CHAPTER FIVE
NO.
It can’t be.
My brain jams like someone yanked the emergency brake. But it’s him.
It’s him.
Standing in front of me like a mirage in the middle of a nightmare. The safest man I know. In this filthy, godforsaken circus of violence and depravity.
Wyatt. Wyatt.
His face is taut. His posture coiled. Those eyes—those icy blue, goddamn beautiful eyes—lock onto mine, and the whole world tips.
I stumble back against the bar, clawing for balance. Rox is saying something—my name? I don’t know. All I hear is my own pulse thudding in my ears.
“Wyatt!” The name bubbles out of me in an explosion of tears. I barely know I’m running until I hit him.
His arms catch me just as I slam into his chest. His hands find my back. My hair.
“Max,” he gasps. “Max—Jesus. What the fuck?”
He holds my arms tight—too tight—examining my face, and then pulls me against him, hard.
I weep into the solid plane of his chest, overwhelmed by the sense of relief. It’s over.
It’s over, it’s over, it’s over.
He smells like safety. Like home. Like Leathernecks and his preferred brand of soap.
“You’re here,” I mumble into his chest, almost laughing. “Oh my god. Wyatt.”
He pulls me back, fingers digging into my arms, his eyes scanning me again—checking me over, like he doesn’t believe I’m real. I see him take in my state of undress. The g-string, nipple pasties, and nothing else. His whole expression fractures. Not just shock—like, terror. Confusion. Disbelief.
“Max, what are you—what the fuck are you doing here?” he whispers.
“I’m safe. It’s over. You found me.”
“Jesus Christ,” he breathes, worry and concern cracking over his face. Then he pulls me in again and holds me tight.
I don’t know how he did it. How he found me. How he got in. I can’t imagine how he plans to get me out of here.
“Are Jake and Damian here?” I ask, hope and grief bubbling up inside of me.
He goes still. Then locks up.
His fingers loosen in my hair. His spine straightens. I look up at him and his expression crumples.
“I take it you two know each other,” says the man standing beside him.
I blink at him in confusion. I’d forgotten anyone else was there. Rox’s boyfriend.
He’s a few years younger than Wyatt, body gone soft, but he still looks strong. Like somebody familiar with violence.
Why is Wyatt with him?
Wyatt doesn’t answer.
His mouth opens. Then closes. His hands drop.
“Who’s Wyatt?” Rox says suddenly, from behind me. She wraps her arms around the man beside Wyatt and kisses him. “Hi, baby,” she purrs.
My heart stutters.
What is happening?
I look back at Wyatt. He’s not reaching for me. He’s not saying my name. He’s just standing there, looking stricken.
“Wyatt,” I plead. “Please.”
He shakes his head quickly, a short jerk of the head, and then shrugs out of his cut and drapes it over my shoulders.
“Here,” he says, his voice rough and raw.
He pulls the leather around me to cover my breasts, gentle and careful, holding the vest closed around me a second too long to keep it from gaping open. But he doesn’t take my hand and pull me out of here. He doesn’t save me.
My throat closes. My vision swims.
Maybe this isn’t real. Maybe I’m hallucinating from whatever was in that joint. Maybe this is some fucked-up dream, some drug-induced fantasy where I thought help had come and it hasn’t.
But it’s him.
It’s him.
That face. That jaw. Those blue eyes.
“Are you okay?” he asks me, but his tone is different—flat and less urgent.
“No,” I whisper, chest heaving. “No, Wyatt, please. What’s going on?”
Rox’s voice cuts through the moment: “You two know each other?”
Wyatt doesn’t even look at her.
He looks at me, and delivers the killing blow.
“No.”
He says it for her.
Then again, softer, for me.
“No.”
He says it low and sad, like he’s asking me to forgive him in a language only we speak.
The rejection knocks the air out of my lungs, and I take a staggering step backward as if I’ve been physically punched in the gut.
“Is she okay?” he asks, more urgently this time. “Is she on something?”
I’m drowning in cold water.
“What?” I whisper, blinking hard. “What are you doing?”
I sway on my feet, eyes stinging, but he doesn’t reach for me again. It’s Rox who steps toward me. Wyatt’s jaw is clenched, his shoulders rigid, like his entire body is holding in a scream.
“Oookay,” Rox says, drawing it out, voice light as air but sharp around the edges. “This is…weird.”
She slides her arm around me, like she’s reclaiming me. Her tone shifts, a little too breezy. “You good, sweetheart?”
“I—” My voice cracks. “I don’t…He knows me. He knows me.”
I turn back to Wyatt, pleading silently, trying to find him under the blank mask.
But it’s Maze who speaks. “Rough trip,” he mutters, more to Wyatt than to me. “She’s wrecked.”
“Big night tonight,” Rox says quickly. “She just had a bit too much…”
She trails off, voice light but careful, but I can feel her defensiveness wrapping around me. Her arm tightening. She doesn’t know what’s happening, but she knows it’s not nothing.
“Let’s go,” she says gently, steering me off to the side. “Come on, babe. Let’s get you horizontal before you collapse.”
She’s trying to save me. I know that. Getting me out of the blast radius before it all goes nuclear. But I can’t move.
“I don’t understand,” I whisper, eyes still locked on Wyatt’s face. “Why are you acting this way? I need you, Wyatt! You have to help me!”
He flinches like I struck him.
His mouth opens, closes, then opens again. But no words come out.
Nothing.
Rox shifts beside me, voice soft but firmer now. “Max—hey. Look at me, sweetheart.”
She cups my elbow with her free hand.
“You’re gonna be okay,” she says.
Maze steps forward slowly, hands open, palms out, his voice low.
“Hey now,” he says, not unkindly. “You need to let Rox take you somewhere you can lie down. You’re rattled.”
I blink at him, confused. “But I…He…” My throat closes. “That’s Wyatt.”
Rox’s grip firms, but her tone stays gentle. “I know, babe. I know.”
She doesn’t argue. Doesn’t tell me I’m wrong. She says it like she’s seen people spiral before and knows exactly what to do.
Maze steps closer. “Let Rox take care of you, okay, honey? Everything will be all right.”
I glance one last time at Wyatt.
He hasn’t moved.
Frozen in place, face like stone, fists clenched at his sides. His eyes burn into mine, wild and devastated, but he says nothing.
“Max,” Rox whispers. “C’mon. Please.”
Something in me breaks.
I stop resisting. Stop trying to understand. My arms go slack. My legs move only because she moves me. Like the string’s been cut. Like I’ve let go of the last thing I was clinging to, and now I’m just…going.
She turns me gently, guiding me through the crowd. My legs barely work. I move like a marionette.
Just a body in motion, dressed in a stranger’s vest.
Rox leads me down the gangway, one hand braced lightly on my lower back. I’m barely aware that my feet are moving. I could be floating as she pushes me lightly though the air—I wouldn’t even notice.
My head buzzes like it’s full of static. I can’t stop hearing it—his voice.
“No.”
“Is she on something?”
It loops in my head.
We stop at Billy’s door at the end of the gangway and Rox knocks once. No answer. She waits a minute and then opens it anyway.
Inside, Peach is on top of Billy, naked and riding him, back arched, hands in her hair, moaning loudly.
“Oh!” she squeaks, covering her chest with one arm and scrambling off him the second she sees us. “Shit!”
Billy groans and sits up, looking supremely annoyed but unashamed. He does nothing to hide his now-exposed erection. “What the fuck?” he snarls.
“Sorry,” Rox says quickly. “She’s having a bad trip. Thought we’d better call it a night.”
Peach picks her clothes up from the floor and presses them in front of her body, hiding her nudity.
Rich, I think, considering that I’m wearing nearly nothing except a leather vest.
Billy rubs his hand down his face and exhales heavily. “Christ’s sake. Jesus. Fine. Leave her on the mattress.”
“Come on,” says Rox quietly, taking my hand and pulling me toward the futon. “Come lie down.”
I’m vaguely aware of Peach trying to step into her shorts while still holding her top in front of her breasts.
“No, baby,” Billy is saying, plaintive. “What the fuck? It doesn’t matter, she’s fucked up anyway.”
“I can’t,” Peach is saying. “It’s weird.”
“C’mon.”
Rox ignores them, kneels down, and tugs off my shoes. “Bet you’ve been dying to get these off,” she says with a smile.
The relief when my toes can expand again is so pleasurable that, just for a moment, I forget all my troubles.
But Billy is up and standing now, blocking Peach at the door.
“Just give me five minutes,” he’s saying, edgy and irritable. Peach purses her lips, crosses her arms, but doesn’t move.
“Rox,” Billy says over Peach’s shoulder. “I need you to take Max tonight, okay? Can you take her to your room please? Just don’t let her leave, okay? I’ll send Silas for her in the morning.”
Rox glances at me, then back at him. “Yeah?”
“Please,” he says, pissed and testy. A horny man used to being obeyed.
“Sure.” She nods. “Of course. C’mon.” She takes my hand and I let her pull me to my feet. “Little sleepover tonight, okay? Plenty of room with us.”
I’m not even a person in this place. I’m just…property. Passed off and reassigned when I’m inconvenient.
I let Rox lead me out the door. She stops and squeezes Peach’s arm. “Have fun.”
Peach says nothing.
We walk down the gangway again, down the rickety steps, back to the first floor. Before I can think too long about Wyatt, she turns me to the left, past a couple of cheap plywood doors and opens one up.
The room smells faintly of old sweat and Axe body spray, like someone once tried to mask the funk and gave up halfway through. There’s a bed shoved against the far wall. No frame, no headboard, just a sagging mattress draped in a faded gray fitted sheet, its elastic corners half-escaped.