Page 48 of The Cruelest Chaos

Maverick shakes his head and turns away from the guy, flinging his arm around me. “I’mherboyfriend.”

I feel a flush of pleasure at his words, even though I don’t think they’re actually true. But I let him steer me out of the house and he doesn’t bother closing the door after us.

Walkingwith Maverick through the aisles of a grocery store is like walking a very large, very aggressive dog through a nursery.

People eye him with equal parts fascination and fear, and he ignores all of them. Unless they get too close. Like the lady who almost runs over my heels with her cart in the pasta aisle.

He turns around, puts his hand out and shoves back on the cart. “Fucking watch where you’re going.”

The woman just stares at him, stunned, white knuckling the handle of her cart.

He doesn’t wait for a response from her before he pulls me in close and keeps pushing our own cart, tipping boxes of mac-n-cheese inside.

“Why were you at my house so early?” I press. I’ve asked half a dozen times. He’s ignored me each time. I’m getting used to him ignoring me when he doesn’t want to answer my questions. I’m not used to how he still expects me to answer him, no matter what.

Like now, when he throws pasta sauce into the cart and it thankfully lands on the cushion of noodle boxes. “How long has your mom been with that guy?”

I roll my eyes. Try his tactic.

A few seconds pass.

His arm tightens around me and he leans down close to me, burying his head in my neck. “Don’t make me hurt you here, Ella.”

I bite back a laugh, the little hairs on the back of my neck standing on end. “Since last night,” I decide to answer him.

He pulls away, brow furrowed. “She do that often? Have men over she doesn’t know?”

This time I can’t stop my laughter.

He doesn’t look amused as we hit the cereal aisle. “I take it that’s a yes?”

I duck out of his grip, grab a box of rainbow-colored puffs, chunk them in the cart. “Why’re we here?”

He puts two more boxes of the same cereal on top of mine. “You’re eating all the food in my damn house.”

I feel myself flushing, but he tips my chin up, noticing.

“I don’t care, Ella,” he says, like he really doesn’t. “As long as I can eat you in my house, too.”

I blush harder, and I know my face is the shade of a tomato, but he pulls me in by the throat and kisses me, hard, right on the lips.

My heart flutters a little, and not for the first time, I wonder what the fuck I’m doing with this dangerous boy.

Chapter Ten

A little overtwo weeks after I meet Ella, and night comes too fast. I dropped her off at her trailer after spending the day and the previous night together, and this time, like when I showed up at dawn a week ago, there was a beat up Saturn in the driveway, parked at a terrible angle.

“Do you want me to come in?” I’d asked her.

She’d looked as if she might faint, shaking her head and jumping out of the car.

I shouldn’t have asked. I should’ve just walked in.

I don’t know enough about her. I don’t know what her mom does. I don’t know why she’s always hungry—or why shewasalways hungry. She’s not anymore. She wouldn’t let me carry the groceries inside for her, but she staggered under their weight up to her front porch, just as she’s done every few days I’ve taken her back here. She doesn’t want to miss her time at The Ark. She doesn’t want to tell me much about her mom. Her life.

She’s from West Virginia. Doesn’t know her father. She likes really rough sex and enjoys leaving my house covered in bruises. She has a thing for watching the moon from the bay windows of my bedroom.

That’s about all I know about her, despite all of our time together.