Page 46 of Chaos (The Serenity Ranch #2)

He told himself it would be better this way.

Evidently, he is a dumbass.

This fucking dress.

I swear it’s gotten smaller since the first time I tried it on. Thinner. Sheerer .

Hanging on the back of my wardrobe door, it stares at me like a living creature, fluttering gently in the breeze sneaking in through a cracked window, acting as a ceaseless reminder of the upcoming nuptials that I somehow have to survive.

It’s not that I’m not excited for my brother. I am, though I might not outwardly show it. And it’s not that I don’t like Luna either—I’ve always liked Luna, even if I don’t show that either.

It’s the actual event that makes me itch.

The social aspect of it all. The throng of people surely set to descend on Serenity.

It’s not my first wedding—the ranch has hosted plenty over the years—but it’s the first where I won’t just be a faceless person in the crowd.

I’m in the wedding. Standing at the altar with a handful of other bridesmaids; my sisters, Luna’s sister, and the best friends she considers family too.

Except for Lux, of course. She’s the best man—the best woman? The best sister , she’s joked endlessly almost every day since I found out about the engagement.

I bet she isn’t nervous about the big day that isn’t even her big day. Eliza or Grace neither. No, I’m undoubtedly the only one acting like it’s my wedding, like I’ll be the center of attention, like I’ll somehow ruin it, like everything I do will be scrutinized and judged and—

A knock on the door saves me from my own head. When, without waiting for a response, Yasmin hauls herself upstairs, I’m actually glad to see her—for all of five seconds, that is. Right up until she opens her mouth and declares, “You’re coming out tonight.”

Huffing dryly, I move my bridesmaids dress into the wardrobe, double-checking it’s hung properly before turning to the girl sprawled on my bed. “I am, am I?”

Leaning back on her palms, Yasmin nods enthusiastically. “Uh-huh.”

I give her points for confidence, but, obviously, “No thanks.”

Glossed lips pout. “Oh, c’mon.”

I shrug, thoroughly disliking how deeply her disappointed tone manages to wiggle beneath my skin. “I don’t do bars.”

I don't drink. That’s what I’m supposed to say. Unashamedly. Learned that the first time I went to rehab, and the second, and in every single meeting ever. I’m supposed to state my boundaries clearly and confidently, and in turn, that helps me enforce them.

You know what else it helps with? Encouraging questions. Concern. Pity , God for-fucking-bid.

Yeah, I’ll pass.

“Well, then, I guess it’s your lucky night.” Yasmin claps her hands against her thighs. “We’re going to a movie.”

Hm. Sounds… well, not un appealing. “What movie?”

“Nuh-uh.” My coworker-roommate-friend tuts, wagging a scolding finger playfully. “I’m not telling you. Don’t wanna give you a chance to pretend you’ve seen it or you hate the genre or something else that’s obviously an excuse.”

Busted .

I’ll have to come up with something else. A different excuse. Because God knows I can’t go, not when…

Well. Y’know. Yas knows. She tells me as much, she says, “I know something happened between you two,” and I flinch even though of course, she knows.

The man on the fucking moon probably knows—that’s how obvious the rift between me and Finn is.

“But that has nothing to do with us, okay? I don’t pick sides.

And even if I did, I’d pick yours because girl power and shit. ”

Though something in my chest warms, my silence persists. My hesitation too.

And as both stretch on, Yasmin sighs. “Fine. I’m not gonna drag you out the door.” She sighs again as she turns to the exit, extra wistful this time. “Guess I’ll just eat a whole bag of candy corn all by myself.”

Suddenly, it’s my turn to sigh, a groan quickly following it. Oh, fuck it . “Hang on.”

Yasmin half-turns, grinning like the damn Cheshire Cat. “Yes?”

Yet another breathy noise echoes around my loft. “Give me twenty minutes to change.”

Her smirk morphing into a pleased grin, Yasmin winks. “You get five.”

I flash my middle finger, but Yasmin is already on her way downstairs, mirthfully hollering to the guys that they’ll never believe who’s joining them. And while I roll my eyes, the corner of my mouth quirks, and it stays that way as I haul ass to make myself somewhat presentable.

By the time I’ve swapped out my pajamas for a sweatsuit plucked from the clean pile of laundry that my baby sister sneakily did for me, my five-minute timer is ringing—Yasmin is screaming my name from the living room, which I slope into to find everyone else already gathered.

Everyone, including the man I haven’t spoken to since I shrieked at him in the rain.

Setting my shoulders, I paste on a smile I’m sure looks more like a grimace. “Ready?”

A chorus of agreement ushers me out the front door.

We’re taking Finn’s truck, I soon learn, though the owner doesn’t head for the driver’s side. Instead, he holds open the passenger door, and while I briefly, asininely assume it’s for me, I don’t make a fool of myself by letting that assumption manifest.

When I climb into the backseat, I fight the urge to glance at Finn to gauge his reaction. But as Yasmin climbs in the front and the boys sandwich me in the back, I swear I hear him shut the door with a little more gusto than necessary.

As we pull into a wide, open lot, I shoot Yasmin a narrow-eyed look. “Movie, huh?”

In the rearview mirror, she blinks at me innocently. “I didn’t mention it was a drive-in?”

No. No, she didn’t. If she had, I wouldn’t have come because there’s a reason the tiny cinema in Haven Ridge is one bad day away from shutting down—the local drive-in stole their business.

Like, all of it. On the weekends, the repurposed field sprawled before us is absolutely riddled with people, and tonight is no different.

I cast one glance out of the windshield and recognize half a dozen faces.

Shit.

As I flick my hood up and slouch like a freaking felon on the run, one of the bodies plastered to mine shifts. “You okay?”

Briefly glancing to my left, I offer Adam a stiff nod. “Peachy.”

If peachy was a synonym for overstimulated as fuck .

The car ride has already frayed my nerves to the point of disintegration—this is a big truck, but Adam and Theo are big guys, and being crushed between them for the past forty minutes made me seriously wish I’d sucked it up and taken the front seat.

This is the last thing I need, but I guess I don’t really have a choice.

It’s not like I can just go home. I’m sure as fuck not going to verbalize how deeply uncomfortable the thought of merely being perceived by anyone I went to high school with makes me, considering what happened last time, so I guess I’ve just got to suck it up.

What was I telling myself only a couple of days ago?

Get right the fuck on over it, Lottie.

By the time I force myself outside, the others have already climbed into the truck bed. Horror of horrors, I find them sitting side-by-side, close as close can be, and yet there’s still only approximately half an inch of space left for me to squeeze into.

Thanks, but no thanks.

I’m reaching for the stack of blankets propped amongst a sea of snacks and pillows, planning to camp out on the grass, when a throat clearing makes me pause. “Yas, cuddle up.”

Metal creaks as Yasmin quickly obeys, more than happy to hop onto her boyfriend’s lap at Finn’s command.

She leaves an empty space beside them, but that doesn’t stay unoccupied for long because Finn isn’t done rearranging.

No, he shoves Adam until he scooches over, and then he moves over himself, leaving a new gap beside him and the side of the truck that I guess must be all for me.

Briefly, I consider sitting on the ground anyway. And then I realize how fucking pathetic that would be, so I hoist myself up and drop into the space, pressed as close to the edge as I can get.

I don’t say anything. Finn doesn’t either. He does stare at me, though. For a while, he stares, and I squirm so much under his burning gaze, I’m surprised the truck doesn’t start rocking.

I pretend I don’t notice. I pretend until the huge screen in front of us finally lights up, and then I don’t have to anymore.

The movie starts, and Finn looks away, and I can breathe again.

He looks away, and I miss the burn.

“Lottie.”

I grunt. Mind groggy, I knuckle my tired eyes without opening them. Shifting to try to relieve my poor buttcheeks, numb from sitting in the same position for who knows how long, I press my face closer to the firm pillow supporting my head.

A heavy weight settles atop my bent knees and squeezes. “Sweetheart, wake up.”

I frown. Grunt again. Sink further into the warmth of… a body, I vaguely register. A body that exudes heat and is flush against my own, that leans into me almost as heavily as I do it, that I have a palm pressed against, somewhere flat and muscled, that—

That smells like beeswax candles, a drop of sweat, spilled wine, and fucking smoke.

Slowly, I peel one eye open. That’s all I need to recognize the dark hoodie beneath my cheek. That I’m beneath, that my hand has slipped under to fucking fondle that fucking penis ravine.

I straighten so quickly, the bones in my neck shift with an audible click.

Hurriedly untangling myself from the blanket strewn over my lap, over Finn’s too because I’m practically on his lap, I plaster myself against the side of the truck—where I was at the start of the fucking movie, but evidently did not remain. “Sorry.”

In my peripheral, I watch the shoulder that I was just using as a pillow roll.

An arm is discreetly shaken out. One long leg bends at the knee before straightening again, and repeats.

Like each were as dead as my ass. Yet Finn claims, “Wouldn’t have woken you, but the movie ended an hour ago and they’re trying to clear people out. ”

Again, my poor neck almost snaps as it whips to the side, towards him. “What?” I croak, grateful for the dark, for the hood pulled up over my head, for him being incapable of eye contact because I’m sure my face is red, flushed with confusion and unease. “Why are we still here?”

Fingers drumming against his thighs, Finn shrugs.

“Where are the others?”

“Yas and Theo went to find a bathroom,” he says, though his inflection replies it’s not their bladders that needed relieving. “And Adam’s over there.”

Following his pointed finger, I find the missing friend chatting to a couple of girls. Just past them, I notice a security guard flashing a torch into car windows and hurrying people along.

“Oh.” I fiddle with the drawstrings of my hoodie, wishing I could yank them tight enough to choke myself unconsciousness so I won’t have to experience another second of the very awkward energy floating between me and the man I accused of wanting to get into my pants only to spend God knows how long napping with my hand damn near shoved down his.

I scramble to my feet. Wobble as the metal beneath them flexes and creaks.

Steady myself with a hand on the roof—am steadied by another one on the outside of my thigh.

One that retreats almost as soon as it lands, like its owner changed its mind only to immediately change it again, to revert, to burn through my sweats, brand the skin beneath, fuse to it so I can’t move away.

Finn murmurs my name the same, soft way he woke me up.

Swallowing thickly, I drop my gaze, and any chance of composure abruptly evaporates. Not because of the solemn face peering up at me, nor the wide eyes reflecting the damn moonlight like they belong to a cartoon prince—it’s what Finn holds that almost knocks me right out of the truck.

What he made , I quickly surmise. Because there’s no way a man who whittles would offer up any creation that wasn’t carved by his own hand.

A rose.

A wooden rose with wooden petals and a wooden stem and wooden fucking thorns. Painted white, contrite like the mouth that whispers, “I’m sorry.”

My knees wobble.

“I was being childish,” Finn continues, grip tightening around my thigh. “But I swear to God, Lottie, it wasn’t why you think. That’s… so fucking far from it.”

My hand literally fucking trembles as he transfers the first flower anyone’s ever given me from his grip to mine. I thumb the delicate petals, prick the pad of one on a thorn, marvel for a stunned second, before asking, “What was it then?”

“I don’t think you want to know.”

“Presumptuous.”

Finn looks at me. Just looks, but it feels like something more.

“Baby,” he says like the single word means a lot more too, like it’s a complete sentence, like it’s an explanation. A plea to understand.

I don’t. But a nagging sensation makes me think I’m missing something really obvious. I’m not seeing something that’s right in front of me. I’m being subconsciously obtuse—or maybe I’m doing it on purpose.

“You were mad,” I try, going with the obvious. “Because I pulled away.”

Before I even finish, he’s shaking his head and correcting, “I wasn’t mad.”

“You seemed mad.”

“I was giving you space, Lottie. I was trying not to make you uncomfortable. I was trying to give myself a fucking break ‘cause—” he cuts himself off. Assesses me. Shakes his head almost imperceptibly and inhales deeply like he’s trying to suck back in what sounds like half of an admission.

“You were right. I wasn’t being your friend. ”

“In the closet?” I ask without thinking and want to slap myself for it. “Or after?”

Finn sinks his teeth into his bottom lip. “Both.”

Suddenly, I feel woozy. Scorched. Not all there. “But we are friends, right?”

Again, he does that assessing thing. Almost like he has a few answers and he’s trying to figure out which one I can handle.

He settles on, “Of course we are,” and I’m not sure how I feel about it. Four words that sound like there should be a but after them.

“That’s good,” I blurt, panicked and pathetic and downright unhinged. “Because you’re…” I gulp, more panicked, more pathetic, more unhinged. “I think you might be the best friend I have. That I’ve ever had. I think…” Jesus. Fuck . What is happening to me? Why can’t I speak? Why is this so hard ?

With a frustrated noise, I sink down to my knees and sit back on my heels, balling my fingers into fists— trying to. That damn flower impedes me. Did I even thank him for it? I haven’t, have I? Hard to be grateful when you’re so fucking confused.

“I—” I think , I start to say yet a-fucking-again, but it’s not good enough. It’s not true. “I really need you. I need my friend.”

God, I wish I was better with words. Wish I had some ounce of creative eloquence. Wish I could adequately, accurately describe what my desperate, garbled words do to Finn, how he melts .

“You’ve got me,” he promises, he swears, he’s so fucking sincere. “Always.”