Page 99 of Unorthodox
He’s nothing.
“You had to be stitched up. And for what, Maximus?”
Long after Coda is gone, the boy lies there.
Even as another, smaller boy slips from underneath the hollow space in the floorboards, rubs his brother’s back, that boy doesn’t move.
He stares at nothing. He feels nothing.
I know.
I remember what that feels like.
Because I still feel it.
What I am.
What I have.
Nothing.
I grab my laptop, slam it against the wall.
It isn’t enough.
She knows I’m nothing.
She fucking knows, and she still feels.
I kick the laptop, pick it up and try to rip it apart, separating the keyboard from the screen. I slam it against the wall again, and when it falls, destroyed, my fist goes into the wall.
Over.
And over.
And over.
Until I can’t feel it.
I can’t see it.
I sink to the floor, my head in my hands.
Numbness.
Nothing.
That’s all I’ve really been, and I hate that I can’t stay there. That when she’s around, when her bravery and her goodness come through…I. Want. More.
I pace the foyer,waiting for Addison and Evora, the guard at the door keeping his eyes on the floor, like a smart man.
Mamie tried to tell me I shouldn’t go to Luca’s party. After she saw the wreckage of my office two days ago, she tried to tell me I should stay home, and that Dante should be properly mourned. But the idea is almost amusing.
You don’t mourn people you murder.
After Mamie’s confession, my nerves were rattled, but I push that from my mind. What she saw.My weakness.
I meant what I told Addison.
