CHAPTER ELEVEN #2
I watch as biometric locks get installed on Billy’s office door, the boardroom, and the armory. Fingerprint access only.
I see Silas pull guys aside for quiet conversations that leave them pale.
Wyatt tells me he’s running loyalty tests—fake errands, impossible choices. Setting traps and watching who flinches.
There are no safe places inside the hangar, but Wyatt keeps trying to find one. We’re prisoners together now, but that means I’m not alone in hell anymore. I have a shield.
Billy loses interest in me completely. After weeks of tormenting me like a cat with a trapped mouse, he seems almost relieved to be rid of me.
Wyatt’s presence changes everything. The way he keeps me close, the way he moves with me through crowded rooms, silent and watchful, looks like a claim the others respect, and over time, the dynamics shift. I stop being Billy’s, and I start being Wyatt’s.
With that shift comes certain freedoms. No more collar, no more public humiliations just to remind me where I stand. It’s like Billy believes the lie we're living—that Wyatt and I might carve out some kind of future here together.
Wyatt leans into it hard, making himself indispensable—running errands, attending strategy meetings, and fixing every problem that crosses Billy’s desk. All while he tries to buy us a way out.
The runs are local these days, thank God, but as Road Captain, Wyatt’s out constantly. Hours at a time, sometimes the entire day. Every time the engines roar back into the yard, I hold my breath. And every time I see him—when I know he’s made it back—something tight inside me releases.
When he’s gone, the emptiness is gutting. I feel like I’m holding myself together with tape and glue, just white-knuckling it until I hear the sound of engines roaring back in.
The boundaries we used to have get blurry. How could they not? Out in the club, we’re a couple. In the room, we share a bed.
At a club party, I sit on his lap, feeling him go tight with discomfort beneath me, but he places his hands on my hips as if it’s easy and natural, and I’m too aware of how big they are.
How strong and capable and safe. I flirt as a test, daring him to break, leaning in close and brushing my lips near his ear, and he laughs and slides a hand up my back.
But I swear I feel the heat inside me reflected in him.
Sometimes I wrap an arm around him in bed, or curl in close so that he has to let me sleep on his shoulder, and I feel his body yield as he sighs, like his very bones are softening.
One night after a long day on the road, Wyatt’s tired and tense. Quiet.
We’re lying in bed, the fan running, his forearm draped loosely across his face like it’s the only way to hold himself together.
His shirt’s off, the solid muscle of his chest impressively cut, sparse chest hair half gray, and I have the strongest urge to trace a finger through it except I know he’d probably start sleeping on the floor if I did.
“Any news?” I ask, not sure why.
He lowers his arm, turns his head slightly toward me.
“They’re prepping a big meeting,” he says quietly, in the whispered tone we’re so used to using.
“Someone important coming in, a Mr. White. Could be the high-level connection we’re looking for.
Could be interesting to find out more, but if we get the chance to get out of here beforehand, we take it. ”
My stomach lurches. My breath gets tight.
“I know who that is,” I say. “That’s the senator.”
Wyatt turns to look at me full-on. “The senator? Who?”
“His name’s Jack. I don’t know if he’s a real senator, but that’s what Billy calls him. Mr. White is, like, Billy’s code name for him. He comes in a big black car or Billy goes to see him. He never comes inside, and no one’s allowed to see him.”
No one but me. Billy often dragged me along to his meetings, affording me a kind of trust not even Silas had, while at the same time somehow expecting me not to notice any of the things that were discussed.
Like I was just supposed to sit prettily and not understand the numbers, the land deals, the talk of shipments and money laundering.
The senator always had one eye on me. He never said much. Just stood too close, smiled too slow. Looked at me the way powerful men look at girls they think are helpless.
He smelled faintly of menthol, like he was perpetually taking cold medicine, and he wore a heavy silver ring on one hand that stood out.
Like he was a mobster, or a pope. I remember the way he kept tapping it against his glass in the limo that night.
Taptaptap. Waiting for my spiked wine to kick in so he could claim his prize.
“But you know him?” Wyatt asks.
“Yeah,” I say. “Billy used to bring me to their meetings.” And I leave it at that.
But Wyatt furrows his brow and cocks his head, looking at me curiously.
“Billy brought you to meetings,” he says slowly, like he’s trying to process it, “with a high-level government contact?”
“Billy’s…needy.” I shrug, remembering the way he used to check over my appearance like it was his own reflection. How afterwards he’d ask questions that fed his ego.
Did the other guy seem nervous? Was he jealous? Did he look scared?
He would sit me down like a doll and talk blood and money over my head, assuming that all I was paying attention to was his performance.
“And he’s controlling,” I add. “I think maybe he liked having a pawn beside him, to show other people what he was capable of.”
“And they talked business in front of you?” Wyatt asks.
“Yes,” I confirm. They spoke as if I wasn’t there or wouldn’t understand. The way you would speak in front of a dog.
Wyatt is still, eyes narrowing thoughtfully. “So you’re a witness.”
It’s a simple statement of fact, but I never thought of it that way.
I take a deep breath.
I know names, dates, amounts. Places and code names. I saw papers I wasn’t supposed to see: land sales, bank numbers, fake companies. They didn’t hide anything from me.
“Yeah,” I say slowly. “I guess I am.”
Some parts of club life can be so mundane. Time becomes more of a feeling than a fact, especially in the hangar, where there are no exterior windows. Eventually, Wyatt yawns and says he’s going to “hit the sack.”
We brush our teeth in the second-floor washroom, where we run into Carla, Pluto’s old lady.
She’s already there, leaning over the sink with a toothbrush in her mouth.
On nights like this, when there isn’t a party, it feels weirdly like a college dorm—a grimy, chaotic dorm with its own bar and no adults.
“You look happy,” Carla says with a wink. I give her a half-hearted smile, and then Wyatt puts his hand on the small of my back and steers me down the hall. I can’t imagine what Carla thinks my life is like. Happy?
In the room, I change into sleep shorts and a tank top. Wyatt strips to his underwear. We politely turn our backs as we undress—like that matters anymore—and then climb into bed, each on our own side, like a couple who've done this a hundred times.
But the show of affection Wyatt puts on for the club dies the minute the bedroom door shuts. After that, it’s distance. Respectful. Careful. And unwelcome.
My feelings for him have always been complicated.
Wyatt is handsome, strong, undeniably sexy.
But he’s so much older than I am. The boundary created by our age difference has always been there between us.
But everything’s different now. Ryder is dead.
Jake and Damian are gone. And we’re alone in this place with only each other.
What I used to feel for Wyatt is blooming into something else, something deeper, anchored in need.
Something he refuses to return. And it hurts.
He lies on his back. I curl toward him like I always do, craving his heat, his solidity. He stiffens, like he always does. That’s our line. I slide under his arm and rest my head on his shoulder. That’s as far as it goes.
But it’s not enough.
My eyes move over the dips and planes of his chest, the sharp edge of his collarbone, the black-and-gray stubble along his jaw, the hard rise of his Adam’s apple.
He smells like heat and salt and the faint trace of his soap.
And I want more than just the comfort of him.
I want to know what he tastes like. I want to know what he looks like when he gives in.
If desire makes him helpless. If he’s ever been helpless.
The thought makes my breath catch.
Tonight, he sighs. His body softens beneath me. He turns his head and kisses my hair, and the gentleness of it sends a buzz through every nerve ending in my skin.
Before I even know what I’m doing, my hand drifts over his stomach. The muscle beneath it goes still and tight.
But he doesn’t stop me.
I slide my hand higher. Across his ribs, over the flat plane of his chest, trailing my fingertips through the sparse hair there, trying to keep my breathing even.
“Max,” he says, his voice deep. Stern. But he doesn’t move.
I tilt my face up and press my lips to the curve of his neck, right where his pulse hammers against my mouth, and he sucks in a breath.
The heat in the room shifts. Gathers. Expands.
I swing one leg over his, straddling his thigh, and press my body flush against him.
He freezes, muscles locked up as I kiss his neck, then his jaw, then the soft skin just beneath his ear.
It’s suddenly so quiet in the room you could hear a pin drop.
The sound of his breathing, controlled and shaky, is deafening.
I move, my knee sliding higher. My inner thigh brushes over his crotch—
And I feel it.
The thick, unmistakable hardness of him, straining beneath the fabric.
For a second, I freeze.
Shocked. Thrilled.
Heat flashes through me like wildfire.
He wants me.
I lift myself until I’m straddling his hips and grind down, instinctive and unthinking. The contact shoots sparks up my spine, and Wyatt’s hands clamp down on my hips, hard, like he’s trying to stop me. Or himself.
“Max,” he groans, a raw warning. “Stop.”
“Why?” I whisper into his neck. “Wyatt…”
His fingers dig in deeper, caught in some kind of war.
“No,” he breathes. “This isn’t right. It’s not—” His jaw clenches. “It’s not appropriate.”
But he still doesn’t push me off.
I bury my face in his neck, and for a long, electric moment, he just holds me there. Our hearts racing, breathing hard in the dark.
Then, slowly, like it’s killing him, Wyatt shifts me to the side. Onto the mattress beside him.
Not far. Just enough.
His arm stays wrapped around me. He pulls me in tight, like he can’t let go, even now.
I press my face into his chest, breathing in his heat, my pulse still erratic.
He kisses the top of my head again and sighs.
And neither of us says a word.