Page 33 of Unorthodox
Don’t think about it.
I force my legs to move, and I pull out the sleek wooden chair and sit on the padded, black seat.
I stare straight ahead, at the door that leads to the porch, my hands fisted in my lap. And just as Max comes from the kitchen with two serving dishes, his shirt hugging his biceps, the corded muscles of his forearms flexed with the weight of the food, I spot the steak knife at my place setting.
Quickly, I look away.
Max sets down mashed potatoes and grilled chicken in the center of the table, along with a bar of dark chocolate at his place setting. For one single second, my mind is diverted.
Dark chocolate is the only kind I eat.
Distracting me from that thought, Max takes his own seat, smoothing down his shirt. Once more, I catch sight of the scars on his hands and his veiny arms. I think of the ones on his body.
I don’t dare look at the knife again.
Max doesn’t say a word as he uses his own knife and fork to serve me. The meat looks tender, topped with spices. He scoops mashed potatoes opposite the chicken, then he serves himself.
When he’s done, he stares at me.
“You need to eat.”
I dig my nails into my palms. I think about Ben this week, his hands all over me, the whip against my back. The punishments. Eating from his hand.
The stairs.
It took me two days.
Two days for him to break me.
I was already halfway there, but still. Two days.
I was weak.
But Ben is dead.
“I’m not hungry.” I’ve found my voice again. And as long as I don’t think about Ben, or the basement, or the stairs, or the gun in my mouth…I’ll keep it. Max is waiting on my father to pay him back, and without me, there will be no payment.
If he wants to kill me, so be it.
But I’m not going to break again so easily. Not for Max.
I push every horrible thing he let happen to me this week into a box in my mind, much like I did as a child. And later, when I was thirteen and my father came up behind me while I was watching a documentary on government conspiracy theories in his room, waiting to go eat with him. He started caressing me, kissing me. Not too long after that, my virgin blood stained his sheets.
I watched the documentary the entire time.
Before that, someone shoved a gun down my throat too. Someone told me to do terrible things. Someone took mine and Danik’s innocence, cleaved it into pieces, shattered it in a way that it could never be put back together again.
I put all of it in a box to survive.
I can do the same with Max.
He studies me for a moment, brow furrowed, hands clasped together, under his chin. His elbows are on the table.
“Would you like to go back to your father in one piece?” he asks me quietly.
I don’t want to see my father ever again in my life.Still, fear threatens to break through my new mask of calm, but I push it back, clenching my fists so hard my knuckles ache. I don’t answer him.
His eyes narrow. “You don’t want to play this game with me.”
