Inside the Maelstrom

by Grace McGinty

The night was bright, and it made the darkness more magical than it had any right to be. Hendrick stepped up to the gate and held out his arms. “I’ll lift you over.”

  I knew this was crazy. Knew that climbing into a fenced pen on the word of someone I didn’t know—and who I didn't particularly like—was lunacy. But I was in a center for the mentally unstable. And I was here for not giving a fuck about my personal safety, so that fit too. I shrugged, stepping toward him, and he grinned again.

  “Otto!” he called, and someone appeared on the other side of the fence. I didn’t get much of a chance to see anything as Hendrick picked me up and physically tossed me over the fence like I weighed nothing.

  Holy shit.

  I let out a squeal as I flipped over the bars, but two arms grabbed me from the air like I was a football. I was deposited back onto my feet, and I fell into the chest of a huge guy. A huge guy with a bright smile and soft eyes.

  Fuck, now a different part of me felt alive.

  Hendrick took a run up and vaulted the fence easily. When he landed on the other side, he gave his friend a considering look.

  “Oh, so me you hate, but this guy you stare up at like he’s the best thing since the clit? That would be right; middle class attracts middle class.”

  “Fuck off, Drix,” the guy grumbled. He looked back down at me, a dimple flashing in one check. “Hi, I’m Otto. Do you need me to punch this asshole in the face?”

  Well, swoon.

  “No, it’s fine. I’ve already been there and done that tonight.” I stepped away from Otto before I did something embarrassing, such as climb him like a tree, and make myself look like an idiot. Especially considering I’d just spent ten minutes acting like a repressed virgin at the mention of an orgy.

  On a chaise lounge on the other side of the pool was another guy, his face illuminated by his cellphone. He was swigging a beer as he scrolled, and I looked over my shoulder at Hendrick.

  “Really? Beer in a rehab? That's a little insensitive, don’t you think?”

  The guy looked up from his phone, and I swear his eyes were entirely black in the darkness. He looked like a demon from hell.

  “Are you in here because you’re an alcoholic?”

  I couldn’t look away from the guy’s eyes, like I was trapped. “No.”

  The guy stood, tossing his phone down on the lounger. He sauntered toward me with that cocky rich boy swagger he seemed to have in common with Hendrick. “What are you in here for then?” He stopped a foot in front of me, close enough to tower over me. I lifted my chin and glared back, my eyes briefly dipping to the small scar that crept across his bottom lip.

  Swallowing hard, I met his eyes again. This close, I could see they weren’t black pits, but they were still dark. I wished it was the middle of the day so I could see exactly what color they were. “That’s none of your fucking business.”

  He didn’t move. “Not drugs. You don’t have that strung out look about you, like you’re coming down. Unless Mommy and Daddy were worried about you taking E at your sorority parties.”

  “I’m not a drug addict. Or an alcoholic.”

  He looked me up and down. “You still have tits and ass, so it isn’t an eating disorder. You try and kill yourself?”

  I tried to stop myself from reacting to his gruff words, but I still flinched. It wasn’t because I was remembering the pain. No, it was because that shit was embarrassing. I took failure to a whole new level.

  “No.”

  The guy lifted an eyebrow. “Yes.”

  Hendrick slapped the guy on the shoulder. “Leave it, man. We’re all here for something.”

  Otto touched my lower back, and I dragged my eyes away from the demon to look over my shoulder at him. “Sorry, he’s an asshole too. This is Sampson. He was clearly dropped on his head as a baby, and it made him lose what little tact he was born with.”

  Otto guided me to one of the chairs, like we were in a formal living room rather than around the dark depths of a pool. Hendrick grabbed a beer from the six-pack beside the pouting Sampson, holding my eyes as he cracked it, like he was daring me to say something about him being in this wellness center for substance abuse. I honestly didn’t care though. He was an adult, capable of making adult decisions.

  Otto made a noise under his breath, but smiled in my direction when he caught me looking. “Now that Sampson has rudely discovered you aren’t in here for a substance addiction, would you like a beer?”

  I shook my head. Otto was dangerously disarming. In close proximity to the other two—who were obviously predators—Otto was like a Venus flytrap, luring you in with a place to rest until he snapped his jaws shut, leaving you trapped.

  Even knowing this, I didn’t leave.

  “Why’d you bring the girl?” Sampson asked Hendrick, who shrugged. That was it. I don’t think he even knew why he wanted me here.

  “He kidnapped me from my bed.”

  Sampson raised an eyebrow. “You fucking her?”

  I snorted. “In his fucking dreams. I have no interest in rich assholes who believe the world owes them a good old-fashioned dick sucking.”

  Otto laughed, and Sampson turned his dark gaze on me again. “I see.”

  That was it. Like I hadn’t just disparaged his friend's character. They moved on to talking about people and things that didn’t involve me, but I still knew the names. That was the thing about being rich and famous. Everyone knew your business. So when Sampson said a producer had been fired by his firm and blacklisted from Hollywood for having his hands down his proverbial—and literal—pants, I knew who they meant. Same with the socialite who’d been caught snorting coke by the paparazzi. But they interspersed it with talk about UFC fighters, and apparently Otto had a love of bull riding, because he waxed lyrical for ten minutes about a female bull rider coming up in the ranks. I mentally gave her a high five for fucking with all those bigots.

  “What about you, Viva?” Hendrick sneered, though I was beginning to understand that sneering was his default setting. He wore his pompous attitude like a shield; he even sounded like that with his friends.

  “What about me?”

  He rolled his eyes. “Who were you before you were here? Any deep, dark secrets you want to share?”

  Hell no. I wouldn’t bare my soul to these piranhas. “I was no one.”

  Sampson leaned forward, steepling his fingers. “Everyone is someone.”

  “How profound.” I flicked my fingers dismissively in his direction, and enjoyed the slight tensing of his jaw at the gesture. “Not me. Beige. Good girl, good grades. Lost my virginity to someone who was on track to be an accountant.”

  A hand shot out and grabbed my chin, and then Sampson was dragging my face to his, slamming his lips into mine and sucking down my gasp. It was over before I’d even managed to get my synapses firing.

  “You don’t taste beige, Good Girl.”

  I shot to my feet, my heart pounding, my mouth hanging open. I could feel the heat surging through my cheeks and I felt all wrong. Or all right. I clutched at my outrage.

  “How fucking dare you?” I hissed, striding away but I didn’t get very far, because the fucking gate was locked.

  Then Otto was there. I tensed as he stepped in close, but he didn’t touch me. “Sorry, Aviva. Here, I’ll lift you over,” he said softly, and it sounded like true regret in his voice.

  I gave him stony silence because I didn’t know what would come out of my mouth if I spoke. When he lifted me gently over the fence, I clung to the top and carefully lowered myself down.

  I stopped and stared at him, while he gave me a soft smile. “Be seeing you, Aviva.”

  I blinked at him slowly, then fled back inside the safety of the main building.

  Chapter 4

  Sampson

  I watched the girl flee. Probably a safe move.

  Otto strode back over with a frown on his face, which meant I was about to get a lecture. Sometimes I thought we kept Otto around because he acted like
the conscience that had been burned out of me and Drix from a young age.

  “Is that who you are now, Sam?”

  “What?”

  He sat down, schooling his face into something carefully blank. “I just want to know if that's your new thing. Sexual assault.”

  Hendrick sucked in air through his teeth, but didn’t say anything.

  “Fuck off, Otto. I didn’t sexually assault anyone.”

  Otto just gave me that look that said I think you’re a fucking idiot, but didn’t say anything else. I took a long sip on my beer and forgot about the girl. Aviva. Pretty name for an average chick.

  I looked around this prison masquerading as a McMansion. It was pretty nice, and honestly, Hendrick had been booted from most of the ones on the West Coast, where we all went to school. About as far as we could get from NYC and our families. Except Otto, of course. His parents loved him, and by extension, probably us.

  “How long until you’re out of this fucking place?”

  Hendrick shrugged. “Whenever I buy my way out, I guess. At least it keeps me out of Dad’s way, and I don’t have to do any of those goddamn campaign rallies.”

  Hendrick’s dad was a cunt. There was no other word for him. Mine was an asshole too, but he was an asshole in a negligent way. He didn’t care if I lived or died, as long as I didn’t upset his lifestyle. He would never put me in one of these facilities, even if he found me smacked out on horse tranqs in our foyer. No, he didn’t care enough to even pretend.

  Honestly, he’d probably be happy.

  But Hendrick’s dad was a sociopath in a nice suit, ruthlessly trying to obtain the usual things: pussy or power. Always one or the other, and it was Hendrick who suffered. Otto and I were his real family, anyway. I’d walk through fire for them both—or even worse, sit through one of Otto’s lectures on morality.

  Otto lifted an eyebrow. “Nothing to do with the pretty Aviva you just dragged out here?”

  Hendrick shook his head, taking another sip of his beer. “Nope. Only met her today. She’s just something shiny to pass the time. I have been fucking a pretty nurse though. She’s very interested in my treatment pathways.”

  Otto shook his head, letting Hendrick’s bullshit slide. “They alter your meds?” A sharp nod from Drix. “You’re taking them?”

  This time, Hendrick grinned wide. “Some of them.”

  Poor Otto. Burdened with the need to do the right thing. Quite frankly, I didn’t care if Hendrick went unmedicated. I would wreak havoc right there beside him, for no other reason than he was my brother and needed someone to watch his back.

  That was Otto’s M.O. too, but he did it in a bit more of a conventional—and probably caring—way. He gave a shit if we lived or died, and honestly, he was the only one. Other than the tabloids, that was. Pretty sure they’d be excited if we died.

  I emptied my beer and tossed it into the pool. It sank into the dark water with ease. “Then let's get the fuck out of here. We can head to Cabo or something, live it up in the sun. Your dad can pretend you’re still here. Or rot in fucking Hell, where he belongs.”

  I didn’t care either way.

  Hendrick sighed, leaning back on his elbows. “I’ll give it another week. At least the food is better than the last place.” Hendrick had been in and out of these facilities since he was twelve. Everyone thought he was a drug addict, and he didn’t correct them. Honestly, in the darker hours of the night, I wondered if his father was just setting a precedent so he could off him and point to his history of rehab.

  Hendrick didn’t need rehab. The guy barely drank, and Otto was way too much of a nagging wife to let either of us take drugs, outside of a little weed. No, Hendrick’s parents had no fucking idea that he just hated them. Or maybe they did and this was a convenient excuse to ship him somewhere while they went skiing in Switzerland. Or sailing around Ibiza. I don’t even know where his mother was at the moment, but it wasn’t anxiously worrying about the health of her son.

  I hated people.

  “We should go back to college,” Otto added, though I knew he was doing his courses online, since being friends with us didn’t lend itself to a healthy class schedule. He never complained though. Otto was a saint.

  Hendrick was a demon.

  And me? I was the fucking devil.

  I took what I wanted, because who would stop me? My father was rich, but he wasn’t influential. And my grandfather had left me all his money, because he knew that his own child would have blown it all in a decade, leaving us all destitute. I’d invested it, my accountant doing what he needed to do. A second accountant made sure the first one didn’t rip me off, and now I was one of the wealthiest men under twenty-five, without working for a cent of it. I kind of knew why people like Aviva were pissed at us. They worked hard, to the point of a mental breakdown apparently, and would never have enough.

  I was born with enough and I’d die with enough.

  We shot the shit for a little longer, giving Hendrick the normalcy he so desperately needed. He was a fucking asshole, of that there was no doubt, but he needed us. He’d never really admit it, any more than I would, but it was true.

  The sun began to peek over the horizon, which was our cue to leave. I stood and hugged Hendrick. I hated he was in here without anyone to watch out for him, and I knew Otto felt the same. But Hendrick wasn’t some weakling; he’d been running this place within twenty-four hours, because money talked. But still, there was a difference between getting your dick sucked by a nurse, and being with your boys.

  “I’ll give you a week and then we’re breaking you out of this shithole.”

  He laughed like I was kidding. I wasn’t.

  I watched as Otto gave him a hug too. We hugged like we meant it—doing weird, one-armed hugs in case one of you thought the other was gay was ridiculous. Science said we needed ten minutes of human contact a day for mental health, and I wasn’t going to hug any other fuckers, especially not my parents. If I hugged a girl for too long, she started thinking we were more than we were.

  So that left these guys, and they both hugged like they were touch-starved.

  We went our separate ways, jumping the pool fence and then the back security fence. It wasn’t really meant to keep people in. If the inmates of this facility wanted out, they could walk out the front doors, or hop the back fence without much problem. But when it came down to it, you couldn’t help people who didn’t want to help themselves in places like this, and if their symptoms were any worse, they’d be in a psych facility and not in a resort masquerading as a medical center.

  “He looks good,” Otto said, and I grunted my agreement. We’d seen every side of Hendrick. Sometimes I’d been too scared to leave his side; sometimes I’d rescued him from situations that only had the potential to be bad. Sometimes he’d done the same for me.

  But he did look good tonight, his face alive and animated. And with the way he’d looked at that girl, I knew he was on the hunt, which made me feel a little bad for Aviva. Didn’t matter, I would sacrifice a hundred good girls to Hendrick’s beast to keep it at bay for another day.

  I was surprised my rental Maserati was still parked under the streetlight where we’d left it. This really was a nice neighborhood. “Wanna go get breakfast?”

  Otto smiled at me, and I once again thought he had an almost feminine prettiness about him. Don’t get me wrong, he was tall and broad, but he had soft, full lips, long eyelashes and kind eyes. It was catnip for women; I didn’t get it, but Otto had it in spades.

  “Hell yeah, I’m dying for something deep-fried or smothered in syrup. Mom is on another juice cleanse, so the whole time I was home, it was kale three meals a day.”

  He shuddered, and I huffed out a laugh. It wasn’t quite right when it was just the two of us—we were always meant to be a trio—but still comfortable. One more week and things would be back to normal.

  As I started the car and roared away, I couldn’t wait.

  Chapter 5

  Aviva


  I’d purposefully avoided Hendrick like he was the plague. If I so much as saw a glint of golden hair, I turned on my heel and went the other direction. If he was in the dining room, I ate in my bedroom. At least he didn’t go to group therapy.

  I’d managed to avoid him for four whole days. Those days were spent hiding in the chapel, reading Verne and the margin notes of the guy I’d started to think of as Captain Nemo. Which was dumb, but he and Nemo seemed to have the same views on humanity and life. They both loathed it, yet were drawn to protect it. In my head, he was Nemo. His words, written in scratchy black ink, slightly smeared like he was left-handed, they spoke directly to my soul. Like he was talking to me.

  Can you imagine loving someone so much that you couldn't stand the idea of humanity without them? I want that kind of love, and nothing else will do.

  I couldn’t imagine it, no. I didn’t even love myself like that. But one thing I did know was that I wanted to meet Nemo. I wanted to understand him. Wanted to hear him speak the words he wrote down in that slightly tragic voice.

  When the door to the chapel opened and closed softly, I shut the book and looked over my shoulder. I groaned at the sight of Hendrick. It wouldn’t matter that he was an asshole, if he wasn’t so damn pretty on top of it. My body thought he was sexy as hell, even as my brain rebelled against finding anything redeemable about him.

  My hate for him was visceral, and probably unwarranted. But like having a crush on Nemo—who I’d romanticized so much that he may as well be a fictional character in a Verne novel—my loathing was irrational.

  I sighed heavily as he came and sat beside me. “I’m praying here, Hendrick,” I said testily, and he grinned.

  “Didn’t take you as the religious type, Viva,” he purred. I really wished he wouldn’t say my name like that. Like it was foreplay.

  I gave him a dead-eyed stare. “You don’t know a thing about me.”

  He quirked an eyebrow. “I know you’re here because you almost mowed down your neighbor. I know it was either here or jail for you. I know your parents work average jobs, a medical receptionist and the manager of a hardware store. I know you tried to kill yourself when you ran into that tree, or at least it was a cry for help. Nice girls don’t slit their wrists in bathtubs for their mamas to find.”