Page 142 of Unorthodox
My stomach growls.
I fist my hands in my T-shirt, trying to resist the urge to shove Mamie out of the way and pluck a muffin from the pan.
I don’t remember the last time I ate.
She closes the oven door with her hip, sets down the pan then slides off the black mitt, lying it on the counter.
Finally, she turns to me, crossing her arms as she leans against the counter. She looks tired, lines under her blue eyes, her hair pulled up into a messy bun. Her black shift dress is rumpled, and she’s got white fuzzy slippers on her feet.
I wring my hands, torn between darting around her and grabbing a muffin, and asking about Max. A doctor came over, dressed in a white coat, a hospital badge clipped onto his breast pocket. He didn’t look twice at the wreckage in the foyer, the dead bodies and blood, all the shattered glass and dropped guns.
He simply stepped over it all and took over where Mamie left off.
She led me to my room. The doctor saw me afterward, cleaned the wounds on my throat, applied ice to my face.
When he left, I asked after Max, but Mamie promised he would be okay.
We both know he won’t after next week.
He won’t be okay, and he’ll have people after him. People that want me badly, far more than my father does, for reasons I don’t understand. They might finish what Colton started last night.
But that’s not my problem.
That’s not my problem.
I’m glad I’ll be free of him.
No matter what he did last night, he didn’t do it to free me. He hasn’t done anything good forme.It’s all been to protect hismerchandise.To ensure he gets paid back from whatever my father fucked up.
The only thing Max cares about is money, because he thinks it protects him for whatever he endured to get to where he is now.
And to him, I’m a hell of a lot of money.
So, I shouldn’t feel guilty about what I’m going to do, but even so…I do.
“He’s okay,” Mamie finally says, breaking the silence. She watches me carefully as I rock back and forth on my bare feet, feeling exposed even though I’m in sweats and a t-shirt. “But are you?”
I feel my face warm with her words, but I don’t answer her.
“I saw what happened to you,” she continues. “It’s okay to not be okay, Addison.”
I straighten my spine, lift my chin as I meet her gaze. “I’ve never been okay,Mamie.”
She smiles, her eyes softening. “I didn’t think so,” she agrees, and I feel a spark of surprise at those words. “It’s why you and Max get along so well.”
At her comment, my mouth drops open, eyes wide. “What?” I ask her, my hunger momentarily forgotten. I shake my head. “We don’t…we donotget along well. Hekidnappedme, and I—”
“And yet he pulled you into his arms last night, and you held his face between your hands.”
“He was on the verge of passing out—”
“And before that,heslept outside of your door,heforbade me to clean your room—”
“No,” I insist, shaking my head. “No, he said you couldn’t usepine—”
She laughs. “No.” Her tone is gentle, but not meek. “Aside from cleaning up the mirror you destroyed,” she cocks a brow and I rock back and forth, twisting my hands in my shirt, “he forbade any of us from going into your room to clean.”
I frown, my mind spinning. “But it was always clean and—”
