Page 37 of The Order of Disorder

“I’ll take her.”

Wyatt.

It’s enough to snap me to attention. I roll my head to the side to see him speaking over me, not looking at me. But I see the determination in his jaw.

No.

“What?” Billy asks.

“It’s fine,” Silas says quickly. “I’ve got it.”

“Nah,” Wyatt says, still ignoring him. “I’ll take care of her. Keep her in line. Be my pleasure.”

Billy whistles low and slow.

“Didn’t peg you for the kind that likes ‘em limp and half-conscious,” he says, grinning. “But hey, no judgment. You want her like this? Shit, knock yourself out. Just don’t lose her, and try not to break her—at least not all the way. She’s still gotta be good for something.”

“Roger that,” Wyatt says, cool and controlled.

He bends down and lifts me like I weigh nothing.

I try to fight, but I can’t make my limbs obey.

Laughter follows us.

“Have fun, mate.”

“Call me over for some sloppy seconds.”

I should scream. I should kick and bite and thrash. But instead I feel a kind of quiet come over me.

Not because I’m okay. Not because I trust him. But because despite everything…his arms feel like home.

The smell of him. The solidness of his chest. The heat of his body against mine. It pulls something up from the deepest part of me, something I thought I’d buried when Ryder died.

He’s awful. He’s part of this.

But being in his arms feels like the way things used to be. Before the club. Before the van. Before Ryder died.

I don’t fight because I’m tired. I’m so fucking tired. And I just want to be reminded of another life. A better one. The one where Wyatt was good and Ryder was still alive and I wasn't this thing I am now.

So I rest my head on his shoulder and let myself pretend, just for a minute, that I’m okay.

CHAPTER NINE

WYATT CARRIES ME up the stairs to old Preacher’s room, holding me gently, like I’m breakable. He shoulders the door open and lays me down on the bed.

I was in this room once when Preacher was alive. The walls were covered from floor to ceiling in posters of naked women. Now, even in the dark, I can see that it’s bare and immaculately tidy. Spartan. Very Wyatt.

Wyatt, whose apartment above the garage had felt like a second home, has a room here. I wonder how long he’s had it for. Preacher died almost two years ago.

I don’t fight him when he lays me down. I don’t have the energy, and even if I did, I don’t know what the point would be. My legs are jelly, my mouth dry as dust. My head feels like it’s stuffed with cotton.

He moves away and turns on a bedside lamp. I hear the low hum of a fan click on, the rhythmic whir of the blades filling the room with white noise. A few seconds later, music crackles from a radio.

Then he comes back to me and kneels beside the bed, close enough that I catch his familiar scent—soap and warmth.

He brushes a knuckle beneath one eye, then the other, looking directly into them like he’s searching for something. I flinch and try to move away and he murmurs quietly. “Hold still.” Then: “Jesus, Max.”