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“What if you said,Yes, Max, I love you? I’d have had to reject you. I’d have had to turn my back on the purest love a black soul like me would ever get. And then I would have lost you completely, maybe Win too. I’d rather pretend not to see and keep you as a brother because it’s better than having none of you at all.”
Slowly, I rotated, one foot in front of the other, until I faced him. He looked older all of a sudden, ragged and tired to the bone. I recognized the look well because it was one I saw in the mirror every single day. I wanted to go to him, offer every ounce of comfort I had left to give. In that moment, I would have tossed aside my shield to offer him the few remaining parts of me if it made him feel better. I didn’t want Max to hurt. I didn’t want him to anguish.
And then once more, it seemed everything I did had been for nothing because, in the end, we came here still.
“Why kiss me, then?” I asked, tortured yet somehow holding my ground. Though I trembled, though I swayed, I would stand here and ask. I’d waited too long to speak the words in my heart. I couldn’t go back now. I wouldn’t. “Why pull me out of that rave tonight? Why tell me you know now?”
His nostrils flared. That violent streak that had been cultivated since he was a child flickered over his features like lightning in a stormy sky.“Because you’re mine.”
I shivered a little at the possession in his voice. A part of me yearned to give in. Instead, I raised an eyebrow, ignoring the tug on my stitches. “So you don’t want me, but no one else can have me either?”
“I do want you!” he roared. “Aren’t you listening? I want you so goddamn bad that I’m willing to blow up this entire family. I’m willing to go against a promise I made to Mom on her deathbed.”
Despite his ire and angry rumble, everything inside me went quiet and still. “What promise?”
His lips rolled in on themselves, eyes pleading.
I shook my head. “Tell me.”
His Adam’s apple bobbed. “I never wanted you to know.”
“Well, you just said you’d blow it all up for me. Did you mean it?”
The muscle in his jaw ticked, and I was momentarily distracted by the memory of that soft scruff brushing against my chin.
“Before Mom passed, she asked to talk to me.”
I nodded, the memory clear. “Me and Win waited in the hall. That guy was there too… the lawyer.” I’d never given him much thought because Mom died a few hours later. And after that, grief was all we knew.
He nodded. “Mom had some last-minute papers drawn up. She asked me to sign them.”
I frowned. I didn’t know anything about this. “What kind of papers?”
“Guardianship papers.”
It took me a second, and then my eyes went wide. “For me?”
“I was the only one that was eighteen. Win still had a few months.”
I puzzled over that. “But Win—”
“Yeah.” He cut me off, voice gentle. “I know you think Win was the one to keep us together.”
“He wasn’t?” I whispered, reeling.
“Without a legal guardian, you would have gone into foster care. When Win turned eighteen, he could have fought for you, but you would already be in the system… already taken away from us.”
“Win too?” I asked. If he wasn’t eighteen yet, then wouldn’t he have been hauled into the system as well? Would they really have separated us like that? The anxiety the thought caused was instantaneous. I’d just lost my parents… I’d never have survived losing my brothers too.
Max shrugged. “Maybe? No one seemed to think foster care would try and take him for a few months. You, though… you weren’t even sixteen.”
“Mom asked you to be my guardian?” I asked.How had I not known this?
His ring-covered hands moved when he spoke as though the words stirred so much emotion in him he couldn’t just speak. “She wanted us to stay together. It was her last wish, Wes. She wanted me to take care of you, make sure you were safe and—”
“But I always assumed it was Win.”
“I told Win to let you think that.”
