Page 213 of Chaos

Finn sighs. “I don’t have nightmares about getting shot. I have nightmares about you getting shot.”

“Why?”

He tilts his head back enough to snag my gaze with his. “You ready to talk about it yet?”

No. But will I ever be? “You said you loved me.”

“I said Iloveyou. Present tense.”

“You can take it back.”

“Why would I do that?”

“Why would you…”

“Love you?”

“You can take it back,” I repeat.

He swears instead.

And then he loops his fingers around my forearms and yanks pointedly, pulling me to my feet while I frown, carefully guiding me to move in front of him, sit in front of him, facing him, bearing the brunt of a very irritated expression.

I know, despite my paranoid mind trying to convince me otherwise, that it’s not aimed at me. That… that it’s himself he seems to be annoyed at, for some reason. Frustrated with.

Bathwater sloshes onto the tiles as he abruptly leans back, his arms braced on either side of the tub as he huffs. “Fuck, I’m sorry.”

I blink. “For?”

“Clearly I’ve been doing a terrible fucking job at loving you if you have no idea thats what’s been happening.”

Without giving me a chance to respond, Finn shifts forward again, unavoidable. “You are not an easy person to love,” he murmurs, and raw pain momentarily constricts my lungs before he clarifies the words are not his own. “That’s what you’re thinking, isn’t it?”

I keep my mouth shut, but I reckon my face says it all—it says enough to make Finn tut, to have him shaking his head, chin dipped low as he rests his elbows on his knees.

“You are one of the most complicated people I have ever met. You’re angry. You’re rude. You take everything as an insult, everything is a slight. You hurt so you like when other people hurt too. And,” he slides his palms up my shins, one encircling the wrist of the hand I’ve pressed to my racing heart, “I love you so much, I don’t know what to do with it all.”

I stop breathing.

Finn doesn’t stop at all. “Youaredifficult, Charlotte. You are fucking infuriating. You make me wanna bang my head against a wall, and I love you so much it’s literally all I think about.

“You are difficult,” he repeats, hepraises, he makes the word soundgood. “But you are not difficult to love. I do it so fucking easily, baby. It’s like breathing. It’s like—”

A splash of water cuts him off. Me splashing water. Me clambering out of the bath.

Lips parted with confusion, dark eyes track me as I clamber out of the bath, narrowing as I snag the robe hanging on the back of the door and wrap it around me. Finn starts to get up too, but I hold up my hand—a physical command to stop because I’m not sure I can get a verbal one out. He hisses my name as I slip out of the ensuite, another utterance following me out of his room and into the hallway, and I reckon if his parents weren’t a floor away, he’d wake the whole house, bellowing for me to get my ass back there.

I half-expect him to come tearing after me—butt-ass naked, considering I’m wearing his robe—so I make it quick. I dart downstairs, into the kitchen, rummaging through the cabinets until I find the one where the miscellaneous shit lives, a collection of candles among them. From the junk drawer just below it, I snag my lighter. Lastly, I root through that ridiculous assortment of flowers until I find roses, and I pocket a bunch before bringing my haul upstairs.

Finn is right where I left him. His disgruntled expression softens when I re-enter the bathroom, morphing into amused curiosity as he watches me light candles and carefully pick a handful of rose petals—flaring, just a little, into something else entirely when I strip off once more. I dim the lights before getting back in the bath, shivering despite the steamy temperature that envelops me as that intense gaze roams over my body.

Voice a heated rasp, Finn asks, “What’re you doing, baby?”

I take a deep breath before throwing the petals in the air, watching them float down and swirl in the water. “I figured you’d appreciate a little romance when I tell you I love you.”

The softest, sweetest smile blooms—completely at odds with the cocky way he claims, “I knew that already.”

I scoff. Plucking a petal from the water, I flick it his way. “Oh, you did, did you?”

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