Page 1 of The Order of Disorder

CHAPTER ONE

I DON’T DREAM anymore.

Or maybe I do and just don’t remember. All I know is that I close my eyes and the world goes dark, and when I open them, I’m still here.

The clubhouse. Billy. My old life.

Back in the old days, Billy used to send me to whatever room was empty when he wanted to sleep with someone else. But now I sleep on a futon beside his bed, like a dog. A thick black leather collar wraps around my neck. Billy makes me wear it at all times. When he takes me somewhere, he clips a leash to the front ring and parades me around on it.

I’m never out of sight of either Billy or his VP, Silas. Never alone. Never free.

“Never again,” Billy said when he slipped the collar on.

At least it’s quiet—for now.

The room is dim, lit only by the weak orange glow of a lamp in the corner. My blanket smells unwashed—like damp and other people’s bodies. I keep it pulled tight around me anyway.It’s the only thing I have.

Above me, Billy breathes slow and even, curled around the girl he brought back for the night. I don’t know her name. Don’t care.

She giggled when they came in. Glitter on her cheeks. Sheer shirt and no bra. Her laughter faded when she saw me. Her smile fell when she realized I wasn’t leaving.

“Wait,” she whispered, as Billy peeled her shirt off and started undoing his pants. “Is she just…staying here?”

Billy didn’t even glance at me.

He grabbed her hips. Pulled her in. Palmed her tits.

“Of course she’s staying,” he said with a cruel grin. “She belongs to me.”

I have to hand it to her. She rallied fast. Lifted her chin and didn’t look at me again. It’s amazing what some girls will ignore just to be with Billy.

I turned my face to the wall and drifted away while they moaned and cried out. Not listening, but not sleeping. Just another day, another night.

I feel nothing.

“You were always mine,” he told me the first night. “You just forgot. That’s okay. I’ll remind you.”

He reminds me whenever he feels like it, just to prove that he can.

Sometimes it’s when he brings a girl back like this. I think he enjoys the horror on their faces when he moves on to me next. Other times it’s when we’re alone, and I get the feeling he’s hoping for something. Some sign of life. Some flicker of what I used to be.

Sometimes it’s fast and brutal. Sometimes it’s slow. It’s not about pleasure—not for me, anyway. It’s about ownership. Reclamation. Making sure I know I’m still his.

But he’s losing interest. I can feel it. Whatever spark he thought he was going to reignite isn’t catching. I don’t cry. I don’t beg. I don’t react. And he hates it.

My indifference is the only power I have left.

The girl in his bed lets out a sleepy sigh and I hear the sound of bodies shifting. It makes me remember what it was like to be held—to sigh and curl into someone.

I press my lips together and fix my eyes on a crack between the plywood boards that make up the room’s walls, trying to ignore the ache that never goes away. I count the breaths it takes to keep my hands from shaking.

Ryder is gone.

Dead.

I watched him bleed out in the dirt and couldn’t stop it.

And now I’m back here, beside the man I can never escape.