Page 44 of The Order of Disorder
Behind him, the sky flickers red.
I scream—
And wake up choking on air.
I ask for water and Wyatt is there, glass at my lips, hand steady at the back of my neck.
A few sips, and it stays down.
“Good girl,” he says quietly.
Later, I dream about Ryder again.“I’m scared,” I tell him.“You’ll get through this,”he tells me, and I don’t even know if I want that to be true. But night comes again, then daytime, and I’m still alive.
“You’re one of the toughest motherfuckers I know,” Wyatt says, and I manage to hold his gaze in a steely glare. He laughs. “You’re gonna muscle your way through, hon. I know it.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
WHEN THE STORM passes, I’m still standing.
And Wyatt is still there too.
It starts with realizing I slept through the night. Then with eating some dry toast and keeping my food down.
Wyatt watches me carefully. We’re both battle-worn and weary.
I take a shower on my own and I’m startled by my reflection in the bathroom mirror. My cheeks are hollowed out, dark circles under my eyes like bruises. The past few weeks feel like a strange dream—Rox, Maze, Wyatt. The twisting sickness. The camera blinking silently in the bedroom. The dreams of Ryder.
I feel scraped out and empty, raw around the edges.
Wyatt suggests we go for a walk.
“Outside?” It feels like I haven’t been outside in years.
“Yeah.” He gives me a funny smile. “C’mon, kid.”
Three guys working on their bikes out front track me with their eyes as we step past, but no one says anything. The sun is bright, the air fresh in a way I forgot existed, smelling like dirtand sunshine.
We circle the hangar in relative silence. He points out a hawk, I pick a bunch of dandelions and link them into a crown, dropping it on my head.
When we come back around to the front, Wyatt jerks his chin toward the storehouse. We cross the yard and walk around to the far side, where it runs parallel to the bushes that line the front of the property.
It’s just a shitty little strip of grass with no view and no sunshine, but Wyatt drops to the ground and pats the ground beside him.
It’s where he wanted me to meet him when he put that note in the cigarette pack.
“Surveillance blindspot here,” he explains in a low voice. “We can talk.”
It’s hard to know where to begin.
I’ve been captive for weeks, ripped away from the place I thought was home, left with the image of Ryder bleeding out on the gravel. When Silas dropped me at Billy’s feet, I was hysterical. Inconsolable. But Billy set himself to breaking me, with rope and humiliation and fear. With a collar and an audience.
He taught me hope was poison. That feeling anything would shred me apart. So I stopped feeling, and shut myself off to everything.
Then Rox came along and offered me a faster way to lose myself, and I chased that as far as I could until it was wrenched away from me.
Now I’m sitting in the grass with the man who keeps saving me. The one who cared for me. The one who just carried me through hell. And I don’t know how to speak about what I’vebeen through. How to reach whatever’s left inside me. Or who he really is anymore.
I’ve been shattered every way that a person can be, and what’s left of me is just pieces loosely linked together. I don’t have words for that. But luckily, he starts.
