CHAPTER SIX
I WAKE UP to movement, the bed shifting and undulating me slightly.
I dreamt about Ryder, and for a second, I think it’s his body against mine, his arm over top of me—warm and soft and still.
But as I blink my eyes open, I remember. It’s not Ryder.
It will never be Ryder again.
Rox is pressed against me, her arm flung around my waist, her breath warm at the back of my neck. The ache in my chest flares like a pressed bruise.
Across the room, I hear movement. A drawer. The thunk of something being set down. There’s a zipping sound and then the man from last night passes through the door, closing it gently behind him.
I sigh and squirm onto my back, becoming aware of the suffocating heat of leather wrapped around my ribcage.
I’m still wearing Wyatt’s cut.
Rox groans behind me, then blinks her eyes open and smiles, soft and lazy.
The sheets are wrapped around her waist, her breasts bare, her copper hair a mess on the pillow behind her.
She’s beautiful, but I feel self-conscious being so close to her in the light of day. I sit up and look down at myself.
All I have on is a tiny g-string and a thick leather vest. My big toes are blistered and red from last night’s vinyl shoes.
Rox stretches, unbothered by her nudity, and crosses the room. She pulls on a t-shirt and panties, then rummages through the dresser.
“Here,” she says, handing me a couple of things. “Wear this.”
I take the faded tank top and a pair of men’s boxers.
I stand to pull them on, moving slow, and Rox, sensing my hesitation, gently slides the cut off my shoulders. The relief is immediate, like taking off a winter coat in August, but when I lay it down on the bed, I freeze.
The screaming skull in its ring of chain glares up at me from where it’s stitched onto the back of the leather. The emblem of the Order of Disorder.
I see that patch every day—on jackets, bar walls, bike tanks. So often it barely registers. But this isn’t just a patch. This is Wyatt’s.
Only members wear the skull. Earned, not borrowed, is what they say. Wearing it without rank is a crime punishable by death.
It takes a moment to sink in.
Wyatt is a patched-in member of the Order of Disorder.
There’s no other explanation, yet it makes no sense. There is no way he could wear this cut in this club if he weren’t.
He had to have joined after I’d left, or I would’ve known him. But that means all those months we lived together, when he’d leave for days, then weeks, he was riding with the club.
He always left on his motorcycle. Ryder told me that he was working—work he couldn’t explain to me. How could Wyatt have been riding with the O.D. all that time…the club that would go on to kill Ryder?
My brain stutters. I can’t process it. The sense of betrayal seeps through my memories, poisoning everything.
I stare at the cut, my heart thudding in my ears, wondering what any of it means.
“Hey,” says Rox, tossing a towel at me to get my attention. “Let’s go get showers.”
“Yeah,” I say, blinking hard and shaking my head like that’ll help me snap out of it.
I can’t afford to spiral out over Wyatt.
Not now. Now when I don’t know how much time I’ve bought myself away from Billy, or what it’s going to cost. I pick up the towel and follow Rox to the shared washroom, savoring the one mercy of the morning: that she forgot my collar.
I’m reading an old fashion magazine on Rox’s bed, swinging my feet in the air, when there’s a knock on the door.
“Come in,” barks Rox from the chair near the wall, where she’s carefully combing out her long, wet hair.
Peach bursts in all smiles, dressed in a pink bikini top and matching shorts. I don’t think I imagine the flicker of surprise on her face when she sees me, but it passes fast.
“Sun’s out, sluts,” she quips, grinning. “Let’s get those tits outside!”
Rox laughs. “Sure, why not?” She gathers some essentials—sunglasses, lip balm, magazines, weed—and then makes a show of deferentially collaring me.
“May I, ma’am?” she asks, clipping the leash onto my collar and then bowing.
We walk through the hangar and cross the lot together, like three girls skipping out of school, and I can’t shake the feeling that at any moment Billy is going to come running after us to drag me back inside—or worse, Silas.
I haven’t been outdoors in at least five weeks.
The heat of the sun on my arms, and the looseness of Rox’s grip on the leash is heady and exhilarating.
A lot has changed at the club since the last time I was here.
The club itself is bigger. There are more people around than there ever were before, unfamiliar and somehow tougher looking.
Billy himself seems more wound up than ever, slightly more manic.
A shade more unhinged. And the actual property has changed.
New low wooden buildings have been erected out back of the hangar—a kind of barracks, it looks like.
And by the entrance, closer to the road, is a new, two-story brick building. That’s where Rox leads me now.
We duck through the door and pass through a storage area littered with tires and greasy tools, then up a narrow stairwell to a small loft-like attic, where Peach pushes open a window and climbs out onto a low half-roof.
The space has two warped chaise lounges, a mattress pad draped with a towel, a milk crate doubling as a table with an overflowing ashtray and an empty soda can on top.
Peach claims the mattress. Rox and I take the chairs. I pull my tank up over my stomach. I don’t have a bra on, but I want the sun.
Rox tosses me a pair of heart-shaped sunglasses, then she pulls out a portable speaker and a baggie. Peach syncs her phone, and soon music is rolling across the rooftop. Rox sparks a joint and hands it to Peach.
It’s so normal it feels alien.
The collar pinches when I move to take the joint, a reminder that I’m not really one of them.
I don’t belong here. But the sun feels so good soaking into my skin, and makes my limbs feel loose.
It feels like I’ve wandered into an afternoon in someone else’s life, and I just try to enjoy the moment while it lasts.
“Tell me about your night,” Rox says to Peach, passing her the joint. “Was it fun?”
“Oh my god,” Peach says, taking a hit and grinning wickedly. “It was good. Like, holy-fuck good. Billy’s a freak in the best possible way. He made me beg for it.”
“Ooh,” Rox says with a little smirk. “Damn. That’s hot, though.”
“Like, fucking hot.” Peach nods. “I can’t even sit down today.”
“Crazy,” Rox replies, rapt.
Peach hands the joint to me, then hesitates. “Sorry. I’m not trying to be, like…” She grimaces.
“It’s okay,” I say, taking it. “Trust me, I don’t care.”
Peach exhales with relief. “Okay, good. Because that man is fucking feral.” She turns back to Rox. “I think I saw God.”
Rox laughs. I take a long pull and blow the smoke out in a slow, even stream. Then I pass the joint back and tilt my head to the sun. The heat pushes against my eyelids. The world feels soft at the edges.
I wait for that same oblivion that pulled me under last night while Peach recounts intimate details about Billy to Rox.
I’ve been with Billy since I was…well, probably too young to lose my virginity, and he’s fucked dozens of women since we’ve been together.
But I’ve never heard anyone describe him like this—the way his cock curves to the right, or the positions he likes.
Instead of being offended, I’m curious and amused, and I find myself smiling slightly as I listen to Peach talk.
But eventually, something else catches her attention. I open my eyes when she props herself up on her elbows and squints through the sun.
“Ooh, boys,” she says. “Who’s that with the clipboard?”
I lift my head and look.
Down below, a group of men are gathered in front of the hangar. They’re unloading crates from the back of a truck and sorting them into rows. One of them stands a little off to the side, clipboard in hand, pen tucked behind his ear.
It’s Wyatt.
No cut today. Just jeans and a fitted top, sleeves pushed up, collar stretched. He’s clean-shaven and alert, his expression focused as he watches the others work. He checks something on the page, says something to the guy nearest him, and nods. It looks like he’s in charge.
An easy laugh escapes him and I hear it from here, warm and familiar. His mouth curves into a crooked smile I know too well and my stomach drops.
“Oh, there’s Maze,” Rox says, pointing to the man beside Wyatt.
Peach makes a low, appreciative sound. “Okay, lumberjack daddy. I see you.”
Maze is a big guy. Burly and a little soft in the middle, but strong where it counts, with shoulder-length dark hair and a salt and pepper goatee.
Seeing him clearly like this confirms for me that he was the man Rox was with last night.
The one she went down on while I pretended to sleep.
The one who climbed into bed behind us and curled his arm around her waist. Everything clicks now.
His hair, his build, his voice. Even the calloused hand that brushed my arm.
But my eyes snap back to Wyatt, calm and smiling, and my chest tightens until it aches.
The disbelief I’ve been grappling with hits me full force all over again.
I trusted Wyatt completely. Up until twenty-four hours ago, I thought he was the safest man I knew. Solid. Caring.
Which makes me a fucking idiot.
I should have known better. My whole life has been a lesson in not trusting people learned over and over.
It started in foster care. I learned it when I was seven and the couple who said they wanted to adopt me shoved me into a locked room and left me there for two days.
I learned it again and again every time a new family passed me on to someone else.
And I learned it with Billy when he tried to sell me off to his fucking senator like I was a party favor.
But Wyatt was kind to me, and I let that be enough to take him at his word and let him matter.