AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“I feel a little guilty, but yeah, it’s not.” Garrett pulled two ration bars from his pack and held one up to Maxwell. “Hungry?”
“A little.” Maxwell dropped his head back down, and Garrett tossed him the bar.
Garrett leaned against the wall opposite Maxwell. He unwrapped his bar and took a bite but could barely taste it, his thoughts too preoccupied with the man across from him. Even now, acting like they usually did, a tension that had never been there before still pulled taut between them.
Garrett fingered the wrapping of his snack and then bit the bullet. “Can we talk, Maxwell?”
Maxwell kept his eyes glued to his hands for a few moments, then dropped them into his lap. He inhaled deeply and sat up, straight-backed, firm, and facing Garrett head-on. “Yes.”
“God, why do you look like that?” Garrett tossed his snack back into his bag. He wasn’t hungry. “You look like you think you’re gonna have to fight me.”
“I…” Maxwell straightened himself up even taller for a second, then huffed and dragged a hand over his face. He slumped back against the wall. “You’re right. I’m sorry.”
“You don’t have to be sorry.” Garrett wanted to cross the little room and touch Maxwell’s shoulder or his knee or anything to just be nearer to him, but his instincts told him Maxwell really would fight him if he did that. “And you don’t have to tell me what’s going on. I just… I want to help.”
Maxwell finally set his bar aside, pulled his feet up to rest on the arm of his chair, and crossed his arms over his knees. Garrett didn’t miss the defensiveness of the posture, but he also didn’t miss the open pain, confusion, and longing in Maxwell’s eyes as he stared at him. Garrett swallowed and stared back.
Finally, Maxwell let out a frustrated growl and balled his fists. “I don’t want you to think you can control me.”
Garrett blinked and recoiled against the wall behind him. “I don’t think I can control you. I don’t want to control you.”
“I’m not yours to protect.” Maxwell fixed Garrett with a glare, but the look had more stubbornness than malice.
Garrett shook his head in bewilderment. “You don’t have to be mine for me to protect you.” Garrett shook his head again and stared at Maxwell’s braced, defensive posture. “Maxwell, is this even about me?”
Maxwell opened his mouth and then closed it again. He looked out the window at the storm, then back up at Garrett. “I just want you to know where we stand.”
Pain lanced through Garrett’s chest, and he crossed his arms to hold it in. That shouldn’t have hurt so much. Maxwell had never given Garrett any reason to think that they comprised any sort of unit. Garrett didn’t have any claim to him. And Garrett had always known that.
“Alright,” Garrett conceded once he was sure his voice wouldn’t shake. “I understand.”
“Ugh.” Maxwell suddenly released his fists and ground his palms into his eyes. “You don’t, though.”
“So explain it to me, Maxwell.” Garrett hunched his shoulders, still patching over the wound in his chest.
He didn’t even really understand the hole. It wasn’t like he’d ever thought they were anything but friends or ever would be. And he’d been fine with that. He didn’t need to be in any sort of relationship with Maxwell to care for him. That was still true. But to hear Maxwell flatly rule it out like he had stung.
Maxwell kept his face buried in his hands, and when he finally spoke, his voice came out small. “I met Kurt years ago when I was young and alone and stupid.”
Garrett winced at the venom in Maxwell’s last word, but now, at least, they were getting somewhere.
“I was reckless, and before I knew it, he…” Maxwell pulled his hands from his face, tipped his head back toward the ceiling, and squeezed his eyes shut. “He owned me.”
Garrett’s heart broke as Maxwell’s voice did. He pushed himself off the wall but stopped short and wrapped his hands tightly around the headrest of his chair to keep himself from getting any closer. “Maxwell…”
“He owned me, Garrett.” Maxwell dropped his head back down from the ceiling, and anguish and fury welled up in his eyes, more emotion than Garrett had ever seen the cool, collected doctor display. “Everything I did, everything I was, it all came back to him. I thought he was all I had, and I didn’t realize until it was too late that that was because he had made sure of it.”
Maxwell leaped to his feet and paced to the cockpit door, then back again. Garrett kept his mouth shut, but his stomach churned, and his mind whirred with all the ways he wanted to rip Kurt Buck limb from limb for how he had hurt and reduced this brilliant, competent, proud man in front of him.
Maxwell finally stopped again in front of the windshield. “He didn’t want me to be anyone outside of him. So…” He dropped his head down to his chest. “So I wasn’t.”
Garrett dug his fingers into the headrest of his chair. “That’s not true.”
“Don’t give me platitudes, Garrett. You weren’t there.” Maxwell whirled on him with his jaw set and his eyes steely, anger and pain all wrapped up around him.
Garrett met Maxwell’s eyes and refused to back down. He may not know the specifics, but he’d seen enough to draw a conclusion. “He was a monster.”
“Yes.” Maxwell took a deep breath and crossed his arms, and Garrett saw him wrestle down the rage. “Yes, he was. Is. But this isn’t about him.”
