CHAPTER FIFTEEN
THE HANGAR’S UNUSUALLY quiet in the morning. With the bike repairs wrapped up, and people sleeping off last night’s party, I get the rare experience of seeing the hangar empty.
It’s like seeing the skeleton beneath the skin. A place that’s been home for more than six years now—and that, with any luck, I could be leaving behind sometime soon. Hopefully, this time for good.
Wyatt’s been gone for probably four or five hours. I don’t have a phone but I’ve been counting time in the way the light moves across the floor, sitting with a pit of anxiety in my stomach that doesn’t feel like it’s going to let up.
As the sun gets high in the sky, the hangar starts to stir.
Rocket’s old lady comes down the stairs in an oversized SpongeBob SquarePants t-shirt and ratty pajama pants and turns the coffee pot on, giving me a polite nod on the way.
Two heavily tattooed girls leave one of the first-floor rooms dressed only in shorty-shorts and bra tops.
I don’t even remember seeing them last night.
I watch through the open bay doors as they negotiate their departure with the guard on the front gate.
Eventually he radios for someone’s permission—probably Silas’s—and I decide it’s time for me to get scarce.
I head back to the bedroom without seeing anyone and lock the door behind me. Wyatt’s flannel hangs off the back of a chair, and I pick it up and hug it to me as I lie down on the bed, inhaling the comforting smell of it as if he were right there.
One night. Just over twenty-four hours to go. I survived without him for weeks. I just need to stay out of Billy’s thoughts for twenty-four hours and then Wyatt will be back. With a plan—a real plan this time. A way out.
The hours drag. I sleep for a bit and then wake up.
I tidy up the room, arrange our clothes, and flip through some magazines that must have been left here.
Preacher’s, I guess. Guns and Ammo and American Iron.
Things I literally could not be less interested in.
I turn on the radio and curl up on the bed out of sight of the camera, hoping that Silas forgets about me too.
I lie on the bed and stare at the ceiling until my eyes burn. I make a game out of not crying.
I’m dozing when the knock comes on the door. Three sharp raps. I sit up fast, heart jackhammering against my ribs. For a second, I think—hope—but no. Not him. Can’t be.
And then I hear a key slide in the lock, and it opens.
Billy steps into the room, that smug fucking smirk that makes me want to claw the skin off his face, Cash behind him, a small black medical case in one hand. They walk in without a second’s hesitation, no lingering by the door.
“What’s with the locked door, Max?” asks Billy, as if it were unusual for me to lock it. As if I don’t have the right.
All the hope I’ve been clinging to evaporates in an instant. There was no chance he was going to leave me alone when Wyatt’s not here to protect me. The cat’s come to play with the mouse. It was inevitable, and my heart sinks heavy at the inescapability that is Billy.
But I have survived this before, and I will survive it again.
He holds out his hand, a loose swathe of black fabric hanging from it.
“Get dressed,” he says, letting it fall onto the bed in a puddle of silk. “An old friend wants to see you.”
My stomach flips, sour and cold. “What friend?”
He tilts his head, assessing me with a cold smile. “Someone you haven’t seen in a while. Put on the dress so we can see how it looks.”
“No.”
His smile doesn't waver. “Not really a choice, sweetheart.”
“Fuck you.”
That gets a chuckle. “Later, maybe. But right now, get dressed.”
He doesn’t move. Just gestures with a flick of his fingers.
“Now, Max.”
I don’t move either, so he steps closer and lowers his voice.
“I can have Cash dress you, if you’d rather.”
My skin crawls. I glance at Cash, who doesn’t flinch or turn away. He waits with his arms crossed.
It shouldn’t matter. I’ve been paraded around this clubhouse naked before—on tables, in laps, across rooms thick with smoke and laughter.
Cash has seen it. They all have. But something’s shifted since Wyatt started staying close.
Since I started remembering I have a right to keep things for myself.
Since I stopped being their spectacle and started being Wyatt’s girl.
That doesn’t protect me now.
“Don’t,” I whisper.
“Then move.” He arches one unimpressed eyebrow.
Every part of me revolts, but my hands are already working, slow and mechanical. Pulling off my t-shirt, the soft shorts I slept in. I fold my arms over my chest, not so much to hide as to keep myself contained.
Billy tsks. “All the way.”
I hesitate a beat too long. He nods to Cash and that’s all it takes.
I peel off my underwear and bra with shaking fingers. The air feels too cold. My anger makes my stomach twist. My shame makes me want to disappear.
Billy watches, his eyes moving over me appreciatively. Cash doesn’t blink.
I stare at the wall.
“Good,” Billy says, voice warm and indulgent. He turns to Cash with a grin. “Fucking beautiful, isn’t she? Tight and bouncy in all the right places.”
He steps closer, gaze dragging down my chest, my stomach, between my legs. “And a perfect little cunt too. Mmm, I think we need to catch up some time, Maxie.”
I grit my teeth and jut out my jaw, saying nothing.
“But tonight you’ve got plans, sexy. Put on the dress.”
Expressionless, revealing nothing, I reach for the dress, but my throat feels raw, as if I’ve been screaming.
I pull the silk over my skin, the fabric slippery and clinging too close, but I don’t give them anything. No tears. No trembling. No shame they can see.
Let them look.
They’ve already taken everything on the outside. But they can’t touch the hope, the strength inside that Wyatt’s given me.
I smooth the fabric down over my thighs, lift my chin, and meet Billy’s gaze with a sangfroid I don’t feel.
He pulls an amber bottle with a white label from his pocket and shakes it so that the pills inside rattle.
“Here,” he says. “I know you’re nervous. I brought you some of these to take the edge off.” He glances at the bottle. “Oxy. Your favorite, right?”
He twists the cap and shakes out four, holding them out in his palm.
“No,” I say.
“Come on now,” he says, mock-gentle. “You don’t have to pretend you don’t want them.”
He steps closer. Holds out the pills.
“I said no.”
“Max.” His voice flattens. “You’re gonna take them, or I’m gonna have Cash hold your mouth open.”
I don’t believe him. But I also do.
So I hesitate, and then take them with shaking fingers.
“Good girl,” Billy murmurs.
He hands me a bottle of water from the nightstand. Watches as I raise the pills to my mouth. I press two of them between my tongue and cheek, tuck the others in my fist.
I pretend to swallow.
He nods once, satisfied. “Let’s go.”
As soon as we step into the hallway, I duck my head. One sharp cough into my hand and the pills land sticky against my palm.
I keep them there, clenched tight, as they lead me out of the hangar—a fist full of poison, a small rebellion burning in my hand.
Outside, the sky is overcast, slate grey and close. A black SUV waits in front of the hangar doors. Cash opens the back door and stands aside while I climb in, the silk dress whispering against the vinyl seat. Before circling to the driver’s side, he hands me the leather case.
It looks like a fancy makeup bag, with a flat top and a handle, and a zipper that goes all the way around. On the side, a black-and-white screaming skull emblem sticker has been slapped on it.
Billy leans in, his arm on the doorframe. “Give that to Mr. White, and be sweet, Max. Don’t embarrass me.”
Then he swings the door shut, straightens, and waves toward the gate. The guard nods, raises the barrier, and Cash starts the car and pulls out.
Mr. White. AKA the senator. I assumed as much, but this confirmation makes my blood turn to ice.
The last time I got into a car like this out front of the hangar it was to see the senator, too. He sat in the back seat, already waiting, and Billy handed me a glass of wine and told me to drink it.
“It’ll help you relax,” he said.
It didn’t.
I remember the way the cheap dress rode up my bare thighs, how cold the leather felt against the backs of my legs even through the haze starting in my head.
I remember the senator’s hand creeping higher.
The panic breaking through the drugs. Billy stepping out of the car, the door closing behind him.
My fingers finding the handle, yanking it open.
Back then, I jumped out of the car and hit the gravel running—sneakers slipping on frozen mud, no coat, bare legs in the February wind. I ran until my legs gave out, until the trees swallowed the sound of my breathing, until I collapsed on a porch I didn’t recognize. Ryder’s porch.
And now here I am again. Dressed to please. On my way back to the man who made me claw through snow just to stay alive. But there’s no way Billy will let it go wrong this time, no way Cash will let me run.
My fingers curl tighter around the four oxycontins still clutched in my palm, chalky and sticky from the heat of my skin.
The hotel is about as different from the hangar as it is possible to be. Glass, gold, and polish. Polite bellboys in white gloves. Cash presses a hand to my back as we walk through the lobby. It smells like bleach and roses—expensive and sterile.
A sleek reception desk stretches across one side of the room. White marble top, gold trim, a glowing lamp on either end. Behind it, two clerks in tailored uniforms answer the phones and greet guests, polite smiles fixed in place. Everything is lit soft, designed to soothe.
But nothing soothes the iron band around my ribs.
A call is made upstairs. We’re told to wait.