Lizzie hadn’t been able to face seeing the baby. She’d sobbed and screamed until the doctor gave her a sedative to sleep. Despite her eyes opening a day later, Max knew, deep in the cracks of his shattered heart, that she hadn’t truly awoken. She was lost to him, too. From that moment, she no longer lived but existed, and Max’s sorrow began to overwhelm him.
The funeral was excruciating, another headstone bearing the O’Hare name. The following weeks were worse. For the first time since the night he’d laid eyes on Lizzie, Max threw himself back into the warm and loving arms of his beloved white powder. With Carter in Arthur Kill prison and his friends keeping a distance from Max’s volatile, high, or drunk temper, he’d never felt more alone, more lost. Until one particular morning.
That brought Max to the third time he’d wanted to end it all: the morning he woke to find Lizzie gone.
“How did you feel when you realized she wasn’t coming back?” Elliot asked.
Max held the most obvious, curse-riddled remark back and pulled his hood closer around his head. “Confused. Angry. Alone . . . Relieved.”
Elliot’s face didn’t change. “Explain relieved to me.”
Max closed his eyes, remembering the vacant, grieving, deathly face of the woman he’d loved so fiercely. “I was relieved because I knew I wasn’t helping her,” he admitted, quietly surprised at the confession. “I was relieved because she took the initiative and left the ruins of us.”
“But she left you.”
Max scoffed. “With the drinking and coke I was doing again? I’d have left, too.”
Elliot wrote. “And looking back, thinking about your painting, do you think she made the right choice?”
“I’ll never forgive her for walking away without a word,” Max spat. “That’s what kills me. I earned more than her silence. I was worth more. Okay, leave, but we’d been through too much together for her to leave without a good-bye or a fuck-you. We made a child together, for fuck’s sake; we were engaged!” Fury rose through Max’s body, lighting his blood with disappointment and heartache. “She slunk away like a coward, like she was the only one who hurt, who cried, who missed our son. It was fucking selfish.” He sat forward, his elbows resting on his knees, tears scratching at the back of his throat. “But if she got better, moved on after we lost Christopher . . . She made the right choice for her.”
Elliot was quiet for so long, Max lifted his head to check whether his therapist was still breathing. He was. “Monday,” he murmured. “I’m booking you in with the facility trainer for your first gym session.”
Max blinked in surprise. “Okay.”
Tate stood behind Max, chewing on the licorice whip Max had shared. “Man,” he exclaimed with a satisfied groan. “These things are like fucking crack.” He clapped Max’s shoulder. “No disrespect.”
Max laughed and chewed his own licorice.
“I mean, I haven’t had any since I was a kid. And even then Riley would steal them and hide them away.” He sighed heavily. “Truthfully, I don’t even know why I still speak to him.”
Max looked up at his art therapist and grinned at his choice of T-shirt, which stated, “No pants are the best pants,” and wondered what seeing the two Moore brothers together would actually be like. In fact, if he remembered correctly, he was pretty sure there were four brothers; he’d met the youngest, Seb, a couple of times. Regardless, Max was certain chaos would ensue.
“I got Dr Pepper, too,” he said, waving his red whip. “Carter’s a legend.”
“Not too shabby,” Tate agreed. “He just sent you a care package?”
“And he’s coming to visit in the new year.” Of course, Max was excited about Carter’s visit, but admittedly nervous as hell.
The unexpected but awesome box of sugary delights had arrived the day before, wrapped in Christmas paper with a card from Carter and Kat and signed by all the boys at the body shop—including Riley—wishing him well and a merry Christmas. For a couple of moments it had made Max feel terrific, feel wanted and cared for, but then he’d remembered he was miles away from them all and how much he missed being at home with his friends. The mood swings and claws of anxiety were never far away, no matter how much better he felt. Nevertheless, he’d certainly made a few new friends with the red licorice. And the M&M’s.
“So,” Tate sang nonchalantly. “Word on the corridor is that you’ll be hitting the gym on Monday. Nice.”