Page 51 of Chaos

Yasmin just grins. “Consider me warned.”

13

She storms across the yard, and an ominous feeling settles in his gut.

He doesn’t recognize it as fear until she jumps.

The next morning,I’m fumbling around in the dark, trying to get dressed, when there’s a knock on the trapdoor.

Figuring it must be Yasmin—everyone I’m related to would’ve just barged in unannounced—I glance down at my sports bra and shorts, and decide she won’t care about a little cleavage and midriff. As I stoop to haul open the trapdoor, the harsh overhead light from the hall downstairs invades the attic and impedes my vision, so it takes a second for me to realize I was wrong.

Go fucking figure.

My eyes adjust just in time to see Finn’s open mouth abruptly shutting. And to catch him eyeballing my chest just a second too long to call it an accident before averting his gaze to safer territory—my not even a little bit bashful face. I’m not shy. Not like he apparently is.

“Do you have something against shirts?”

I do, actually. Seams and tags, if we’re being specific. The overall concept of being clothed, if we’re being really, really specific, but I’m well-versed in rhetorical questions.

Straightening up, I grab the tank top strewn on my dresser. “Happy now?” I ask without caring about the answer as I slip the white material over my head and tug it down my torso, wondering if Finn knows I can see him in the mirror, staring at the backs of my bare thighs.

The burn of his gaze is there, and then it isn’t. Dropping his head back to stare at the ceiling, he blows out a long breath. “You gonna drive with us today?”

I wasn’t planning on it. I’m wearing athletic shorts for a reason—yesterday, without my brother picking up my nephew to use an excuse, I got up an hour early and ran all the way to the main house.

Was it good for the ankle that refuses to heal? No.

Was it good for my head? Yes.

Did it remind me of running track in high school, which then brought me down the fairly dim path of why Istoppedrunning track?

Yes. Yes, it did.

But I was still planning on doing the same thing today. I stillam. I’m not in the mood to be trapped in a tight space with people who always speak in quiet, cautious voices around me and a man who thinks I’m the kind of girl who would befriend the fucking Webers.

Climbing another few rungs of the ladder, he plants his palms on the attic floor, and I momentarily get distracted by the rippling muscles beneath yet another obscenely tight compression shirt before I remember I’m as mad at him as he is at me. “Can we talk please?”

I focus on my reflection, not the one just to the left and behind me, as I fix my hair into a ponytail. “We did talk.”

“Properly, Lottie.”

I huff. “Will you stop doing that?”

“Doing what?”

“Saying my name like that. Like I’m a fucking child or a nuisance or something.”

“I—” He starts only to stop just as quickly, gnawing on his bottom lip for a moment before trying again. “I didn’t mean to do that.”

“Well,” I drawl sarcastically. “As long as you didn’t mean to.”

His sigh echoes around the attic, punctuated by the sound of his feet hitting the floorboards.

Scooping up my Brooks from where I kicked them off after running home last night—an infinitely more shit idea than running there, by the way, considering I was already dead-tired, but at least I had an endless well of stubbornness to draw energy from—I sit on the edge of my bed. “Get out. I don’t want to talk.”

“Well, I do.”

The mattress dips beside me, so deeply I have to brace my hands against it so I don’t roll into Finn’s big, infuriating body. “I’m sorry,” he says quietly as I stare at my bouncing knees. “Ignoring you was childish.”

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