I’ll show him some freaking lines, I thought as I flipped the third page and began again. But damn, my hand was cramping up and I was only on number forty-five, so I decided to try again tomorrow. Plus I was starving so I went downstairs to eat. I hadn’t even realized how hungry I was until I thought about food.
It was a tradition on Sundays to have a potluck with everyone in the church, so Sunday evenings people pretty much just fended for themselves. I grabbed some leftover casserole and started inhaling it.
“Uh, Alice? Are you alright?” Cat sat beside me.
“What, yeah, why?”
“You just seem… chill.”
“Oh. Yeah. I’m great. Mr. Weston spit in my mouth.”
She raised an eyebrow at me and then snickered, shaking her head as she walked away.
“What?” I called back.
“Nothing.”
Sophie was sitting a few seats away and had clearly heard our conversation. She was grinning down at her hands and peeked up at me.
“Shut up, Sophie.”
She giggled. “I knew it.”
***
It took almost five days to finish my lines. Three hundred lines in my notebook was fifteen pages. Never again. I’m going to have to be very clever about bratting him in the future, because I never want to write this many lines again.
Although the bit before had been worth it…
But even though I kept going back over the memory of the elevator over and over again, my mood began to sour. Reuben had basically just forced his way into my life like he had some kind of authority over me, and it was just a given that I would be his. And I wasn’t sure I was willing to accept that. I didn’t want to be taken advantage of, and I didn’t want to be his temporary entertainment, released when he found the next best thing.
Plus, he hadn’t come by the clubhouse all week. He hadn’t texted, or even tried to reach out to me. Hadn’t he said he wasn’t a once-a-week kind of guy? So did that make him a liar? Was he messing with me? Was he bored of me already? Did he call Woodrow and decide to take his side of the story?
Before I knew it, my brain had spiraled into a depressive headspace, and I’d decided that he didn’t like me, and that he just wanted to use me, teach me a lesson, and leave me as a laughing stock of the church, and that my real punishment was the laughter and the funny looks I’d gotten from my so-called friends after he’d made a fool of me. Anger and betrayal burned through my body like a fever, followed by a wave of nausea.
I hate my life. I can’t do this.
I stumbled into the bathroom, vomiting and trying to regain control over my body, but all I wanted to do was throw my head against the wall until I stopped seeing, stopped thinking, stopped breathing.
With shaking hands, I sat on the floor of the bathroom, wrapping my own hands around my neck. I remembered the way he’d done the same, and how good and beautiful it felt, how powerful he looked as he stared down at me, daring me to push him again.
I squeezed a little, then a little more, and let my eyes close.
What the fuck is wrong with me?
But then my vision changed. Insead of remembering Reuben and I in the elevator, I remembered being strapped to a Swedish Rack, naked and bleeding, pulling away from the collar on my neck in an effort to get out, begging and shouting and screaming–
My hands fell away from my neck and I felt the blood rush back to my head, making me dizzy. I barely caught myself on my hands, laying down on the floor and pressing my face into the cold tile of the bathroom.
Fuck Reuben Weston, I thought. I can’t believe a damn word he says.
***
When I woke up, I was in my bed, my hair brushed, my face washed. Alex was sitting beside me in the chair, staring at me with her typical expressionless face.
“Hey, Alex.”
She didn’t answer, she just continued to stare, blinking slowly, her sky-blue eyes studying me with some unknown expression.
I took a deep breath and forced myself to sit up. I felt a little lightheaded, and was pretty hungry. Looking down at the bedside table, I saw that it was past midnight, and that Alex had brought a bottle of water and a sandwich up to my room for when I woke up.
“Thanks,” I whispered, and I ate it slowly as she spoke to me.
“Alice,” she said, and I met her gaze. “You asked me for help once. Do you remember?”
“Yeah.”
{“In the car on the way home from DC. You told me about your condition. You told me you don’t trust yourself, or your feelings. You told me that you trust me because I’m unbiased. Is that still true?”}
I nodded, knowing where this was going. I finished the sandwich and drank most of the water, and then met her gaze again.
“I need you to make a choice. You are going to trust Reuben Weston, and believe that he is a good man and does not mean to hurt you. Or… you are going to a treatment center.”
An ultimatum from the one person I trusted more than anyone in the world. I looked down at my hands, wondering what treatment would be like.
I had other friends like me, who shared my condition. Mostly online, on Reddit and Facebook groups. They talked about their time spent in mental institutions like it was the darkest, most dangerous times of their lives, and it had absolutely scared me to ever be sent to one.
“I would send you to a good one and check in with you regularly. You wouldn’t have to fear being mistreated. Sophia has visited a very good one that I can send you to. If that is what you want… I will help you through that.”
I looked up at her to see her face had changed slightly to a concerned, serious expression. She meant it.
I trusted Alex Victor with my life. I knew she was the one person in this church that, no matter what, would always know what was true and what was not. Being able to read minds and know both sides of the story, and what people’s true motivations were, I knew if someone was trying to hurt me or take advantage of me, she would step in. Because she had before.
“That man is not going to harm you. He does, actually, have your best interest in mind. You need to trust him with the same level of trust that you have for me. I would trust him with my life.”
But would you trust him with your heart, I thought to myself. Because that’s different.
{“I can’t answer that. Jacob and I… I can’t imagine anyone else having my heart. I don’t want to. But I can tell you this… you are precious to him.”}
“Why,” I snapped. “Why does he like me? Why does he even care? He hates brats, remember?” Irrational frustration and anger began to swell in me, but Alex stood and took a few steps towards my bed, and laid a hand on my head.
Instantly, peace and calm dragged me back down to earth. It was like the safest place in the world. Like… Like I was back in daddy’s arms and he was hugging me tight.
I wanted to be there. I wanted to live there. It was all I wanted, and I could never have it.