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He teasingly asks if she wore the sweater first so it would smell like her.

A pretty, perfect blush says it all.

We spend the end of the year doing a whole lot of blissful, absolute nothing.

On New Year’s Eve, we watch the fireworks from the deck of the A-frame.

The first Sunday after, I watch endless episodes of The Powerpuff Girls with Silas and his great-granddaughter, and I try really, really hard not to be so amused by the little girl christening me Buttercup—I try really, really hard not to feel so…

much when the old man meets my boyfriend and drags him away to give some kind of a speech that I don’t hear, that no one relays back to me, yet it settles behind my ribcage and burns anyway.

The days are muddy after that, indistinguishable from one another because they’re much the same. I can only judge the passing of time by the number of strikes gouged into the wooden objects that get pressed into my hand at the end of each day.

Today, it’s a carnation. Carnations . Six of them, sitting on my bedside table. Five petals each—thirty in total to match the thirty scores shared across the stems. Thirty days of sobriety.

Thirty days of Finn, more or less.

Curled up on one side of my bed, I stare at the man sleeping on the other.

I didn’t kick him out tonight. I couldn’t make myself.

It was too hard, and that worries me. It’s the reason I’m awake, endlessly pondering what it means that I like sleeping beside someone now.

That maybe I always did—maybe it just was never the right person.

Which brings me to Finn is the right person, and fuck, that’s worrying enough, terrifying enough, all on its own.

As if my thoughts aren’t only so loud in my head, Finn stirs, a sleepy frown creasing his handsome face as he reaches for me.

He tugs and I go, plastering myself to his side and sighing contentedly when his mouth finds the harsh lines etched across my forehead and tries to smooth them out.

“Whatcha thinking so hard about, honey?”

I see no reason to lie—like I’ve said so many times before, he’ll probably know anyway. “You.”

“Good things, I hope.”

Good. Confusing. A lot . “You make me different and I don’t know if I like that.”

“I’m not trying to make you different.”

Groaning, I flop onto my back so my frustrated scowl focuses on the ceiling instead of on Finn. “That makes it even worse.”

Finn grants me a whole ten seconds of sullen silence before erasing the sliver of space between us. Rolling onto his stomach, he throws an arm across my abdomen, tangles a leg with one of mine, nuzzles the curve of my neck and oh-so-patiently asks, “What’s different, Lottie?”

I think about it, and I feel silly. Because it’s simple. It’s little things, lots of little, inconsequential things, like not flinching when people touch me and actually listening when people talk to me and waking up not dreading the day ahead, and it all boils down to, “I’m really, really happy.”

“And that’s a bad thing?”

“It’s a new thing,” I correct quietly, a sad little contradictory weight settling on my chest. “I don’t think I’ve ever actually been happy before.”

The arm slung over me stiffens.

I dance my fingers along sharp shoulder blades, splaying them wide where I know a heartbeat lurks beneath dark skin and strong bones. “I don’t feel like nothing anymore.”

A blustering exhale skitters across my skin.

Finn doesn’t say anything. For once, I’ve left him speechless, frustrated, eyes half-shut and gleaming with a kind of agony I don’t quite understand as they roam my face.

“Sorry,” I whisper before his tongue can untangle itself—before he can say more things that are almost too lovely to withstand. “Just got in my head for a sec.”

“I like being in your head.” Rising on an elbow, Finn presses his mouth to my temple. “Wish I could get in there more often.”

I grunt. I wish I could get out of there more often.

Finn shifts again, planting a hand against the mattress on either side of me, the top half of that unreal body hovering over the top half of mine.

“I like that you’re happy,” he murmurs, dropping just enough to brush his nose against mine.

“And I liked you just the same when you weren’t.

Maybe you feel different, but you’re not different to me. ”

The space behind my eyes itches.

Finn drops a little lower, kissing the corner of one. Dragging my nose along his jawline, I nudge him pointedly until he gets the hint and kisses where I want him the most.

Lazy, leisurely kisses that go nowhere because they aren’t meant to, they’re just for the pure pleasure of kissing, they end with my back to his chest and my mind quiet, sated, drowsy.

I don’t realize I’ve fallen asleep until movement stirs me awake again.

Finn quietly shushes my protests as he slips out of bed, evading my blind grabs and muttering something about ladders and bathrooms and sleeping in his damn bed from now on .

Smiling at… fuck, I don’t even know what, smiling just to smile, I hug a pillow to my chest while I wait for the man it smells like to return.

And it’s right as sleep is tickling the edges of my mind again that this odd, preternatural sense of wrong washes over me.

Peeling my weary eyes open, I push myself upright, and that feeling only intensifies when a loud bang sounds.

When, despite the early, early morning hour I find stamped across my phone screen, I squint against the bright light filtering in through the thin curtains drawn across my windows.

Headlights, I realize, when I tiptoe across the room and peer outside, careful to stay as out of sight as I can—a difficult feat, considering the entire fucking wall is made of glass.

A foreboding feeling settles in my gut when I don’t recognize the truck idling out the back.

It intensifies when I can’t make out whoever’s behind the steering wheel, nor the shadowy figure in the passenger seat, and it damn near bowls me over when I hear the back door slam shut and a handful more intruders rush out into the night.

All except one throw themselves into the rumbling truck. That single person dips into the backseat, and as they strut back to the house, I forget about hiding—I damn near hang out the window, trying to figure out what the hell they’re doing.

It’s right as I realize they’re holding something that they throw whatever it is at the house, and I jolt at the sound of breaking glass and raucous laughter.

And it’s that jolt, the instinctive backstep I take, that stops the brick that sails through my window next from shattering more than just glass.

I scream. Shriek, really. Equal parts terror and outrage fuelling it—because an airborne, rock-hard hunk of clay hurtling towards you is pretty damn terrifying, and because an airborne, rock-hard hunk of clay just hurtled towards me.

What the fuck?

Forgetting everything I’ve ever grumbled and groaned about characters in horror movies who run towards danger instead of away from it, I do exactly that.

I display a modicum of caution, carefully tiptoeing my way around the sharp shards littering my bedroom floor, before promptly throwing it to the wind.

I charge downstairs, nevermind the fact I’m well aware that the assholes who just almost killed me will be long gone by the time I make it outside.

Except I never do. I make it to the bottom step of the stairs, and I freeze.

Fuck.

“ Lottie? ”

A panicked yell booms across the first floor. Floorboards groan under the weight of thundering footsteps. Hands cup my shoulders, drag down my biceps to my forearms, retrace their path so a palm can cup my nape, another on my cheek and guiding my gaze sideways. “Are you okay?”

I sway as the wild panic in dark eyes renders me a little wobbly. For a second, as they catalogue every inch of my entire body, I forget why my heart is pounding—it starts pounding for different reasons.

And then I mentally smack myself across the face for getting so distracted by eyeballs when there is something much more worthy of my focus. “I’m fine.” I twist to face forward again. “Someone broke in.”

“ What? ” Finn moves around me and descends the last stair, a hand stretched behind him and planted on my stomach to stop me from following.

A rough, rasped curse falls from his lips.

Yeah. My thoughts exactly. Everyone’s thoughts exactly, evidently, because the rest of my bleary-eyed roommates mutter similar sentiments as they traipse downstairs.

“Woah.” Yasmin’s shoulder brushes mine, her eyes wide as she surveys the damage. “What the hell happened?”

Destruction.

That’s what.

Complete and utter destruction.

From what I can see, nothing escaped unscathed.

The TV is cracked. It looks like someone took a knife to every single sofa cushion, the stuffing spilling out of the gaping wounds in the fabric.

The fridge door hangs open on a single hinge, the contents tossed around the kitchen, smeared on counters, dropped on the floor, and it’s not alone down there.

Just like in my bedroom, there’s a fine layer of glass everywhere, threatening our bare feet, but that’s not what I worry about. It’s not what I zone in on, it’s not what makes everything else disappear as my ears start to ring.

No, that would be the lake of red staining the floorboards.

A deep, dark crimson that’s a lot thinner than blood, but just as vital to my livelihood—or at least it used to be. At least I’m trying for it not to be.

Someone sniffs. Adam’s voice asks, “Is that wine?”

My heart skips a beat.

“I thought we cleared out all the alcohol,” Theo muses before swearing quietly, as if he’s admitted a secret.

Finn glances at his friend, then drops his wary gaze to me. “We did.”

“What the fuck?” more than one person murmurs, thick bewilderment tainting the night air spilling in through broken windows and a wonky front door.

I, on the other hand, am not quite so confused.