Page 60 of Maximus

Max would never be mine.

Not ever.

And that didn’t hurt, it destroyed me.

Chapter 18

Anaya didn’t go a little overboard. She went crazy.

Elijah had fallen asleep in the car about an hour ago. This was after driving for six hours and stopping to get dinner. The TVs in the headrest were a godsend and had kept the boys occupied. Unfortunately, that meant there was a whole lot of silence during the drive.

Eva had damn near shut down. She gave one word answers when she could, would hum her agreement, and grunt her negative responses to any questions I asked.

This should’ve been good. I needed to distance myself from her, and not getting to know her any better was a great way to do just that. However, the quiet gave me too much time to think my fucked-up thoughts. What it didn’t do was give me time to sort myself.

I used the hours in the car to ponder all the reasons why I was the way I was. I’d gone all the way back to the beginning and started wondering what in the hell was so broken in my mother that she loved an abusive dick more than her own child. I would never know because I’d never asked. But as hard as I tried, I couldn’t for the life of me figure out why she’d given me up into foster care instead of leaving my dad and keeping me.

I was an unlovable burden.

Then I deliberated what was so wrong with me that my aunt and uncle couldn’t love me. Sure, they’d taken me in. Not because I was the son of my aunt’s sister, but because they got money each month for my care. I was just a kid, but I remember the conversation clearly. They did not hide that shit from me and straight out asked how much money they’d receive. My dad was loaded after all, so they hit paydirt. They did not use that money to take care of me. They didn’t even use it to move into a better home in a nicer neighborhood. They didn’t save it for my college education. They bought me the bare minimum and they bought themselves cars, clothes, and vacations I was not welcome to attend. And the money had afforded them babysitters. Which I spent a good amount of time with so they could go to fancy dinners to wear their nice clothes and take their trips.

I was an unlovable meal-ticket.

By the time my thoughts went to Pam and her bullshit, I was no closer to figuring out why not a single person in my life could love me.

Therefore, it was me who was broken, damaged, and not good enough.

I was the common denominator.

And even if I wanted to fix myself—which I didn’t—so a woman could give herself to me, I didn’t have the first clue how to do it.

The fuck of it was, I’d never really contemplated my life so thoroughly.

I just went through life protecting myself, not trusting anyone to get close.

But it wasn’t until I watched Eva lean into the back seat, unbuckle Eli from his car seat, and carry him into the house that I wondered if I’d missed out on something.

Was there more to life?

It was with those thoughts that I opened the front door of the safehouse and saw no less than twenty bags piled in the middle of the room, that I realized I had no idea what Christmas times ten meant, because I’d never had a real Christmas.

Yeah, fuck yeah, I’d missed out on a lot.

After Eva had laid Elijah down and Liam had changed into pajamas, both mother and son had come back into the living room. My eyes went from the bags Anaya had dropped off to Liam’s eyes, then up to Eva’s. I couldn’t read either of their expressions.

“What’s all that?”

“I asked a friend to pick up some stuff for you and your brother,” I started.

“That’s for us?”

“Yeah, but before you tear into anything, your mom needs to go through it and make sure it’s okay for you to have.”

That was the right thing to say, right?

I thought it was, giving Eva the final say on what the boys got to keep, but she kept her face completely blank.

“Mom?”