Page 20 of The Order of Disorder

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.”