Page 73 of Chaos (The Serenity Ranch #2)
Something heavy presses to the top of my head—a forehead, I quickly surmise when a grumble warms my scalp. “Kill me, please.”
“Sorry, baby.” I tilt my head to the side so Finn’s falls to my shoulder, smiling against his temple when he groans. “Even I can’t do crime on Christmas.”
He grumbles something unintelligible, and I smile wider as I nudge him with my nose, nuzzling him the way he claims I do a lot—like a cat, he says.
I see that very thought run through his mind and I snicker before he can voice it, rolling my eyes at the rough purr that skitters across my collarbone.
He kisses the same patch of skin and I drop one of my own to his hairline, another just above the neckline of his festive sweater as he straightens, and I’m dropping my chin to give the hand that cups my shoulder the same attention when I realize how quiet it’s suddenly gotten.
Shifting my gaze forward, I find a whole lot of eyes focused on me, and mine narrow. “What?”
Everyone abruptly looks away.
“Nothing,” they murmur, but a proficiency at lying is not a Jackson family trait, it’s not an Evans family trait either, and not a single member of the combined lot even tries to hide the looks they cast each other.
Nor their secret, knowing smiles or the nudges they trade that make me squirm and frown and huff.
“Go on, then,” I snip a little firmer than necessary. “Let’s hear it.”
Pausing her attempts to shove some breakfast down her son’s throat before she loses him to the pile of presents stacked beneath the tree in the living room, Lux blinks. “Excuse me?”
“ Am I having a stroke? ” I quote one of the many jokes I’m sure my siblings are stifling. “I think I just hallucinated. Did hell just freeze over? Lottie’s showing affection so the world must be ending, et cetera, et cetera. C’mon. Let ‘em out.”
“I wasn’t thinking that,” Grace claims around a mouthful of the porridge Alex sneakily passes her, but her wink isn’t exactly innocent.
Eliza cracks a guilty grimace. “I thought the stroke one.”
“I was thinking that you guys are adorable .”
Jackson grunts like he agrees with his wife, but he doesn't particularly want to.
Ignoring his mother’s scolding, Alex scrambles to stand on his chair, red-faced as he jabs a finger at the man beside me. “I was thinking that Finn is a lover boy ,” he screeches before devolving into maniacal giggles that wrack his little body.
Every bit as unhinged as her nephew, Luna snickers. “Oh, he’s lovin’ on something all right.”
“Oh my God,” Finn moans into my hair, and I mimic the proclamation.
Reaching behind me, I snag his wrist and start to drag him into the living room, away from the uproar of snickering and groans and death threats, only to change course when I catch sight of all those unopened presents.
Teeth chewing on my bottom lip the same way nerves gnaw at my stomach, I guide him upstairs instead and into my old bedroom— our old bedroom, I guess.
“Charlotte,” Jackson hollers after us, his legal guardian voice in full effect. “Do not shut that door.”
Just to be a pest, I slam it behind us.
“Jesus Christ, baby.” Finn groans, face a conflicted twist as he eyes the closed door, but makes zero moves to open it. “I thought you liked me.”
“I do,” I feel the need to hurriedly, emphatically confirm, despite knowing damn well he’s only joking. Shifting my grip to intertwine our fingers, I dance my other hand up his chest, drumming in rhythm with his heartbeat. “Maybe you should’ve gone home for Christmas. Would’ve been safer.”
He doesn’t even hesitate. “Nah.”
“Why?”
“Because I really, really like being around you,” he answers so easily, so honestly.
“I really, really don’t like not being around you.
I really, really didn’t think you’d react very well if I asked you to spend the holidays with my family.
I really, really wanted to watch you spending it with yours. ”
I blink. Scratch at the sudden itch plaguing the left side of my chest. Croak, “That’s a really, really good answer.”
“Hm. Did you bring me up here for a reason or do you just get off on threats to my life?”
Right .
Wiggling my hand free, I walk to the dresser and drop to yank open the bottom drawer, rummaging around until I feel wrapping paper. Swallowing inane, useless nerves, I rise, turn around, and hand the parcel over in one swift movement before I can talk myself out of it. “Merry Christmas.”
Dark brows shooting up, his lips part. “You got me a present?”
My nerves shift awfully close to panic. Was I not supposed to? We didn’t talk about it, I just… I thought that’s what couples do. Taking a sharp step forward, I reach out to snatch the gift back. “If you don’t want it—”
“Did I say that?” Holding the present aloft with one hand, he swats me away with the other, playfully snarling, “ Mine . Back off.”
Kissing my teeth, I might pout just a little. “It’s barely even a present, alright? It’s shit. It’s—”
He cuts me off again. Not with words, but with a soft, pleased, gasping kind of a noise that follows the crinkle of wrapping paper falling to the floor. “You knit me a sweater?”
“Obviously,” I mumble around the thumb nail that finds its way to my mouth as he surveys the swath of red fabric. “If you don’t like it—”
“Will you stop that?”
Chastising me with a tut, Finn wastes no time whipping off his store-bought sweater and replacing it for the chunky knit I lost a whole lot of sleep trying to finish, trying to make good .
As he tugs it over his head, I hold my breath and wait for it to be too small or too scratchy, or for some other inevitable fuck-up to make itself known, except it doesn’t.
There are no snags in the fabric, no uneven stitches.
It fits him perfectly, a little loose like I wanted, a little cropped like I knew he’d want.
Sidling closer, I toy with the hem sitting a couple of inches above his jeans waistband. “So you do? Like it?”
“I love it,” he replies, and he means it, I can tell by his voice and his eyes and his smile—his smile that fades into a frown when he brushes his knuckles over his cheek and something tickles his inner wrist. Rolling back the left cuff, he thumbs the little charm I hid in the stitching. “What’s this?”
I swallow. “Not quite my little broken heart, ” I quote his own words back to him, thinking of the wooden heart that lives on my dresser, the larger replica of the gold one pinched between Finn’s fingers. “But I thought I’d return the favor.”
For a long moment, Finn just stares at the heart-shaped charm. And then he stares at me for just as long, just as intently, just as… fuck. Loving .
“Jesus Christ, baby,” he says again, less of a groan this time and more of a…
I don’t know. Something tender and hopeful and rugged, something that perfectly matches the way I feel when he roughly cups my face and drops his forehead to mine, eyes fluttering shut as he brushes my nose with his. “I am so fucking glad you exist.”
My breath catches and sits like a rock in the back of my throat. Frustration has it doubling in size, has me frowning and pulling back, has Finn frowning too and muttering a concerned, “What?”
“You always say these nice things and I can never think of anything good to say back.”
“You don’t have to, honey.”
“But I want to. I want…” I sigh, fisting his sweater like a damn comfort blanket. “I want you to know that I feel all those things too. I don’t show it very well or say it very well either, but I do.”
“You show it just fine, Lottie.” As if to prove his point, he brings his wrist up between us, giving it a shake so the charm jingles. “I know.”
Relief settles my stomach. “Good.”
“I got you something too.”
“Really?”
Reprimanding my shock with another cluck of his tongue, Finn fishes a small parcel out of his back pocket and presses it into my palm. Not even trying to temper my excitement, I rip the thing open, something I’ll never admit to be a squeal leaving me at what I find.
Finn chuckles. “I knew you’d like it.”
As I hurriedly unravel the leather belt and slide it through the loops of my waistband, fastening it and hooking my thumbs around the great, big, obnoxious buckle stamped with the word lucky in capital letters, I find that like doesn’t quite cut it.
I shift my gaze to Finn, and the same revelation strikes me.