Page 209 of Chaos

I frown at her. “You don’t want to rebuild?”

“Maybe…” She chews on her bottom lip—choosing her words carefully, I can tell. “Maybe I shouldn’t. I’ve been stretched so thin for years, y’know? Maybe this is a sign.”

“But you love the rescue side of things.”

“Not as much as you do.”

“What?”

My older siblings exchange a loaded look before Lux’s gaze flits back to me. “You love horses, Lottie. That’s the only reason we ever started taking them in.”

Shock parts my lips. “Really?”

Lux nods. Jackson nods. Fucking Grace and Eliza nod too, completely unsurprised and snickering a little, like they’re amused that I didn’t know.

Blinking away the sudden itch making my eyes water, I swallow the lump in my throat and drop my temple to my brother’s shoulder again, reaching around the back of him to clasp my older sister too, squeezing her wrist in a silent thanks because I don’t think a verbal one would come out all that coherently.

She squeezes me back, saying nothing, and no one else says anything either. The five of us are silent as we stare at the remnants of such an enormous part of our life.

Eliza sniffs. “This feels like the end of an era or something.”

“Maybe it’s the start of a new one.”

I manage to keep my mouth shut for a grand total of three seconds. “That was a little cringe.”

A long-suffering sigh leaves my brother. “Shut up, Charlotte.”

49

His dad asks the same question his mama did.

He offers the same response.

He’s already home.

A dayafter he crashed into a telephone pole, Ricky was charged with arson and attempted manslaughter in the same hospital he put my boyfriend in.

In matching rooms just down the hall, Vic and Ethan were slapped with their own charges. Only a few hours later, the Webers were found in the shitty mobile home they’d moved to a different part of my family’s land in a half-assed attempt at evasion and found themselves with a breaking and entering charge that wasn’t anything close to their first, an assault charge to match, and a shiny new arson charge too.

Their trials are sometime next month. I’ll have to testify, as will Finn. My lawyer spouted a hundred things that need to happen between now and then, none of which I really comprehended, but that’s okay. I understand the important parts.

The assholes who tried to ruin my life are locked up indefinitely, without bail and no one to pay it anyway. They didn’t get what they wanted, not even close.

And Finn is okay. Finn is tucked against my side, using me as a crutch as I help him up the stairs and into his bedroom for the first time in a long, long week.

Well, it’shisfirst time. Not mine. Something Finn clocks the second his head hits the pillow.

Rubbing his cheek against the silky fabric, he sniffs. “Have you been sleeping in here?”

I let the duffel bag he’s been living out of for the past few days hit the ground with a harder thump than necessary, scoffing. “Don’t be ridiculous.”

“My pillow smells like you.”

“I think the pain is making you delusional. Let me get your—”

Impeding my escape attempt, Finn snags me by the wrist. “You were sleeping in here.”

I roll my lips together. “Lux hired a shitty glazier. There’s a draught in the attic.”

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