Chapter 21
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
MAVERICK
I ’m scaring Everly. That much is evident by her wide, tear-filled eyes staring up at me.
I don’t blame her. Before her arrival, I was sure my mind was stable—that I could tell what was real and what wasn't. The fear, the paranoia, the inability to control my emotions—all this emerged from the tests, drugs, and torture done by the doctors in Rookwell Tower. But since I’ve been released into the general population, I thought I had a handle on all those things.
That all went out the door with one glance at Everly.
I've seen what I can become under the right circumstances and, truth be told, I’m scared of myself.
The person I was the night she came to my room wasn't someone I recognized. I became unhinged and dangerous. It's the opposite of who I want to be. Who I thought I was. I thought, despite the misery that is my life, I had a reliable moral compass. But I’ve failed myself. Even if the ECT machine hadn’t worked, I allowed Rowan and Braum to talk me into something I never would’ve done to anyone else. I helped take things too far.
All it took was looking into the most deep, beautiful pair of hazel eyes I’d ever seen, so full of love and hope, to trigger some sort of fucking monster that’s been hiding inside me.
Now I’m no better than Rowan or Braum. Hell, I might not even be better than James Woodrow at this point. That knowledge is soul crushing.
As is the fact that Everly is curling her legs beneath her to make herself smaller because she thinks I'm here to hurt her again.
Swallowing down the bile that creeps up my throat, I try to help Everly—ready to show her I'm capable of more than just violence. That I’m not the same man that I was the other night. Slowly, I reach out to give her a hand up.
“Nonononono!” She screeches, her eye growing so wide with fear I can see the whites around them. She scrambles back on her hands and butt. “P-please don’t hurt me. Not again.”
Her fearful cry pierces through my heart, leaving a frigid chill like I’ve been stabbed with a damn icicle.
Goddamn I’m a fool.
I open my mouth to speak, but all that spills out is a pained croak. Choking it down, I try again. “Evie…”
Everly flinches at my nickname for her. Tears slide down her cheeks as she peers up at me.
“Mavie, please,” she whimpers. “It's me . Don't hurt me.”
All I saw when I looked at Everly when she arrived was her father and brother.
Not her . I allowed my loathing for those two to cloud my judgment.
As I hurried through the woods to find Everly this evening, I wondered if my loathing for her family outweighed the love I've carried for her.
I can feel it—that wild, frantic, hot energy that could lead me to another round of self-destruction.
It causes my blood to boil and my thoughts to become hazy.
But staring into Everly's face now is like staring into the sun. It hurts, and yet I can’t look away.
Everly was the girl I longed to touch, taste, and bury myself in for as long as I can remember.
She’s also the girl who belonged to the family that ruined me and mine.
Yet she didn’t do that. Everly is everything good in this world.
Always has been, always will be. The monster rattling around inside me settles some. Enough for me to know I won’t hurt her.
The certainty of that thought settles the panic and fear in my chest. The rage is still there, though, keeping me on edge and teetering on rationality.
The tension in my jaw keeps my teeth clenched.
No matter how hard I work to relax the muscles in my face, they won’t listen.
Somehow, I need to let her know she’s safe with me, but we have to go.
Through clenched teeth, I call to her, “Everly?—”
I take a step forward, but that only causes her to yelp. She scrambles to her feet and stumbles backward, away from me. The sight of her backing away has my whole body tensing. Some animalistic part of me wants her to run so I can give chase.
“ Don’t run from me, Evie,” I spit out, worried at the unusual desire welling up inside of me.
“EVERLY!” someone bellows from nearby.
At this, Everly flinches hard. She rips her watery gaze from my face to look over her shoulder.
I take advantage of the momentary distraction and close the distance between us.
I reach out and grab her by the arm. Everly’s head whips back around and tilts up to stare at me in pure, unadulterated terror.
Her whole body seems to shrink as she leans away.
She might as well have kicked me in the balls with that single look. Before Serenity Falls, she looked at me as if I hung the moon. Now I’m her nightmare. The guilt that wells up fuels the monster inside me. She tugs at her arm, and it only causes me to hold her tighter.
“ Don’t— ” I start, growling through clenched teeth, still unable to unlock my jaw.
I need to calm down, at least enough to talk rationally.
Using what the therapists here have taught me, I suck in a long deep breath through my nose let it out through my teeth.
I do this a few times before I can finally relax my jaw enough to speak.
Just as I’m about to though, Everly beats me to it.
“Look, Mavie, I didn’t mean to cause you any trouble.
I never wanted to upset you. Me coming here, it was to fix what my family did to you.
I-I understand now that I’m the last person you want around,” she says, speaking so fast it’s hard to understand her.
“S-so, I’ll get out of your hair, okay? I’ll leave everything you need to escape on your own.
All I want for you is to be free and to find happiness. ”
I can’t stop the grunt of pain that slips past my lips.
Leave. Everly’s leaving me. Not because she doesn’t believe I’m worth saving—which clearly, I’m not—but because Everly believes she’s fucking this up.
Unconsciously, I drag Everly closer to my body.
It’s as if by keeping her close, I can prevent any more harm from happening to her.
She tenses; a physical reminder that I’m the harm she’s worried about right now.
I hate the reaction. I hate all of this. If I could somehow explain myself maybe I could, I don’t know, fix this. Whatever this is. I want her to look at me with hope and excitement like she used to.
“Everly—” I start again, trying to find the words to explain myself. In any capacity.
“EVERLY!”
This time when Everly jumps, my hold on her arm grounds her.
“They’re getting closer,” she whispers anxiously, reluctantly stepping in closer toward me. “You have to go, Maverick. Rowan and Braum are using me to bait you. They were expecting you. Don’t get caught up in their game.”
Of course, they’re using her as bait. The thing is, it’s working. I came, didn’t I? Just as they expected. And right now, I’m barely holding on by a thread. If Braum and Rowan appeared right now and tried to drag her away from me, I would end up playing right into their hands.
“Come on,” I growl and drag her in the direction I’d come from. “Let’s get out of here.”
Everly tries to pull her arm free, but my grip tightens instantly.
“Mavie, let go.”
I know she’s talking about her arm, but the thought of letting her go instantly makes me feel feral. Possessive. Desperate. Let her go? No. I can’t do that. She's my lifeline. My future. My freedom. Each thought is bulleted, intense and full of denial.
“No, I don’t want you to run from me again.”
“Mavie, Maverick , listen to me. Please don’t take me back to the chapel. I told you, I’ll?—”
“I’m not taking you there,” I assure her, grimly. “I’m taking you to the administrative office, where the head of security is. They’ll call?—”
She tugs her arm out of my grip with a shriek of terror. I whirl around, surprised by her strength, to find Everly looking more frightened than ever before.
“No!” she snaps, breathlessly. Tears linger on her long lashes as she pins me with a look of sheer panic. “I can’t go there. They’ll call the authorities, who will contact Father.”
I scoff incredulously. “You should’ve thought of that before you pulled an idiotic stunt like breaking into Serenity Falls. There was always a risk of you getting caught on campus.”
“You don’t understand!” Her voice grows sharper and louder as the color leeches from her face. “Maverick, listen to me, please ! After what I did to him, if Father gets his hands on me, he will kill me .”
After what I did to him …
Dread coils around my heart as I realize how serious she is. “What did you do?”
Something shifts in her eyes. They look sunken and hollow, and with the panic stricken-expression twisting her pretty features, she looks haunted.
Her shoulders start to curve inward before she self-corrects.
I’ve never seen her this way before. Judging by how swiftly she shutters the desolation away with a few rapid blinks, I have a feeling she’s been hiding behind a mask to protect herself from something, or someone, for a long time.
“It doesn’t matter. You just have to believe me, okay?” She peers up at me anxiously. “Please, don’t take me to the administrative building. He can’t find me, Mavie.”
I believe her. I believe every word coming out of her mouth. Since the beginning she’s been telling the truth. Grinding my teeth together, I reach out for her again. This time, she lets me, though heavy suspicion clouds her gaze.
“Come on, we need to get moving,” I tell her.
“But—”
“I’m not taking you to the admin building, okay?” I cut her off, my stomach clenching tight. I won’t throw Everly to the big bad wolf.