Page 38 of Chaos

My head lolls to the side, my eyeballs rolling, getting caught on the ebony skin exposed by yet another obscene bicep-bearing crop before finding a smirk that makes me squint. “It’s a recurring nightmare, actually.”

With a low laugh, Finn holds a fist out towards me, unfurling it, palm-up, to reveal my stolen lighter sitting in the center. “Guessing you’re looking for this?”

Grunting, I reach for it, fingers just brushing the plastic before it’s snatched away. I make another discordant noise, I make another grab for it, but like a fucking overgrown child, Finn holds it above his head, keeping it hostage.

He does the same thing to the goddamn cigarette he steals right out of my mouth too.

“What the fuck is your problem?” I snap as I attempt to retrieve both of them, failing miserably because while no one would call me short, that word doesn’t even exist in Finn’s vocabulary, and evidently, he’s dead set on using every extra inch he has to keep me from indulging in one of many nasty little habits.

Grinning like an asshole, Finn drops his thieving hand and moves it behind his back—like he thinks his body is an adequate obstacle, that I wouldn’t dare get close enough to try to take it.

All this time spent around Jacksons, and he hasn’t yet learnt that we have no concept of boundaries? Dumbass.

I step towards him and his eyebrows jump, but he doesn’t move other than to evade another grab—other than to slip his fucking loot into his back pocket, something that makes me huff a laugh because really? He thinks that’s going to stop me?

It won’t. I’ll dive right in there. I can’t imagine there’s a woman alive who wouldn’t grab that bull by the horn—or grab that ranch hand by the ass cheek, if we’re being literal about it.

His mouth, on the other hand, does cause me pause. “Isn’t smoking a little taboo among runners?”

“How do you know I run?Ran,” I quickly correct because I don’t run anymore, I haven’t in… a while. Years. My high school track career ended even before high school did.

A pretty damn good career, as Finn reminds me, “All those medals in your room kinda gave it away.”

My old room, he means. The one at this house. “And when the fuck were you in my room?”

“It was my room for a while.”

Oh, I do not like that. I don’t like that one bit. If I’ve done the math right in my head, I was barely even gone when he came onto the scene. My bed was barely cold before he rolled into it. If I had any wild notions of my room being some kind of mournful shrine…

I didn’t. Hopeless optimism is not a mindset I’ve ever managed to achieve. But shit, did I think my siblings would waste no time moving in a nicer, shinier replacement?

Fuck. That guts me. Makes me cross my arms protectively over my chest, like I’m keeping something from falling out, spilling onto the porch, exposing me.

Although, I think I do a little of the latter anyway when I snark, “They kick you out too?”

Dark brows drop and pull together as the tilt of his head becomes a lot less taunting, and a whole lot intrigued. Confused. As questioning as whatever words I’m sure are about to spill from parted lips.

Except when a voice fills the air, it isn’t Finn’s.

“Well, well, well.” A perpetually sultry tone has me tensing, sighing, and shitting myself in equal measures. “What’s going on here?”

Gaze trained on the man I didn’t realize was quite so close until now, I tell the love of my brother’s life, “Foreplay, I think.”

Finn chokes.

“Can you come back in…” I purse my lips, staring at Finn’s bottom one as his tongue traces it. “Thirty seconds is enough for you, right, darling?”

Obsidian eyes narrow, but he doesn’t get the chance to object.

“Step away from the cowboy, chaos girl. He’s way too nice for you.”

Tell me something I don’t know.

Winking sardonically at Finn, I pat him on the chest as I step around him, my smirk abruptly dropping when I get my first look at Luna Evans in two years.

Luna, the toddler on her hip, and the rock on her slender finger.

It’s the latter that catches my attention the most—an easy feat, what with a diamond the size of my fucking head glinting in the sunlight. “You’re engaged?”

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