Page 26 of The Order of Disorder
I lift my head and look.
Down below, a group of men are gathered in front of the hangar. They’re unloading crates from the back of a truck and sorting them into rows. One of them stands a little off to the side, clipboard in hand, pen tucked behind his ear.
It’s Wyatt.
No cut today. Just jeans and a fitted top, sleeves pushed up, collar stretched. He’s clean-shaven and alert, his expression focused as he watches the others work. He checks something on the page, says something to the guy nearest him, and nods. It looks like he’s in charge.
An easy laugh escapes him and I hear it from here, warm and familiar. His mouth curves into a crooked smile I know too well and my stomach drops.
“Oh, there’s Maze,” Rox says, pointing to the man beside Wyatt.
Peach makes a low, appreciative sound. “Okay, lumberjack daddy. I see you.”
Maze is a big guy. Burly and a little soft in the middle, but strong where it counts, with shoulder-length dark hair and a salt and pepper goatee. Seeing him clearly like this confirms for me that he was the man Rox was with last night. The one she went down on while I pretended to sleep. The one who climbed into bed behind us and curled his arm around her waist. Everything clicks now. His hair, his build, his voice. Even the calloused hand that brushed my arm.
But my eyes snap back to Wyatt, calm and smiling, and my chest tightens until it aches.
The disbelief I’ve been grappling with hits me full force all over again.
I trusted Wyatt completely. Up until twenty-four hours ago, I thought he was the safest man I knew. Solid. Caring.
Which makes me a fucking idiot.
I should have known better. My whole life has been a lesson in not trusting people learned over and over.
It started in foster care. I learned it when I was seven and the couple who said they wanted to adopt me shoved me into a locked room and left me there for two days. I learned it againand again every time a new family passed me on to someone else. And I learned it with Billy when he tried to sell me off to his fucking senator like I was a party favor.
But Wyatt was kind to me, and I let that be enough to take him at his word and let him matter.
This might be the greatest lesson of all—finding out that Wyatt, of all people, is here with the men who kidnapped me, collared me,humiliatedme.
The men who killed Ryder.
There’s no such thing as safe people. There’s only what people want from you. And what they’ll take to get it.
I close my eyes and press my knuckles into my sternum, trying to tamp down the ache.
I always fucking do this. I see someone kind, someone good, and I believe it. Like it’ll be different this time. Like I’m not the girl who gets abandoned. Used. Passed around.
Like I deserve something more.
But I don’t.
“Maze is fucking hot,” Peach says to Rox. “That silver fox with the clipboard’s not bad, either.”
Rox lifts her sunglasses and squints.
“Oh yeah, that’s Ryan,” she says casually.
She watches him for a beat longer, then shifts her attention to me. Her tone is light, but there’s a careful look to her eyes, like she’s fitting puzzle pieces together in her head.
“You know him, right?”
My pulse kicks.
I thought I knew him. Once. But apparently I don’t know Wyatt—or Ryan, or whatever his name is—at all.
“No,” I say, dropping my eyes. “I don’t know him.”
