Page 96 of Unorthodox
I don’t want more of it.
Max doesn’t say anything. He keeps standing there, leaning against the doorframe, watching me.
The hair on the back of my arms stand on end.
I wonder if he plans to kill me today. I draw my knees into my chest, wrap my arms around my shins. I think about him holding that gun to his head four days ago, and I hate how it makes me feel: sorry for him.
It makes me feel pity, and a man like Max Bennett doesn’t deserve pity.
“I’m aware of what time it is,” he says softly. He doesn’t say anything else, doesn’t ask again, but I know he’s waiting.
“Do I have a choice?” I ask him, hugging my knees tighter to my chest, my body tense as I wait for his answer.
I swear I make out his smile in the dark. “No.”
Swallowing down the lump in my throat, and the angry retort, I nod, even though I don’t know if he can see it. Slowly, with shaky limbs, I get out of bed and head to the closet, which brings me far closer to Max than I really want to be. But all of my clothes are in there, and I’m only in a sleep shirt and shorts.
When I reach for the closet door with trembling fingers, he steps into my room, so close I can smell his beachy scent.
I freeze, turn to look at him as my knees feel weak beneath me.
He’s staring into my eyes, and his face is a mask of calm that I don’t like. Not when he makes me feel so far from it.
“Are you scared of me, love?”
I blink, my hand still reaching for the knob, but immobile. Frozen. I think about his hand against my face. About him pinning me to the bed. The fall down the stairs while he watched, after Ben pushed me. I think about spitting on his shoe and licking it clean.
The gun against Ben’s chin. Dante’s head.
Him, inside of every part of me.
I feel dizzy with fear, but I force myself to answer him. “Yes,” I whisper in the dark, and my face warms with shame. With self-loathing.
With hatred.
He puts his hand on my arm, gentle as he lowers it down, away from the door, his fingers curling around my wrist. I try not to flinch with his touch. Try to hold my ground.
He steps closer, pulls me so I’m facing him, the closet adjacent us, the door to my room at his back.
His hand comes to my face and my jaw tenses, but I don’t move.
His fingers are gentle as he traces the curve of my cheekbone, then over my brow, across my temple, back down to my throat, where the bruises are healing.
“I’m sorry.”
I don’t think I’ve heard him correctly.
He continues tracing my face, his touch light, his eyes on mine. “When all of this is over, I don’t want to be the worst man you’ve ever met.”
My stomach twists into knots. His fingers skim over my lips, and I can’t breathe.
“But I think, even if I hurt you more,” he leans in close, his thumb pulling down my bottom lip, “you’ll find there are far worse monsters in the world.”
I try to turn away from him, anger and fear colliding in my bones with his twisted words.I’ve already met worse monsters.But before I can get away, he grabs my chin, forces me to look at him.
“Don’t think that what you saw means you know me, Addison.”
For a moment, I’m confused, and it’s on the tip of my tongue to ask him what the fuck he’s talking about, but I quickly swallow the question as it plays in my mind again.
