don't say that,” I snap, fuckingshivering, loathing that he could ever think like that. “It should’ve been me.”

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