𝑼𝑵𝑬𝑿𝑷𝑬𝑪𝑻𝑬𝑫 | 𝑐ℎ𝑎𝑠𝑒 𝑑𝑎𝑣𝑒𝑛𝑝𝑜𝑟𝑡

𝐴𝐺𝐸 𝐴𝑃𝑃𝑅𝑂𝑃𝑅𝐼𝐴𝑇𝐸

─────⊰ ✦.*🥀*.✦ ⊱─────

Chase❤💋
Hey, I'm grounded for three weeks, so I can't hang out tomorrow :(
11:41 PM

Chase❤💋
I'm not grounded anymore. If you want, you can come over?
9:28 AM

　　 𝐓𝐖𝐎 𝐓𝐄𝐗𝐓𝐒. 𝐓𝐇𝐀𝐓'𝐒 𝐀𝐋𝐋 it takes to unravel my morning. By the time I roll out of bed, Chase has already pulled off the impossible—somehow convincing his parents that he's "ungrounded." I don't ask how. I don't want to ruin the miracle. Instead, I slip into his house the first chance I get, and we've been wrapped up in each other all morning.

Now, his hands cup my jaw as we lean into a kiss, the kind that makes the world blur. His lips taste faintly of peppermint gum, and my pulse thrums at the back of my throat. The air between us has that electric crackle, like it's waiting to snap—

Until Leo barrels into the room.

'Guys! We have a problem!'

I break from the kiss, my breath shaky, my head still caught in the haze. 'It would be a miracle if there wasn't one.'

Chase mutters under his breath, his arm still draped across my waist, reluctant to let me go. 'What did you do, Leo? And on a scale of one to ten, how much do you actually need us?'

I elbow him lightly in the ribs, and he lets out a low chuckle that hums against my skin. 'Just joking.'

'ROCKET CHAIR!' Mr. Davenport's voice screeches from the hallway. He blasts past us like a maniac, colliding with the wall so hard I flinch.

'So what's the problem?' Adam strolls in, casual as ever.

'He Leo'd up again.' I answer for Leo, smirking.

Leo glares daggers at me. 'Don't verb me.'

'We're all verbs, Leo,' Adam says earnestly.

Chase backs him up, patient and smug all at once. 'When you Addilynn something, it means you nailed it—pulled it off perfectly. When you Chase something, it's genius-level, like acing a test. When you Bree something, it's stylish or badass. When you Adam something, you did something dumb.'

Leo stares at us like we've just started speaking in Morse code.

'Addilynn came up with it,' Bree chimes in, a wicked smile playing at her lips. 'Remember when you thought Human Bullseye Bounce was a good idea? Adam ended up with a dislocated arm, right before a mission. That's when she coined "Leo'd up."'

'That was three months ago!' Leo sputters, but nobody looks guilty.

'We've got bigger issues,' I say, dragging us back on track. 'What did you do, Leo?'

'Okay, so you know that neural thingy we've all been playing with?' His eyes dart everywhere but my face.

'No,' I deadpan.

'Except for Addilynn, yeah,' he mutters. 'Anyway, I wanted to erase twenty-four hours. But... I might've accidentally erased twenty-four years. He's fifteen.'

The timing couldn't be worse. Mr. Davenport pops up from the floor, wild-eyed. 'This place is sick! And now—I'm gonna be sick.' He promptly pukes into a plant. I gag.

Leo tosses the device on the couch with a sigh. 'I don't know why he's getting a Presidential Medal for this thing. It's faulty.'

'The device is fine,' Chase says sharply. 'You're the problem. You Leo'd it up.'