Page 31 of Property of Chaos

And I don’t know why.I hate that.I hate not understanding things. Not knowing why people do what they do, lest of all myself. Call it my repressed childhood trauma, but I feel better when I can understand a person’s motivation. Knowing how their brain ticks makes them predictable, and predictable is safe.

Right now, I’m anything but predictable, and that sure a fuck doesn’t bode well.

I got the road name Chaos for a reason.“Because wherever you go, boy, Chaos is sure to follow.”My father’s voice echoes in my mind, the day I was patched in as fresh in my fucking memory as this goddamn woman’s smell.

Fuck me.I ain’t no florist. I don’t know what it was. I just know that if I walked past the fucking plant now, I’d be tempted to palm my cock to her memory.I’m doomed.The heel of my hand pressing against my closed eye does nothing to distract from the imagery clear as fucking day in my head. Her swollen lips half an inch apart as she stared at me seated on the foot of her bed. Those goddamn tits—so full and perky beneath that oversized T-shirt. The ink on her skin, like a crooked finger beckoning me to follow the lines toward the heaven between her legs. Shit. Even the fucking way the moonlight shimmered over her midnight-black hair…I’m fucking ruined.And I don’t even know her name.

The pages scratch against one another as I flick back through the journal, seeking a clue. Some days she writes fuck all—afew lines. Some days she upends entire fucking novels into this thing. And others? Other times, she draws.

It’s the pictures I love the most.

I trace my thumb over the rough indentation of her pen on the page, the grooves the nib made. She pressed so goddamn hard that the lines impressed onto the following pages. But it’s the detailed monochromatic imagery that has me smoothing my palm across the page to feel the story against my skin. The edge of the paper wrinkles with the saturation of ink. Small pictures are scribbled atop one another into a creeping dark that inches toward the huddled figure in the center. Yet the imagery around the outer rings has me intrigued the most. Generally, people draw animals, clouds, flowers, or simple symbols such as hearts or skulls.

Not my enigma. No. She scribbles mainstream logos for chain stores, names, shapes of states, and what seem to be dates. It’s a collage of the things that haunt her—of corporate America.

What does it have to do with the guy she repeatedly mentions?What connection do they have?

Doesn’t matter.I’ve got more pressing shit to take care of now that daylight scours the landscape.

I shunt the journal back into my waistband and go downstairs toward where my bike waits in the yard. My footsteps echo throughout the vast, empty rooms with every strike of my boots against the staircase. I pause in the foyer, short fingernails pressing repeatedly at my thumb as I slowly turn on the spot to take it all in. Once the brothers arrive, silence will again be as rare as unicorn shit, as sought after as the pot at the end of the rainbow, and just as unrealistic as both. Eyes closed, I tilt my head back and relish the nothingness. The break from insanity.

The echo of my thoughts.

My fucking phone rips me from the serenity.

“For fuck’s sake.” I tug the device from my pocket and stabAccept. “What now?”

“She won’t go to school unless you take her.” Loki sighs.

Fucking Selena.“Put her on.”

The scratching of the phone being passed over precedes my sister’s growl. “Two nights in a row, Seamus.”That she knows of.She’s also the only one who can get away with using my birth name.

Not even my mother has the privilege.

“Get your fucking ass to school.”

“No.”

“I’m not playing games, Selena.” I march out the front door, slamming it shut behind me. “Your attendance already raises red flags. Too many more days off, and I’ll have the fucking superintendent asking for our plan to re-engage you. You know what that means, right?” I mount the phone and switch the comms for my helmet on, missing most of what she says before I tug it over my head. “It means,” I growl, cutting off her tirade. “That I have to fuck around in meetings at your school once a week until they have evidence that your grades have improved and your attendance is flawless.”

“So fucking wh?—”

“You swear at me again, and I’ll fucking revoke phone privileges.”

She huffs.

“If I have to fucking play nice with your goddamn school, that means I miss time with the club. And if I ain’t at the club, do you know what that means?”

“You remember you have family?”

“Fuck me, Selena. You got a death wish, girl?” I stab the starter on my bike, the growl somewhat calming my mood. “Club comes first. You know that. I can’t always pander to your fucking neurotic obsessions.”

“You told me you’d always tell me where you are!”

“I WON’T ABANDON YOU!” My ears ache from the reverberation of my hollered words inside my helmet. “I fucking made you that promise the day she died, and I goddamn meant it.”

“You meant it when you said you’d always share your location, too.”

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