Page 24 of The Order of Disorder
Wyatt.
The look on his face. The sound of his voice. The way he said he didn’t know me.
I squeeze my eyes shut hard and try to focus on the warmth at my back. The steady rise and fall of Rox’s breathing.
I try not to think about what it means, that he’s here, that he saw me. And that he pretended he didn’t know me.
My heart pounds. My chest aches. My mind replays the moments over and over, as if I could ever understand it.
But the joint is still in me. And eventually it drags me under like a tide too strong for me to fight. Sleep pulls charitably at the corners of my mind, edging me back into oblivion. And in the dark, still wrapped in his leather, I slip into a dreamless sleep again.
CHAPTER SIX
I WAKE UP to movement, the bed shifting and undulating me slightly.
I dreamt about Ryder, and for a second, I think it’s his body against mine, his arm over top of me—warm and soft and still.
But as I blink my eyes open, I remember. It’s not Ryder.
It will never be Ryder again.
Rox is pressed against me, her arm flung around my waist, her breath warm at the back of my neck. The ache in my chest flares like a pressed bruise.
Across the room, I hear movement. A drawer. The thunk of something being set down. There’s a zipping sound and then the man from last night passes through the door, closing it gently behind him.
I sigh and squirm onto my back, becoming aware of the suffocating heat of leather wrapped around my ribcage.
I’m still wearing Wyatt’s cut.
Rox groans behind me, then blinks her eyes open and smiles, soft and lazy. The sheets are wrapped around her waist, herbreasts bare, her copper hair a mess on the pillow behind her. She’s beautiful, but I feel self-conscious being so close to her in the light of day. I sit up and look down at myself.
All I have on is a tiny g-string and a thick leather vest. My big toes are blistered and red from last night’s vinyl shoes.
Rox stretches, unbothered by her nudity, and crosses the room. She pulls on a t-shirt and panties, then rummages through the dresser.
“Here,” she says, handing me a couple of things. “Wear this.”
I take the faded tank top and a pair of men’s boxers.
I stand to pull them on, moving slow, and Rox, sensing my hesitation, gently slides the cut off my shoulders. The relief is immediate, like taking off a winter coat in August, but when I lay it down on the bed, I freeze.
The screaming skull in its ring of chain glares up at me from where it’s stitched onto the back of the leather. The emblem of the Order of Disorder.
I see that patch every day—on jackets, bar walls, bike tanks. So often it barely registers. But this isn’t just a patch. This isWyatt’s.
Only members wear the skull.Earned, not borrowed,is what they say. Wearing it without rank is a crime punishable by death.
It takes a moment to sink in.
Wyatt is a patched-in member of the Order of Disorder.
There’s no other explanation, yet it makes no sense. There is no way he could wear this cut in this club if he weren’t.
He had to have joined after I’d left, or I would’ve known him. But that means all those months we lived together, when he’d leave for days, then weeks, he was riding with the club.
He always left on his motorcycle. Ryder told me that he was working—work he couldn’t explain to me. How could Wyatt have been riding with the O.D. all that time…the club that would go on tokillRyder?
My brain stutters. I can’t process it. The sense of betrayal seeps through my memories, poisoning everything.
