Page 9 of Inside the Maelstrom: Part One
I was born with enough and I’d die with enough.
We shot the shit for a little longer, giving Hendrick the normalcy he so desperately needed. He was a fucking asshole, of that there was no doubt, but he needed us. He’d never really admit it, any more than I would, but it was true.
The sun began to peek over the horizon, which was our cue to leave. I stood and hugged Hendrick. I hated he was in here without anyone to watch out for him, and I knew Otto felt the same. But Hendrick wasn’t some weakling; he’d been running this place within twenty-four hours, because money talked. But still, there was a difference between getting your dick sucked by a nurse, and being with your boys.
“I’ll give you a week and then we’re breaking you out of this shithole.”
He laughed like I was kidding. I wasn’t.
I watched as Otto gave him a hug too. We hugged like we meant it—doing weird, one-armed hugs in case one of you thought the other was gay was ridiculous. Science said we needed ten minutes of human contact a day for mental health, and I wasn’t going to hug any other fuckers, especially not my parents. If I hugged a girl for too long, she started thinking we were more than we were.
So that left these guys, and they both hugged like they were touch-starved.
We went our separate ways, jumping the pool fence and then the back security fence. It wasn’t really meant to keep people in. If the inmates of this facility wanted out, they could walk out the front doors, or hop the back fence without much problem. But when it came down to it, you couldn’t help people who didn’t want to help themselves in places like this, and if their symptoms were any worse, they’d be in a psych facility and not in a resort masquerading as a medical center.
“He looks good,” Otto said, and I grunted my agreement. We’d seen every side of Hendrick. Sometimes I’d been too scared to leave his side; sometimes I’d rescued him from situations that only had the potential to be bad. Sometimes he’d done the same for me.
But he did look good tonight, his face alive and animated. And with the way he’d looked at that girl, I knew he was on the hunt, which made me feel a little bad for Aviva. Didn’t matter, I would sacrifice a hundred good girls to Hendrick’s beast to keep it at bay for another day.
I was surprised my rental Maserati was still parked under the streetlight where we’d left it. This really was a nice neighborhood. “Wanna go get breakfast?”
Otto smiled at me, and I once again thought he had an almost feminine prettiness about him. Don’t get me wrong, he was tall and broad, but he had soft, full lips, long eyelashes and kind eyes. It was catnip for women; I didn’t get it, but Otto had it in spades.
“Hell yeah, I’m dying for something deep-fried or smothered in syrup. Mom is on another juice cleanse, so the whole time I was home, it was kale three meals a day.”
He shuddered, and I huffed out a laugh. It wasn’t quite right when it was just the two of us—we were always meant to be a trio—but still comfortable. One more week and things would be back to normal.
As I started the car and roared away, I couldn’t wait.
Chapter5
Aviva
I’d purposefully avoided Hendrick like he was the plague. If I so much as saw a glint of golden hair, I turned on my heel and went the other direction. If he was in the dining room, I ate in my bedroom. At least he didn’t go to group therapy.
I’d managed to avoid him for four whole days. Those days were spent hiding in the chapel, reading Verne and the margin notes of the guy I’d started to think of as Captain Nemo. Which was dumb, but he and Nemo seemed to have the same views on humanity and life. They both loathed it, yet were drawn to protect it. In my head, he was Nemo. His words, written in scratchy black ink, slightly smeared like he was left-handed, they spoke directly to my soul. Like he was talking to me.
Can you imagine loving someone so much that you couldn't stand the idea of humanity without them? I want that kind of love, and nothing else will do.
I couldn’t imagine it, no. I didn’t even love myself like that. But one thing I did know was that I wanted to meet Nemo. I wanted to understand him. Wanted to hear him speak the words he wrote down in that slightly tragic voice.
When the door to the chapel opened and closed softly, I shut the book and looked over my shoulder. I groaned at the sight of Hendrick. It wouldn’t matter that he was an asshole, if he wasn’t so damn pretty on top of it. My body thought he was sexy as hell, even as my brain rebelled against finding anything redeemable about him.
My hate for him was visceral, and probably unwarranted. But like having a crush on Nemo—who I’d romanticized so much that he may as well be a fictional character in a Verne novel—my loathing was irrational.
I sighed heavily as he came and sat beside me. “I’m praying here, Hendrick,” I said testily, and he grinned.
“Didn’t take you as the religious type, Viva,” he purred. I really wished he wouldn’t say my name like that. Like it was foreplay.
I gave him a dead-eyed stare. “You don’t know a thing about me.”
He quirked an eyebrow. “I know you’re here because you almost mowed down your neighbor. I know it was either here or jail for you. I know your parents work average jobs, a medical receptionist and the manager of a hardware store. I know you tried to kill yourself when you ran into that tree, or at least it was a cry for help. Nice girls don’t slit their wrists in bathtubs for their mamas to find.”
My whole body went ramrod straight. “How fucking dare you?” I said, my body trembling with rage.
He shrugged like he had every right to my history. “I know that you’ve got a failing GPA, and you’re lost, Aviva Robinson. So hopelessly lost, there's no way out.”
He turned back to the front of the pulpit, staring at the cross that hung on the wall like a grim reminder of our sins. I tried to ignore the ache in his words. But no matter how much he tried to hide the pain, and I tried to ignore it, it sat between us like a deflated balloon.
