Page 78 of Chaos

Fuck.

I can’t pretend anymore. I can’t lie. I can’t be so resolute that I don’t have a problem because the evidence proving otherwise will be trickling down my throat.

The dog curled up by my hip whines when I push to my feet, disturbing our cozy nest on the floor at the foot of my bed. One hand bracketing the base of my throat, I press the other to the window, letting the cold glass cool my skin—flushed from hot, unrelenting anxiety. And as it creeps over me, growing, I squeeze my eyes shut, trying so hard to ward against the swell of memories I’d rather forget, but there’s no stopping them. I can’t help thinking about the first time I felt anxiety like this.

It wasn’t like it was with Grace. I didn’t grow up struggling with frequent attacks. I didn’t even have infrequent ones like the ones Lux thought she hid so well from us. I never had any at all.

Until the first time I went to rehab. It wasn’t the first time I went through withdrawal, but it was the first time I recognized the chills and the tremors and the fucking delirium for what they were. And it was the first time I felt real anxiety. Not panic or nerves or fear, but bone-deep, unrelenting, tear-inducing anxiety that freezes your body, that makes you feel like you’re not in your body at all.

Which is common, I learned, among recovering alcoholics. A consequence of my own damn actions. Another fucking cross to bear, like I don’t already have enough of those.

A knock on the trapdoor pulls me out of it.

Relief isn’t an emotion I’m capable of right now, nor is gratitude, so when I yank up the slab of wood, I’m neither. I’mtired. Spent. Incapable of being anything other than exactly what I am, and that sure as fuck isn’tfriendly.

“Jesus.” I sigh a dry laugh, palming my aching temples. “You’re fucking everywhere, huh?”

As Finn flinches away from my snapped comment, I wonder why he looks so surprised. Did he forget? Is a week really all it took to lull him into a false sense of security, to make him think I’m a good person, a better person, the person he wants me to be? The person I might’ve been, if things were different?

I wonder how he’s so capable of just… shrugging it off. Continuing upstairs like nothing was said, carrying a plate loaded with pasta and offering it to me rather than, I don’t know, throwing it at me. “Brought you some dinner.”

Straightening from my crouched position, I wipe my clammy palms off on my sweats as I stride to the other side of the room, as far away from Finn as I can get. “Not hungry.”

Entirely unphased, he sets the plate on my bedside table before slipping something out of his hoodie pocket—a thermos. “You want tea? I put in some of that honey you like.”

Tugging at the tip of my ring finger, I frown. “What?”

“The one from the farmer’s market.”

When my confusion persists, he unscrews the thermos lid and pours some of the steaming liquid into it. As he holds it out, that’s when the smell hits me.

Chamomile.

Honey.

And orange blossom.

“I got it yesterday,” he tells me. “Saw you looking.”

I flinch. I actually fucking flinch. I am so unfamiliar with kind gestures that they hit me like a sucker-punch, they make me feel fucking pathetic and inadequate andchildish, I feel like achild.

I think I probably look like one too, small and cowering as I back up until I hit the dresser, my arms wrapped tightly aroundmy middle, a palm flat against my chest and rubbing circles over the spot that aches. “Get out.”

“What?”

“Get the fuck out, Finn.”

He doesn’t. He does the opposite. He steps forward, painfully concerned, maddeningly perceptive, making it all the fucking worse. “What’s wrong?”

“Well, for starters, there’s a man in my room and he won’t fucking leave.”

Nothing. No reaction. No anger. Just a soft, firm, “Lottie.”

Everything. All reaction. All anger. And a curt, cursed, “Finn.”

“Do you really want me to leave?”

“That’s what I fucking said, isn’t it?”

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