Unorthodox (Sick Love Book 1)

by K. V. Rose

  Even as I catch myself on my palms and sit up, turn to face him, he hears me. “I know pain,” I tell him as he walks toward me, a manic smile on his face, “I know pain and I know bad people. But I still feel things, Max. You could ask Dante about that. You could ask Mamie. You could ask all the people that claim to serve you, but wouldn’t hesitate to fuck you over for someone who still sees the good in—”

  He lifts his foot, and for a split second, I think he’s going to kick me. I curl into a ball, wrapping my arms around my shins.

  But he turns away from me, and his foot goes through the empty cabinet of my nightstand. The wood splinters, and he kicks it again, where it collides with the wall.

  He doesn’t stop.

  I watch him destroy it, watch the nightstand turn on its side, quickly dilapidating into nothing but broken wood, the sound so loud I can’t hear myself breathing. Can’t feel my heart nearly beating out of my chest.

  When he’s done, when he pauses, turning to look at me, I think it’s over. I think he’ll walk out. Blame me for the mess, maybe make me pick it up. But I think this fight is through.

  I think wrong.

  He closes the space between us, yanks me to my feet.

  “What did you say to me?” he asks quietly, even as his chest heaves, his grip on my arm bruising as he holds me close to him. “What is it you fucking said to me? You still feel things? Is that what you said?”

  My throat feels tight. My knees tremble as he shakes me.

  “Answer me, Addison.” He’s still so quiet, his voice so low.

  I wish he would scream. I wish he would put a hole in the wall. I wish he would let go of me. “Yes,” I tell him. “I-I do.”

  He smiles at those words, and a shiver takes over my entire body. I’m shaking in his grip.

  He leans down close, his mouth by my ear and he says, “Let’s change that.”

  Then he yanks up my dress, shoves me against the bed, one hand fisted in my hair.

  “Max, don’t—”

  “Don’t talk, Addison. Don’t fucking talk.” He rips down my underwear to my ankles, and with one hand in my hair, I hear him undoing his belt, then the zipper.

  I try to stand up, try to push away from the mattress.

  I want my body as my own.

  Not this again. Not fucking this.

  His knee comes to my back, pinning me down. He yanks harder against my hair, causing my throat to arch. “If you fight me, I’ll make sure you hate every second of this.” He moves his knee, lets go of my hair, throws me flat on the bed, then climbs over me.

  I feel his cock against my ass as he pins me down with one hand on the side of my face.

  He nudges my legs apart roughly, his finger going into me just as rough.

  I try again, my palms flat on the mattress as I do my best to push up, but it’s fucking useless.

  It’s useless, and he’s really going to do it.

  I feel bile running up my throat, feel tears pricking behind my eyes as he leans his weight against my face, aching under the pressure of his hand.

  He’s going to do this all over again.

  He pulls his finger from me, then I feel something much bigger nudging against my entrance.

  He grabs my hair, twisting my head so I see him in the dim light of the room, his eyes dark as he smiles at me, guiding himself against me.

  “You’ve been to hell?”

  “Max,” I try, tears pouring down my face. “You don’t want to—”

  “I’ll take you back, Addison. I’ll make sure when I’m done with you, you don’t feel a fucking thing.”

  “Max.” His name is strangled from my throat, and I feel every second tick by painfully slow as I wait for him to do it, even as I pray he doesn’t. “Don’t do this.”

  “You say that to Dante?” he asks me, his voice a growl, but he doesn’t push further against me. He stops.

  And when he does, I can breathe a little easier.

  “Or maybe fucking Zeke. Maybe you wanted it in that fucking stairwell.”

  “Max,” I breathe out, “I didn’t want—”

  “So long as it wasn’t me again, huh, Addison?”

  I don’t speak, fear seizing up my throat.

  “You should’ve trusted me. You should’ve fucking trusted me.” His voice breaks on the last words, and I don’t say anything. Don’t move. Don’t breathe.

  “Fuck!” He nearly screams the word as he pulls away from me, and I feel relief flooding through my veins, like I can take an inhale again. Exhale.

  I feel the bed shift, I hear his zipper. His belt. Then he says, close to my ear, “Look at me.”

  I swallow, closing my eyes for a second. Trying to think, my heart hammering in my chest.

  I don’t want to look.

  I don’t want to see him.

  But I do it.

  I pick my head up, turn it to the side, so I can face him.

  See his steel-blue eyes searching mine as he’s on his knees beside my bed. His gaze roams over my face, and his brows pull together, and I don’t know what he’s thinking.

  “Fuck, Addison.” He pulls the gun from his hip, sinks to the floor, draws his knees up. He has his head in his hands, his gun tapping against his temple. There’s tension in his body, his shoulders hunched. And as tall as he is, as strong as he is...in this moment, he’s weak.

  Even what he did to me...it was another moment of weakness. A crack in the mask he’s probably been wearing for most of his life.

  “Addison, I…” He picks his head up, reaches for me with one hand, gun still in the other. I flinch, rearing back, shifting on the bed.

  He drops his hand.

  His gun is still against his temple, and I hate it, how I feel about it. How I want him to put it down. How, even after everything he just did, I don’t want him to die.

  I hate him, and I hate myself for it. For feeling.

  “Max,” I whisper.

  He stares at me, the barrel still pressed against his head, one hand on his knees, squeezing as if to keep himself grounded.

  “Addison.” His voice is rough, and he says my name like it’s a lifeline.

  He buries his head against his knees again, an anguished sob coming from his throat.

  I have the strange urge to reach for him, and I think again how I hate myself. How I hate what I am. How I can long to comfort a man who only wishes to hurt me.

  But I don’t reach for him, because I know that I can’t help what I want. I can’t help my thoughts, my pity, my empathy for a man like Max. But I can help what I do.

  I keep my hands by my sides.

  Another way I’m stronger than him. Another way I can control myself, where he can’t.

  “I’m sorry,” he finally says again, opening his eyes and lifting his head to take me in.

  He stands and I tense, waiting for his next move.

  But he just walks out, slamming the door closed as he does without another word.

  For five days, he disappears again.

  Another guard watches my every move.

  After he left my room, I spent the night crying myself to sleep.

  I haven’t cried since.

  The nightstand that he destroyed was cleaned up, gone the first morning after breakfast.

  I eat in the dining room three times a day, but I’m still not allowed out of the house. The new guard tells me all of this impassively, and I know without trying there will be no manipulating my way out of this house by inviting him into my bed.

  The days pass in a haze of routine. Boredom interspersed with threads of fear that I can do nothing about.

  Fear, and a longing that I refuse to dwell on.

  But the fifth night, after a dinner in which I picked at my food but ate little to nothing, I realize as I lie in my bed that I’m thinking about him.

  Him.

  I know I shouldn’t, and I try to reason that perhaps I only miss speaking to anyone at all. I haven’t seen Mamie since before the party, and
the guard I’m with is mute, save for issuing his orders passed down from Max.

  I try to tell myself I’m thinking of him because I hope he stays far the fuck away from me.

  I try to tell myself that I hate him.

  That I hope he’s dead.

  But I know it isn’t true, and I hate myself for it.

  I wonder if I’m losing my fucking mind in this big, silent house as I stare at the ceiling and imagine him with that gun to his head.

  Imagine his heated argument with Mamie.

  The way his eyes glistened with tears he’d never shed.

  How he held me close afterward, as if he were clinging to me.

  The way he tried to tear me down in my room days later.

  The “incident” in the car.

  Zeke.

  Max’s arm around me as he pulled the trigger.

  And that name… Jameson.

  I don’t let myself think about it. About where I might go if my father doesn’t hurry up. If I don’t escape like I think I might.

  I try not to think that the last time I was with Max, that will be my entire life. The pain. The bed.

  I close my eyes, my heart aching, and drift off into a fitful sleep, rewinding that night in my head, thinking of the words Mamie whispered to me in my room as she got me ready for the party. Words of hope.

  I’m not sure if I believe what she told me. I don’t really think this nightmare will ever end. And a part of me, as grateful as I am for her words—her seeds of a plan—part of me feels the sharp sting of sorrow at the idea of leaving.

  At what I could find within Max Bennett if I stayed.

  I don’t often have nightmares.

  Maybe a handful of times in my entire life, ever.

  But sometimes, something triggers them, and when it does, I wake up screaming.

  Like now.

  Immediately, I sit up, scrambling back against the headboard, clamping my hand over my mouth.

  Inhale. Exhale.

  Repeat.

  A cold sweat breaks out over the back of my neck, but in the dark, I see nothing. Hear nothing. The TV is gone, and I had been using the blue glow as a nightlight.

  Now, though, there’s nothing.

  One hand still over my mouth, I reach for the new lamp on my nightstand. The third one since I’ve been here.

  I flick it on.

  I see nothing in the mostly empty room. The door to the bathroom is closed, how I left it. The closet is closed.

  But my bedroom door...it’s open.

  I pull my knees into my chest, wrap my arms around them after I drop my hand from my mouth.

  My chest is heaving, but I force myself to breathe slowly in and out through my nose, trying to listen for anything that sounds off.

  Before I fell asleep, the door was shut and locked from the outside by the new guard.

  But now the door…it’s open.

  The nightmare.

  It had been Uncle Cade. Danik.

  Pine.

  I inhale again, focusing.

  I can smell it. Probably from the floor outside, in the hall. The scent hasn’t been completely removed from this house, and I know Mamie likes to clean with it. Max forbade it from being used in my room, but the rest of the house is coated in it.

  And if my door is open…

  Slowly, silently, I fling off my covers.

  Careful to distribute my weight evenly on the wooden floors, I take quiet steps toward the door. In the dark, I can see nothing beyond it. But there should be a guard.

  There should be a guard.

  My heart thumps wildly in my chest, and I hold my breath as I reach the door.

  For some reason, the image of Max with a gun to his head flashes in my mind. I think about how it hurt, seeing his finger on the trigger. How, despite knowing what he is, I wanted nothing more than for him to lower that gun.

  A sense of foreboding tightens in my gut.

  I try to push those memories away.

  Stupid, stupid girl.

  A few days later, he left me.

  Blamed me for it.

  Let someone hurt me.

  But then he killed him for me.

  And he came as close to crying as he probably ever does, his head in his hands.

  I shove it all aside even as my fingers drift to my face, down my throat, over the faded bruises. Dropping my hand, I reach for the knob of my door, and I stand in the darkness, listening.

  Waiting.

  The only sound is the too-fast beat of my heart.

  I pull the door open completely, staring out into the dark hallway.

  Letting go of the doorknob, taking one cautious step after another, I come out into the corridor, where my guard should be.

  The scent of pine is stronger here, but I force myself not to think about it. Just like I won’t think about Max.

  A soft blue light flicks on with my movement. My father had those—motion activated lights.

  Looking to the left, I see nothing.

  But when I turn to the right, I almost scream again.

  Just as the sound bubbles up my throat, I close my mouth, forcing it down.

  Max is in the hallway, his legs to his chest, wrists over his knees, his head tilted back against the wall, lips slightly parted.

  His eyes are closed.

  I stare at his chest, and I hate that I’m relieved to see a steady rise and fall beneath his fitted white t-shirt.

  He’s in black jogging pants, just as he was when I last saw him.

  And his gun…his gun is on his hip.

  Beside him, on the floor, there’s something that looks like a crumpled foil wrapper and I realize with a spark of amusement that it’s...chocolate. A chocolate wrapper.

  A small smile pulls up on the corners of my mouth, but I look to the gun again, and the smile fades.

  I think of his hands on me the last time I saw him.

  My limbs start to shake.

  I sweep my gaze down the hallway. No one else is here. No guard.

  Just Max.

  I think about going back to bed.

  I think about running, but I know there will be guards outside the doors. I know there’s an alarm system.

  I won’t be able to escape.

  I rake my hands through my hair, then wrap my arms around myself, deciding to go back into my room and leave Max to his uncomfortable sleep.

  But just as I step toward the door, my chest tightening at the sight of his exhausted body in the hallway, he darts an arm out, circles his fingers around my ankle and draws his gun.

  I bite back my scream, keep my arms wrapped tight around myself as I stare into his blue-grey eyes, bleary with exhaustion.

  And something else.

  There’s something else by his eye.

  A wound that’s angry and red and I see stitches.

  My gut churns as he tightens his hold on my ankle, the gun still pointed up at me.

  “It’s me, Max.”

  He lowers the weapon immediately, but he doesn’t let go of me. Instead, he runs his thumb over my ankle, and I shiver beneath his touch as I stare at him on the floor. There’s another bruise, along his jaw, and his lip looks…swollen.

  Someone beat him.

  I feel two conflicting emotions at once. Both vengeance and horror. Thinking he deserves it, followed by an eerie question: What kind of person could hurt Max?

  I don’t ask about it. Instead, I say, “I’m going back to bed. I was just….” I trail off, my throat tight. I try not to imagine the last time I saw him. I try not to think how it felt afterward, lying in my bed, staring at the ceiling like I sometimes did underneath my father.

  I try not to feel the numbness.

  That’s what Max wanted me to have.

  I won’t give him that.

  “Let me go, Max.”

  He keeps staring up at me, not letting go. The circles beneath his eyes are nearly black. With those and the bruises along his face, it’s almost hard to look at him, the
dark contrast of that weakness against the pallor of his skin.

  He keeps running his thumb over my ankle, and as the seconds tick by, he doesn’t say anything.

  I sigh, cover my hands over my face, closing my eyes. He’s not the only one who’s tired. Dante’s body in the woods. The nightmare with Cade. Danik. Max’s finger down my throat. Zeke’s body on mine. Max wrapping his arm around me, pulling the trigger as he shot Zeke.

  Then later, his anger. His hands on me.

  He’s not the only who wants to escape it all.

  “Why were you screaming?” His voice is low, but it sounds loud in the quiet of the house.

  I tense, not dropping my hands from my face. That’s the last thing I want to talk about with him. I’m surprised he even heard me.

  “I had a nightmare,” I decide on, dropping my hands. Knowing he wouldn’t have let it go unless I told him something.

  He doesn’t stop massaging my ankle. “Tell me about it.”

  “No.”

  He arches a thick brow, then he lets go of me and rises to his feet. I take a step back, his height unnerving when he was just on the floor, beneath me. From this angle, I can clearly see the swelling along this jaw. The tiny stitches above his eye.

  “What happened, Max?” I ask him quietly.

  He glances down the hallway, as if he’s looking for something, and when his eyes meet mine again, ignoring my question, he asks, “Was it the pine?”

  My throat feels tight, my chest heavy. I don’t know what time it is, but I don’t want to talk about this with him right now. Or ever. I wrap my arms around myself again, edging toward my door.

  He watches me move but doesn’t stop me, even with his gun in one hand.

  When I’m in the doorway, I hang my head, but don’t drop my arms. “Yes,” I answer him, my voice rough. “It was the pine.”

  He places his hand on my arm, and I try my best not to flinch. His touch isn’t demanding, or painful, it’s just…there. “What happened, Addison?”

  I swallow down a scream of frustration as I pick my head up to stare at him. “You first,” I say sharply.

  He just keeps staring.

  I sigh. “I don’t want to talk about this, Max.”

  He glares at me, and he looks nearly demonic in the soft blue lights of the hallway, with those circles under his eyes, cuts on his face. I think he’s going to hold that gun to my head and force me to tell him anyway, because that’s what Max does.