Page 166 of Unorthodox
Maybe when I stare into his grey eyes, listen to his soft hums of happiness.
But for her?No.I won’t break for her.
Her fingers glide against my face as she feels every part of me. As she takes the broken pieces of my soul and holds them in her hands. She doesn’t look away from me.
“When you were a kid.”
I nod again, unable to look away from her beautiful green eyes. If I close my eyes, if I turn my head, I’ll be there again. At my father’s mercy. I’ll hear Ollie’s screams.
I’ll be there, and I might never leave.
“Well you know what, Max?” she asks me, her eyes narrowing.
I feel myself tense, at the mercy of her next words. As small as she is against me, as much damage as I can do to her—as much as I’ve already done—if she hurts me now, if she betrays me again, it’ll destroy me.
Her hand stills on my face, one still around my neck, her fingers in my hair. “Fuck him.”She leans in close, presses a soft kiss to my lips, but her words are anything but. “He’s dead, and you survived.” She kisses me again. I don’t kiss her back.
I can’t.
I can’t move.
“Fuck. Him.”
He betrayed me.
My own father. The man who was supposed to love us and care for us and help us grow, hebetrayed us.
When I look into Addison’s green eyes, shining with unshed tears, fierce and angry on my behalf, I know it’s all bullshit.
Because shebetrayed me too.
For a moment,he just stares at me. His eyes are shining, but no tears fall. As the seconds tick by, I regret what comes after this.
Maybe I shouldn’t do it.
Maybe I should stay.
Those thoughts echo in my head, along with ideas of how he was hurt. How he was created. What made himthis.
I wonder if he could be different because there is something human in him, after all. He’s not entirely a monster.
Like Satan, he was born with at least an ounce of goodness.
But just like the devil, he learned how to use it to make himself appear human. Because the next words out of his mouth aren’t about his father, or his past, or any of the people that turned a little boy into my worst nightmare.
His next words are simply, “You lied to me.”
My breath catches, my hand still on his face, one around his neck, his fingers digging into my waist.
He blinks, and where I thought he might actually cry, he looks instead as if he might kill me. Because Max likes to hurt people. It’s the only thing that numbs his own pain.
And he won’t let go of it, because he enjoys the horrors.
I don’t regret it anymore,what comes next. That moment is gone, vanished like the glimpse into Max’s grief.
Instead, I leap to my feet while I still can, and he lets me go, because he thinks he’s going to win this too.
I don’t think Max is used to losing.
