Page 67 of Chaos

“I don’t get it,” I whisper. “I don’t get how you’re not fucking furious, Lux. You and Jackson, you deserve to be, more than the rest of us.”

“I am. At the people who deserve it. Not at the entire world.”

A reasonable outlook, sure, but it still doesn’t make sense to me.

Pushing upright, I draw my knees up to my chest, picking at the edge of the comforter that covers them. “We got fucked, Lux. Cosmically and genetically fucked. I can count the number of times I’ve seen my dad on one hand—I can’t even remember half of them. We have zero connection with an entire half of our identity because our grandparents couldn't stand having a Japanese daughter-in-law so they chased her away, and sheleft us behind. I amstuckat eight years old, watching Mom fucking flee and knowing Dad never wanted us and overhearing everyone call us mistakes and hiding us like some dirty little secret, but I don’t deserve to be mad about that? I’m so wrong for not being able to just… forget it?”

“I haven’t forgotten anything, Lottie. I’ve just moved on.”

“Yeah, well, it’s not that easy for me. I can’t move on from what he did to us.”

“They,” Lux corrects sharply, half-sitting up as shakes her head at me. “I don’t know what version of Mom you remember, but she wasn’t innocent.”

“It was different for her.”

“It was,” she agrees, but her head is still shaking, she still argues, “but that doesn’t mean her abusing us was okay.”

I flinch at that word, I look away, I roll my lips together, but Lux persists.

“You don’t think that’s what it was? Because she didn’t hit us or berate us or starve us? She would leave us with strangers for weeks, Lottie. She left us, for good, with our grandparents, knowing how they felt about us, how they would treat us. She neglected us every day she was in our lives. She didn’t want to be a mother, but she kept having kids because she did want a man to love her. What the fuck else would you call that?”

Desperation. Loneliness.Addiction. “I don't wanna talk about this anymore.”

For the third time, Lux sighs, audibly disappointed yet she still scoots closer to snuggle against my back, she still whispers that she loves me, and as she does, something tickles the back of my mind. A memory, not the one Lux was talking about, but a different time we shared a bed. When I was eight and she was eleven and we’d just been dumped somewhere for the umpteenth time—what we didn’t yet know would be the final time—and I was so desperate for comfort from the person whogave me the most. That, I remember vividly. Like I said, I remember it happening a lot.

What I can’t remember, though, is when exactly I decided to stop.

17

He finds a crimson, silk ribbon forgotten on his passenger seat.

He stares at it for entirely too long before tucking it in his pocket.

“Mama.”

Sticky hands smash my cheeks together. “Auntie Lottie. Wake up.”

Prying my tired eyes open, I jolt when I find my nephew an inch away from my face. “Let me guess,” I drawl, poking one chubby cheek. “Another teleporting child?”

As sweet little giggles warm my chest, I rake my gaze over Alex, searching for any sign that yesterday’s events have lingered, that he’s scarred or still upset or, fuck,mad. When I find none, I lift my tired arms—wincing as my achy upper back proves that yesterday sure is lingering with me—but before I can wrap them around my nephew, someone else beats me to it.

Yanking her son towards her, Lux buries her face in the crook of his neck, peppering him with kisses until he squirms and giggles some more. “How’d you get here, sweet boy?”

“He rode Ruin.”

My head snaps to the side, to the teenager holding her phone in front of her face. Blinking innocently at mine and Lux’s less-than-impressed expression, Eliza climbs onto my bed. “Too soon?”

I bend a leg, rearing up to boot my little sister to the floor, but before I can connect, a familiar laugh makes me freeze. Sitting up, I lean forward so I can get a better look at Eliza’s phone screen—or more accurately, at the incredibly familiar face filling it. “Grace?”

“Oh, thank God.” A breath of relief makes me frown. The dramatic swiping of an imaginary bead of sweat from a crumpled brow, on the other hand, makes me roll my eyes. “I’m still the prettier twin.”

Two fingers let my twin sister know exactly how I feel about that—much to Alex’s delight and his mother’s chagrin. “In your dreams, maybe.”

Grace grins. I grin back. I… fuck, I kind of want to cry? Something about seeing the face that’s essentially mine but a little different, a little more like our brother’s, makes my eyes water.

There were a lot—and I meana lot—of times over the past two years when I found myself reaching for the old phone I turned off the second I passed Haven Ridge’s border and still haven’t turned back on. Times when I missed home so badly it made me sick, when all I wanted to hear was my siblings’ voice, to see if they even tried to call after finding me gone.

It was always,always, Grace’s number I thought about dialling. I missed my other sisters, I missed Jackson, but Grace was different. Grace is… well, Grace. My twin. The other half of me, thebetterhalf of me.

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