Page 39 of Chaos

The long fingers curled around a chubby, freckled arm tighten ever-so-slightly. “Uh-huh.”

I wrench my gaze away from the ring that would look so despicably ostentatious on anyone else yet fits the woman wearing it perfectly. “To my brother?”

“No,” Luna drawls sarcastically. “To Finn. I came out here to beat your ass for making a move.”

A low chuckle sounds from behind me. “Leave me out of this.”

I, on the other hand, don’t quite find the same humor in the situation. “You and Jackson are getting married?”

The beautiful face that hasn’t changed a bit in the five years since I first saw it, since the first time my brother brought her here and she busted me sneaking around with a guy who’s name I can’t even remember, softens. “Yeah, kiddo. We are. In a couple of months.”

I swallow something acrid. “Oh.”

“Well and truly, trapped, hm?”

I wince. “Luna—”

“Izzy’s gonna walk me down the aisle,” she cuts off my… apology? Explanation? I’m not sure, but I am sure that my heart, my brittle fucking heart, can’t take much more of this. Can’t take watching the woman about to become my sister-in-law nuzzling the downy head of the nephew I didn’t know existed. “Aren’t you, little guy?”

He’s got her eyes. That’s the first thing I notice, the thing I didn’t see when we briefly met a week ago as he dozed in his father’s arms, destroying me just a little and not even awake to witness it. Big, blue eyes. Blinking at me curiously. Darting between me and his mother,his mother,Lunais amother.

Jacksonis afather.

They have a kid.

A kid with two parents who love him. Who won’t grow up thinking he’s less than or expendable or unloved, or unloveable.

The break in a long, wretched cycle.

I would cry, if I were that type of person. I would be so inexplicably happy, if I were that kind of person either. But no.

I’m the person who’s jealous of a toddler.

Childishly, indefensibly jealous.

But I choke it down. I lift a hand, and I fucking wave at the child who looks the perfect mix of his parents. “Hi, Izzy.”

While he smiles shyly, his mom snickers. “You gonna shake his hand next?”

I scowl at her. “Shut up.”

“I’ll organize a formal meeting,” Luna teases, but as she closes the distance between us, there’s nothing formal about the way she plops her son in my arms. “You know your Auntie Lottie, don’t you, Iz?”

I don’t see how that could be the case, but the kid nods. He doesn’t cry or scream or fidget his way out of my grip. He just… settles. Babbles a little. Finds a whole lot of amusement in destroying the hairstyle I fixed my hair into this morning,yanking on the thin red ribbons securing two plaited pigtails and giggling when they come undone.

I smile. How can I not? And I smile even wider when Izzy says, in his garbled, toddler way, something that sounds an awful lot like my name.

And Luna, ever the sarcastic asshole, ever me in a more aesthetically-pleasing font, gasps at the sight. “Oh, my. Miracles are real.”

I say again, “Shut up.”

She winks and pats me on the shoulder, a mildly affectionate gesture bestowed on someone averse to it by someone who can only stand it from the right people before jerking her head towards the front door. “C’mon. The sooner we eat, the sooner I can teach you the consequences of calling my kid a trap.”

Oh, what a treat that’s likely to be.

I shouldn’t be surprised when Finn follows us inside, but I am. I watch him with a frown as he saunters into the kitchen and takes a seat at the table,myfucking seat, or the seat thatusedto be mine, I should say. And I frown some more when I realize the table is set for six adults, not five, and then Iscowlwhen, within a couple of seconds, Alex is climbing onto Finn’s lap, bouncing on his thigh, a hand braced on his shoulder as he rambles with near-incomprehensible enthusiasm, with easy, casual amity, about the toad he found down at the creek this morning.

Childish and inexplicable once more, irritation makes me twitch. Makes me snap with a little more venom than necessary, “I thought this was a family dinner.”

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