Page 50 of Chaos

I snort. “Nope.”

“Sounds like there’s more to that than justnope.”

I pause. I sigh. I channel the spirit of fucking flourishing female friendship or whatever. “I was seeing this guy for a while. Not a boyfriend, but… yeah. Anyway, we got in a car crash, he gotout and left me there, and now I hope the next girl he tricks into fucking him gives him a really nasty case of the clap.”

With my eyes firmly fixed on the saddle’s pommel as I mumble my way through that confession, I don’t realize my riding partner has suddenly stopped until a screech comes from behind me. “Hewhat?”

Glancing over my shoulder, the corner of my mouth quirks at an expression that can only be described as gobsmacked. “A real keeper, right?”

“A real fuckhead.” Yasmin kisses her teeth as she urges the Appaloosa forward once more. “Was he driving?”

“His brother was.”

“And they both just left?”

I nod.

Disgust—that’s what contorts Yasmin’s pretty face. “Men.”

I don’t mention Vic or her own speedy escape. I just agree, “Men.”

“In the interest of full transparency,” she says once she’s caught up with me. “I knew about the crash. And the arrest. I was there when Lux found out.”

I make a face. “She’s scary when she’s angry, right?”

“She wasn’t angry. I thought someone had died or something, she was crying so hard.” Yasmin pauses just long enough to let that sink in—andsinkit does, like a goddamn rock in my stomach—before adding, “We didn’t know about you. Well, Finn did, I think, but he’s been around longer than the rest of us. But now that we do know, it makes sense.”

“What does?”

“It always felt like there was… I don’t know, a gap, I guess. Maybe it’s because I have siblings too, but I could tell something,someone, was missing, y’know?”

God, do I grasp at that chance for a subject change with both hands. “You have siblings?”

Yasmin looks at me like she knows exactly what I’m doing, but she lets me do it anyway. “A sister and a brother.”

“Are they all back in…”

“New Jersey,” she fills in the blank with a little smirk, not at all offended that I didn't have the slightest clue where she’s from. “Nah. Reem lives in Canada with her husband and their kids, and Younes is in… India right now, I think.Backpacking.” She makes a face that says exactly how she feels about roaming the world, staying in hostels and carrying all your earthly belongings on your back. “He’s your age.”

“And you’re not?”

Yasmin barks a laugh that makes our horses’ ears twitch. “I’m thirty-two. So is Theo. Adam turned thirty last summer, and Finn’s the baby.”

“And by baby, you mean…”

“Twenty-six.”

“Ah.” I thought maybe he was older. Guess that air of superiority ages him.

“Although, I guess you’re the baby now.”

“Fornow,” I correct. “You only have to put up with me for a few months and then it’ll be back to normal.”

My promise doesn’t earn the response I thought it would. Not even a sarcasticphew. It doesn’t earn any response at all. Not an immediate one, at least. Yasmin lets that natural silence resume as she assesses me with an indistinguishable look on her face.

And just as I’m about to ask what the hell she’s staring at, she declares, “I changed my mind. Iamgonna force you to be friends with me.”

“Sounds painful,” my mouth protests even as something else, something buried deep and long dormant hums a quiet, jovial tune. “And ill-advised.”

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