Page 32 of The Order of Disorder

“It had these ratty blinds and a busted AC unit, but it was mine,” she says wistfully. “God, I used to lie on the floor just to feel cold.”

I smile faintly, and try to picture her in a world with windows. Then my heart stops.

Up ahead Wyatt is striding toward on us, a man on a mission, and just the sight of him makes my goddamn heart break. I want to imagine that he’s going to wrap an arm around me and carry me away from all this; tell me that it’s all a mistake. Instead, when he gets close to us, he flicks blue eyes over to me and tossessomething in the air. I instinctively reach out to catch it and fumble it.

“You said you were out,” he says coolly, without breaking his stride.

A pack of cigarettes bounces off my hand and drops to the ground. I blink down at it. Marlboros.

“You don’t smoke,” says Rox. And I don’t—but for some reason, I don’t want her to question this interaction. I wish she’d never seen it.

“Sometimes I do,” I bluff. The dumbest bluff in the world. I’ve never smoked a cigarette and would surely cough if I tried. But I pick the pack up and stuff it into my pocket. “C’mon,” I say. “Let’s go.”

“What’s the deal with you and him?” she asks, picking up her pace to keep up with me. “Listen.” She grabs my arms and turns me to face her. “Just tell me. I’m not going to say anything.”

“Nothing,” I say, turning to keep walking. “I just asked him to grab me some smokes.”

“When?”

I keep walking and she lets it go. For now.

When she leaves me alone in the bedroom to go use the washroom, I pull the cigarette pack from my pocket and slide it open. Inside, wedged between two smokes, is a torn scrap of paper.

6PM

far side of the storehouse

come alone

No name. Just the sharp, scrawled handwriting I’ve seen a hundred times on work orders at Leathernecks.

My hands shake.

I tear the note into tiny pieces and drop them into the trash can, then kick the pack of cigarettes under the bed, seeing the corner of his leather cut down there when I do so.

I never returned it to him, and he never asked.

Wyatt.

The biggest disappointment in my entire life. In a long list of disappointments. What could he possibly have to say to me?

It’s hours later when I realize I don’t know what time it is at all.

Maze pulled a package of “something new” out of his locked cabinet and handed it to Rox to run to a buyer, but he palmed two of the pills for us.

“It’s an old-school press,” he’d said, giving me one.

It hit hard. Hot in my chest, syrup in my blood. Reality blessedly melting away.

Now the edges are creeping back in, and all I can think about is time.

I’m alone with Maze, on my knees, his hand in my hair, his cock pushing into my mouth as he groans low. I’m trying to count backwards to when Rox left, to when she’ll be back.

6PM, I think, over and over. 6PM.

Maze’s grip tightens in my hair as he thrusts harder, and I let my jaw go slack, my throat open, wondering when we agreed to this. If we agreed to this.

What time it is.