We were sitting on the couch. It’s where we had been for the past two hours. We hadn’t talked much; Maxx had been mostly quiet. I was hesitant to break the silence, not knowing what would come next.

He seemed to need to hold me. He ran his fingers through my hair and softly kissed my temple. That was all. For him, right now, that appeared to be all he needed.

I couldn’t help but continue to notice the fine tremors in his body, his erratic heartbeat under my palm, the fine sheen of sweat on his face. He was still trying to climb out of his horrible withdrawal. He was unhealthily pale, dark circles ringing his eyes, their normally vibrant blue dull and listless.

I had grown accustomed to the silence, so when he spoke I started in surprise. The noise was almost obscene in the hush.

“What sort of person doesn’t remember his own mother dying?” he asked. I wasn’t sure he was looking for an answer, but I gave him one anyway.

“You were a child, Maxx. You couldn’t possibly understand what was going on.”

Maxx was quiet again. I wasn’t convinced he even heard what I said. His hold on me was as tight as ever, his fingers digging into my skin as though he was trying to fuse us together.

“My dad sort of disappeared from our lives after that. He was there, but he wasn’t. He worked a lot, and I took over taking care of Landon. I would get him breakfast and dinner, help him with his homework. I made sure he had clean clothes to wear and went to bed when he was supposed to. He became my responsibility. I became a mom and a dad at ten fucking years old.”

I wasn’t sure what I had been expecting him to tell me. I had conjured up a thousand explanations about how he may have come to be the way he was, what had pushed him into the dark world he lived in. But hearing about a boy who had lost both his parents and was forced to become an adult before he was ready wasn’t what I had expected.

I had guessed at a less-than-rosy past. Maxx hid too much away for his childhood to have been idyllic.

I had seen his protectiveness toward Landon. It had been more than obvious that he felt responsible for the younger boy. But the story Maxx began to share showed a side of him that was sad, yet it strangely gave me hope for the person he could be.

“And then my dad died of a heart attack two weeks after I started high school. I don’t think I ever really knew him. I don’t even remember the person he had been before my mom died, when he wasn’t depressed and grieving. Christ, I don’t know what the fuck I’m talking about,” he muttered, running his hand through his hair while his other arm still clung to me tightly.

I could tell he was trying to sort through everything going on in his head, trying to find the words he wanted to share with me.

“After that, I realized there were varying degrees of shit. And the shit before my dad died was nothing compared to the shit after he died,” Maxx said, his voice cracking a bit.

“My uncle David had never been in the picture. I barely even knew that he existed. He’s my mom’s younger brother. It was pretty obvious after we went to live with him why we never knew him. He’s an asshole. Worse than that, he’s a self-serving, sadistic asshole, a guy who gets off on treating others like shit if it makes his life easier. He got custody of Landon and me because there was no one else. Both sets of our grandparents were dead, and my dad was an only child. So that left just David. At first he refused to take us on. But when he realized we came with a hefty Social Security check every month until we turned eighteen, that changed his tune pretty damn quickly. The fucking douche bag took our money and made sure we never saw a dime. He said it’s what we owed him,” Maxx growled.

I took his hand in mine and laced our fingers together. “I’m so sorry, Maxx,” I said earnestly, hoping I didn’t sound condescending. There was something so ridiculous about the words I’m sorry. As if I could in any way empathize with what he had experienced. For all the crap I had gone through with my parents after Jayme had died, I didn’t understand what it was like to feel unloved and unwanted.

My childhood before Jayme’s death had been pretty close to perfect. I had parents who gave me everything. I couldn’t fathom the feelings of abandonment and isolation Maxx must have experienced. And to have had to take on the role of parent when he was only a child himself was unimaginable.

I had lost the relationship I once had with my parents in the last few years. But for the first time I wondered whose fault it was. Did the blame completely rest on my parents’ shoulders, as I had convinced myself? Or had I been too lost in my selfish grief to realize I was pushing away the two people who had loved me the most in my life?

Self-realization was a scary business. It shook your foundation to the core. How strange that it was this fucked-up boy, with a life full of pain, who made me question what I thought I knew about myself.

And how strange that he could make me doubt absolutely everything.

“I just want to take care of my brother. It’s all I’ve ever wanted. But David is his legal guardian, and he holds that over my head every chance he gets. I try to make sure Landon has money to live on, but David just ends up taking it all. I’d kill the bastard if I could. I’ve thought of so many ways to get that fucker out of our lives. Sometimes this anger”—Maxx gripped the fabric of his shirt over his chest and pulled it—“it hurts. It hurts so fucking badly. I can’t think, I can’t see anything beyond it. The hatred eats me alive. I hate David for using my brother and me. I hate my parents for leaving me. Sometimes I even hate Landon for depending on me so much. And most of all, I hate myself. Because I’m weak and selfish. Because I don’t want the responsibility of taking care of anyone but me. I just want to live my life for me and not for anyone else. I hate knowing that in my heart I feel that way. I hate that I resent Landon and my parents for the shit they’ve put on my shoulders, whether they meant to or not. I feel like I’m drowning with no way out.”

Maxx’s face contorted in grief and self-loathing. It ripped a hole in my heart. God, I just wanted to take all of his pain away.

“How did you end up at Compulsion . . . doing . . . what you do there?” I asked tentatively, not sure how to pose the questions I wanted to ask. I wanted to know how he ended up immersed in that dark and scary scene, how he had grown so comfortable in a place that seemed to suck you dry and leave you with nothing but regret.

“I’ve known Marco most of my life. He’s a few years older, but I knew him from high school. After my dad died and Landon and I went to live with David, I was in a pretty fucked-up place. I didn’t know if I was coming or going. I was depressed. And then Marco handed me a flyer for Compulsion. He got me in, introduced me to Gash, who runs the place. I wanted somewhere to belong, to do something that made me feel good. It started simply enough. I’d help Vin scout locations for the club every week. I was getting paid decent money, but it wasn’t enough for me to take care of Landon. And then I got accepted by Longwood University. I had applied on a whim, convinced there was no way in hell I would ever go, even if I got in. But then the letter came, and I thought, Hey, this could be my chance to get out of here, to build that life for Landon.

“But that took money—a lot of it. Between school tuition, finding a place to live, and making sure Landon was okay, I couldn’t survive on the little bit of money location scouting was bringing in. Then I realized I could make so much more selling club drugs. You know, some ecstasy, a little oxy. A bit of cocaine here and there. Maybe some crank. Before I knew it, I was flush with cash. Gash gave me the drugs, and I sold them, taking my cut. And because of it, I was living the life I had always wanted. I lived on my own terms, no one else’s. I was on top of the world.”