A small laugh escapes me before I can stop it.
Haven watches my amused reaction with something like cautious approval. She sets the notebook and pen down on thecouch cushion between us and leans back, studying the ceiling for a beat, like she’s making up her mind.
Then she reaches down and pulls her sweater sleeve back slightly, exposing her wrist.
There are faint scars there. They’re not fresh ones. I’m not a good gauge, but I’d say they’re a couple of years old, though they’re still visible.
Haven rubs her thumb over them before trailing her fingers down to the underside of her palm. She flexes her hand, folding her fingers open and closed, drawing attention to the undamaged skin there.
I frown, shaking my head so she knows I have no clue what she means.
“Did you see it?” she rasps. “On their hands?”
The sound of her voice startles me. It’s rough, like she hasn’t used it in a while. Like every word costs her, but something she sees in my confusion has spurred her to try again.
“Um. On Dallas? And Connor?”
“Onallof them.” When I nod, she asks, “Do you remember? Do you know what it means?”
I don’t, but I don’t know what’s stranger about this conversation: that we’re having it at all, or that she doesn’t seem surprised when I tell her that Dallas brushed it off as something stupid he did when he was eighteen and he was initiated into some kind of club that he and most of the kids he knew messed around with.
“Club?” Her eyes flash. “He tells you you’re his wife. But you… you’re no Offering.”
Huh? “I’m sorry… I don’t know what you mean.”
She grabs for the notebook again as though she’s lost her voice—or because she used too much of it—before writing this:
the Order of the Owed
Haven scribbles it out, then adds:
the secret society in town… you don’t know?
Keeping quiet myself, I shake my head.
“That’s how it works,” she says, voice quieter now. Almost strangled. “You’re not supposed to know unless you’re in it. But you should… and he should tell you.”
Heshould. “He’s my husband.”
He’s my husband, and he’s keeping this from me. Why? What does it matter if he’s in some kind of club or… or secret society? He’s out tonight for a work thing. That’s all. He’s a mechanic. He works with his friend, Sebastien. Sure, he’s paranoid and he lives in the penthouse he inherited from his lost parents, and he’s super protective of me after what I went through, but he… he’sDallas.
And he’s mine.
But he also has a second job, I remember, this side hustle of his when he works for Adrian, and now that I think about it, it’s not like this could be an emergency, late-night, mechanic job… can it?
Why is Haven telling me this? Is it a warning? It must be important enough to her for her to actually talk to a stranger when that’s clearly something she doesn’t normally do, but I don’t understand it.
Haven ducks her head, allowing her hair to fall forward in her face. “I love Connor. IloveConnor,” she says again, emphasizing the wordlove. “But I’ll never forget he’s one ofthem.”
What?
I open my mouth to ask when, right on schedule, Connor comes walking into the room as though he stayed away as long as he could, but just can’t do it anymore.
A boyish smile fills his face as he moves to the other side of the coffee table. “I thought I heard someone saying my name. You getting on alright, Lucy? You call for me?”
I glance at Haven. “It wasn’t me.”
Connor’s pretty blue eyes land on his wife, a rush of some combination of heat, of affection, ofrelieffilling his gaze. “Oh, sweetheart,” he breathes. He gestures for her to go to him.
