Total pages in book: 88
Estimated words: 84002 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 420(@200wpm)___ 336(@250wpm)___ 280(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 84002 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 420(@200wpm)___ 336(@250wpm)___ 280(@300wpm)
“My father….”
A million questions bombarded Shane’s brain. About Maxwell. Their past. His mom saying she saw herself in Max, and how Shane had sometimes thought he’d seen loneliness in him too. About what the fuck Max was doing there now.
The longer Shane stood there thinking about it, the angrier he became. My father…. Was that supposed to wipe out all the years Maxwell was an asshole to him? He’d said he didn’t want Shane’s pity but how in the fuck did he know that was true? The Maxwell he’d known hadn’t been above using whatever he could use to get whatever he wanted. Had he come out there trying to make Shane feel like his hatred of him was misplaced? Poor little rich boy whose father likely treated Maxwell the same way Maxwell and his friends had treated Shane.
He wasn’t going to do it; wasn’t going to let Maxwell off the hook for the shit he’d done.
His head throbbed. His jaw tensed and he felt the tick there. His whole life, he’d wanted to show Maxwell the shit they’d pulled hadn’t fucked with him. That he’d grown past it, but now that Maxwell was there, his body was a hurricane of different thoughts and needs.
He didn’t want to care.
He didn’t want to give Maxwell the satisfaction.
He also didn’t want to let Maxwell off the hook for the shit he’d pulled, the same way he and his friends had always been let off when they were growing up.
Anger controlled Shane’s movements as he pushed away from a tree and made his way back to where he’d left Maxwell—motherfucker, at his fishing spot.
“You know what? Fuck you,” he said the second he broke through the clearing.
“I was waiting for that.” Maxwell stood beside Shane’s chair. He put the fishing pole through the cup holder, which had a hole in the fabric so it would stay there. Shane could have done that from the beginning.
“So because you’re gay and you didn’t have a perfect life I’m supposed to forget the way you treated me?”
“I never said that,” Maxwell countered. “I—”
“It makes it even worse because you knew what I was going through! In some ways, the perfect Maxwell Sullivan knew what I was going through and instead of calling your fucking dogs off me, you just kept piling it on. You spray-painted fag on my house, when you were gay too. That makes you worse than all the rest of them combined.” Shane had been alone. The only person he’d had in his life was Caleb and Caleb had been taken away from him, yet Max had been gay too and he’d harassed Shane?
“You think I don’t know that?” Maxwell’s voice thundered through the quiet space around them. “You think I haven’t regretted that every goddamn day of my life since then? That I haven’t hated myself for it? That I haven’t thought of a million ways I could try to make it up to you? Because I have, and no, I know that doesn’t make it better. I know what I did, Shane. I live with it every fucking day of my life, the same way I’m sure you do. No matter how much we try to forget our pasts, they’re always fucking there.”
He shook his head, ran a hand through his dark curls. “When I left Last Chance and put myself on a bus to LA, I never wanted to come back. I never planned to see this fucking town, Jonathan, my parents, or any of them again. I wanted to do nothing but forget—the lies, the pain, you.”
Shane rolled his eyes. “Believe me, I wasn’t real fond of memories of you either.” As much as he hated it, he felt some of his anger melting away. He’d needed to get that out, needed to tell Maxwell to fuck off, and he’d done it.
“Thinking of you reminded me of the worst in myself,” Maxwell said, then pushed his hands into the pockets of his worn jeans. “Thinking of this town, and especially of you, made me remember who I didn’t want to be. I’ve spent the past twelve years trying to make amends for the person I was, and the things I did.”
His words were broken-down, bare-bones honesty. Shane could hear it in the painful rasp to his voice. See it in the pain in his green eyes.
He opened his mouth to say something…he wasn’t even sure what, when his fishing pole jerked. Maxwell must have noticed it too because his eyes darted to the side. It pulled again, slipping out of the makeshift holder in the chair. Both he and Maxwell dove for it at the same time.
Maxwell got his hands on it first. “Oh fuck. Feels like a big one.”
“Reel it the hell in!” Shane told him.
“I’m trying!” Maxwell turned the handle on the reel but pulled it too tight.