Page 18 of Exposed (The Wellard Asylum #1)

I don’t belong in the asylum.

My issues aren’t real.

I faked the symptoms.

I’m not obsessed with getting perverted satisfaction.

I’m not obsessed.

I’m here because I choose to be here.

I’m here because of my mom.

I’m here because ? —

F or the next hour, these mantras roll around in my head, an endless loop trying to convince myself of my reasons and actions. Everything is a blur. My mind can’t fully process anything.

I don’t remember getting dressed. I don’t remember Dr. Ambrose escorting me from the basement to his office. I don’t remember Benji picking me up. I don’t remember getting in the car or putting on my seatbelt. Did Benji buckle me up? Did Dr. Ambrose?

I repeat these phrases internally to keep myself in check. Whenever I stall, my brain falls back to Dr. Ambrose’s words:

Your issues are very much real .

You’ll be back.

You belong here.

We’re both freaks.

It’s sunset, the early evening chill settling around us. The asphalt whizzes by. White dashes. Yellow lines. Red lights. Red, like the acid burns on his face. Yellow, like the sagging skin under his eyes. White, like the thick scars on his cock.

“You don’t have to go through with this,” Benji says.

I stay fixated on the road. Benji has said things like this before, warning me the Wellard Asylum is a bad place and claiming he wants to protect me. And maybe some stupid part of me assumed Benji would always be here to rescue me. Maybe that’s what he’s doing now.

What happens if I don’t want to be rescued anymore?

Not by him.

Not by me.

The drive stretches on, and the evening grows darker. Benji doesn’t say anything else; he focuses on the road. Or maybe he does say more, but I can’t hear him.

I could tell Benji to keep driving. I could tell him we need to leave everything in our apartment behind. I could tell him we need to run away so the deranged doctor won’t be able to find us. I could tell him we need to go now.

My lips don’t move. I press my forehead against the window.

Benji is safe. Our life is balanced.

But I want to go back to the asylum and wait for Dr. Ambrose’s insane training, and he’s probably my father.

Maybe that’s why this is okay. It’s natural for me to want to be close to my parents .

No, no, no! This is not fucking okay!

“What’s the plan now?” Benji asks. “I ran a few errands while you were testing.” He points at the small pocketknife in the cupholder. “I sharpened it again and made sure you had enough pills in the container.”

My voice is a whisper: “I think he’s my father.”

The car swerves. Benji straightens his steering, then turns to me, his hands still on the wheel, the car moving forward.

“Your father?” He blanches. “You can’t be serious.”

I never admitted it out loud, but I’ve known the possibility we’re related for a long time now. For some reason, I didn’t want Benji to know. I guess I didn’t want to confront what that would mean.

Bile bubbles in my throat. I try to get the words out as fast as I can.

“I don’t have DNA proof, but my mother’s physician and psychiatrist were unavailable during her treatment, which means she was solely in the custody of Dr. Ambrose.

But if he’s not my father,” I ramble, clinging onto the hope that he’s not, that maybe someone else with similar handwriting wrote the note about me returning, and that maybe my father is out there, someone I can find after I kill Dr. Ambrose.

“Then Dr. Ambrose probably knows who my father is. I just need to ask him a few more questions. In a couple of weeks, I’ll call you, and?—”

“No,” Benji says.

Shock punches my chest. I reel back in my seat. “No?”

“You can’t go back there.” He glances at the road, then back at me. “Damn it, Violet. I’m trying to support you, but if you go back there, I can’t help you anymore. And if he’s your father, then he raped your mother, like he was hurting you. I saw everything through the mirror?— ”

“I liked it,” I blurt. Tears fill my eyes. It’s so messed up, but the truth is ingrained in my flesh. I can’t deny it anymore. “I liked everything he did to me. I didn’t want to like it, but it felt right. And now I’m closer to finding out where I belong, and?—”

“You’re a good person,” Benji pleads. “You need to move on. Let go of this. He’s preying on your need for acceptance?—”

“Preying on me?” I gasp. My entire body reddens, rage bubbling to the surface. “Even if he is preying on me, I’m the one who came to him. I’m the one who wants this!”

The car engine rumbles. Benji faces forward, his brow furrowed, his features twisted in disgust.

“You’re not serious,” he says quietly. “You can’t want this. He was obviously manipulating you.”

“I do want this,” I repeat. “I do want this! I have to. I want to. I do!”

“You want to kill him?”

“Yes,” I say, but the word fades like mist.

Benji’s jaw drops. A beat passes. Then his fists grip the steering wheel tighter.

“You’re into him,” he says. “The man who raped and murdered your mother.”

“I can’t help?—”

The car screeches to a halt outside of our apartment. He turns off the engine. A street light illuminates our parking spot in the twilight. Our breathing is erratic, both of us filled with emotions so strong, they’re threatening to boil over.

I don’t know what to do. I don’t know how to make sense of it.

But I know I have to go back .

“While you were fucking the doctor, I was out searching for answers,” Benji barks, his voice stern and cold, a side to Benji I haven’t seen before.

I rock in place, and he snarls. “Dr. Ambrose told me you might have dug up your mother to fuck her. I didn’t believe him, but her grave was empty, Violet, like you actually dug her up to take her with you! ”

Dig up her grave? Why was it empty? Does Dr. Ambrose have something to do with that?

Will Benji leave me because of this?

“I didn’t do that,” I pant. “I swear, Benji. I?—”

“I know.” He rubs a hand over his face. “Dr. Ambrose did it just to mess with our heads, and that should show you how dangerous he is. You’re strong, Violet, and you can kill him if you really want to. But you’re having second thoughts, and that’s not good. I can see it in your eyes.”

He grabs my hands, squeezing them. A lock of curly hair falls over his forehead. This is the man I should want.

But I don’t want him.

“You can’t let this obsession control you,” he warns.

“You just want a real family. All of us do. No one can blame you for that. But your mother is dead, and you’re still here.

” My insides are crushed to a pulp, my mouth open.

His features stiffen. “Don’t throw your life away for some vague chance at a family that was never meant to exist in the first place. ”

Never meant to exist? He’s saying I wasn’t meant to exist.

My heart breaks.

Benji thrusts the gear and reverses out of the parking spot. “Fuck this,” he mutters. “We’re leaving. ”

“Wait. Why?” I ask. “Where are you taking me?”

“Don’t know. Don’t care,” he grunts. “Not fucking here.”

The car speeds down the street. A gas station. A general store. An empty field. The main road. The highway is close now.

We’re close. We’re way too close.

I can’t leave.

“Stop it!” I shout. “I need to go back!”

“No, you don’t.”

He keeps driving. I grab the pocketknife from the cupholder and flick it open. “Go back now, Benji, or I swear to the blood in my veins, I will hurt you.”

“You won’t.” He steps on the gas. “You’re not that kind of person. You’re not like him, Violet. You’re good. ”

“Go back!”

“No!”

I lurch forward. The knife slices Benji’s arm; the car swerves. Oncoming headlights sear across our vision. A car honks. We veer into an empty field.

Benji slams on the brakes.

I wheeze; my knife is dotted with blood. Benji gawks at his wound. It’s not deep, but I did hurt him. Why did I do that?

What’s wrong with me?

“I’m not done,” I cry. “I have to go back.”

Benji narrows his gaze at me, but water glosses the bottom of his eyes; there’s pain in his expression, like he’s about to break too. He looks away.

He must think I’m choosing Dr. Ambrose over him.

I am, aren’t I?

There’s a better chance of me finding out who I am if I put off my revenge plan for a little while longer. If Dr. Ambrose helps me explore my desires, then maybe I’ll see how similar and different I am to my mother and father. Maybe my life will finally make sense, and I’ll be able to move on.

“I have to do this,” I whisper.

“What is ‘this’ exactly?” Benji’s shoulders quiver. “Do you even want to kill him anymore?”

My bottom lip trembles. I can’t speak.

Benji sighs. He turns the car around, the tires rolling softly against the dirt.

On the road, he nods to the glove compartment. I take out an orange prescription bottle with a ripped label and blue capsules.

“I can’t save you anymore, but you can still take those with you,” he says. “Find your answers, and then get rid of the motherfucker.”

His words spear me. I keep holding onto this idea that Dr. Ambrose may not be my father, but inside, I know Dr. Ambrose is a motherfucker.

My heart breaks, not for Benji, but for the old me.

The girl who was told her biological parents chose drugs over her.

The girl who faked her orgasms. The girl who had a job, who was planning to go back to school.

The girl who had a life before this. I mourn the girl I was before I found out who my mother was.

I can’t bring my mother back from the dead.

I can’t make Dr. Ambrose love me like a father should. And I can’t let Benji save me anymore.

I want closure, to be able to control my thoughts again. It’d be so much easier if I had normal desires and I loved Benji, but that’s not my life .

More than anything, I want to be loved unconditionally.

My dead mother will never give me that.

My ex never gave me that.

Benji will never give me that.

But Dr. Ambrose? I burned him with acid, and he still wants me.

Benji parks outside of our apartment, this time in an actual parking space. He sulks inside, clutching the cut on his arm.

The neighboring apartments are lit up, shadowed figures pacing across their windows. Our apartment stays dark, as if Benji collapsed as soon as he closed the door.

Dr. Ambrose said I won’t be wearing clothes when I’m at the asylum, so why pack my bags? I have the knife and the poison pills in the car with me. I should go back to the asylum now.

An urge wells inside of me, pushing me out of the car. My feet take me to the road. With the knife and the pills in my pockets, I head toward the nearby cemetery.

It’s dark now, but I want to see my mother’s empty grave for myself.

Going to the cemetery is like asking Dr. Ambrose to come find me, to chase me down, to prove he’ll never let me go, to make him care for me indefinitely.

To be honest, I don’t want Dr. Ambrose to let me go either.

We’re alike that way.