Page 44 of Chaos

Again, there’s no denial. “Your family are good people.”

“Yeah, they’re great and I’m the Devil, I get it.”

“Why do you do that?” His tone bleeds pure exasperation. “Why do you take everything everyone says in the worst possible way?”

Because that’s how they usually mean it.“You tell me. You know enough about me, right?”

Finn grits his teeth. Clutches the steering wheel a little tighter. Quickly glances at me again before swallowing, spitting out, “I think you’re so angry that you don’t even know what you’re angry at anymore. I think you’re jealous. I think—”

“Of you?” I cut him off with a very nasty noise. “Fuckoff, Finn. You’re the ranch bitch formyfamily. What, exactly, do I have to be jealous of?”

This time, when he looks at me, it lasts a lot longer. Sears a lot deeper. Hits me right in the ribcage, burrowing deep and latching on to something meaty and fragile. “Do you really want me to answer that?”

I hide my flinch by looking away, by sneering. “Fuck you,” I repeat except this time, I really fucking mean it.

11

His stomach churns when one of the worst people he’s ever met looks at her like he knows more than just her name.

The younger Weber does the same, he makes her smile.

That waste of space and life makes her smile, and he sees red.

Or maybe it’s green.

A tiny handtrying to yank out a chunk of my hair jolts me awake.

Squinting through one eye at the baby who somehow wound up in my bed, my groggy grimace fades to a groggy smile. “How’d you get here?”

“Teleportation,” the woman dumping a duffel bag and a travel cot on my bedroom floor drawls. “He’s very advanced for his age.”

As I roll onto my back, stretching and yawning, Izzy makes quick work of crawling onto my chest, his sweet fifteen-month-old giggles warming the skin above my collarbone. Splaying one hand across his back, I prop myself upright with the other. “What’re you doing here?”

“What’re you doing in bed?” The mother of the little boy slobbering all over my t-shirt answers my question with one of her own, looking oh-so-maternal as she braces a palm on the headrest of my bed and peers down at me. “It’s so early.”

God forbid a girl tries to nap after a long day’s work. “I’m not drunk, if that’s what you’re asking.”

Luna makes a noise in the back of her throat. “If I thought you were drunk, I wouldn’t have brought my son over for you to babysit, would I?”

Babysit?“Seriously?”

“Exam season,” she explains without actually explaining very much. “Mama’s gotta study and Daddy’s gonna rub her feet while she does it.”

“Exams?” I question as I fish my hair out of Isaac’s mouth before he chokes on it—because that would be just my luck. “Don’t tell me Sun Valley held you back.”

If not for my nephew, I reckon that comment would’ve earned me a thwack upside the head. Instead, I get a snippy denial, and an exasperated shake of a blonde head. “I graduated two years ago, smartass. I take a JD program part-time now.”

Right. Yeah, I knew that. Or I knew it was the plan, but I figured with the baby and the wedding that that might’ve changed. I should’ve known better—I should’ve remembered Luna is the kind of person to do something purely because it’s hard.

Me, not so much. And keeping a whole ass person alive kind of seems a little fucking hard. “Lux is busy?”

“Lux is always busy.”

“Eliza couldn’t watch him?”

“Didn’t ask her.”

“I—”

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