"Open," he says again. Patient. No judgment.
I open my mouth. He feeds me. Small bites, held steady, waiting while I chew. When I need water, he uncaps the bottle and holds it to my lips. Tips it carefully. Wipes the spill from my chin with his thumb.
I huff out a small laugh and he smiles, then offers me another bite.
Something cracks inside my chest.
I've been taken care of before. Atlas held me together after Mom died—fourteen years old, inconsolable, and my oldestbrother sat on my bedroom floor for three days and didn't leave. But Atlas held me together the way a general holds a unit together. Structure. Routine. Orders.
This isn't that.
This is gentle hands and quiet patience and the simple act of feeding someone who can't feed himself. This is Max–gentle, kind, willing to help me out when I need it.
Even if I don’t deserve it.
"Your wrists," he says, when the food is done. He reaches for my hands. Turns them over. The zip ties have rubbed the skin raw—red, chafed, the edges starting to crack. "Hold still."
He tears two strips from the mattress cover. Thin fabric. Folds them carefully and slides them under the zip ties, padding the plastic against my skin. His fingers are precise. Deliberate. He adjusts each strip until the pressure eases.
"Better?"
"Yeah." My voice comes out rougher than I intended. I hadn’t realized my wrists were starting to hurt until the pressure eases. "Thank you."
He doesn't respond. Just caps the water bottle and sets it within my reach. Then he sits beside me. Close. Shoulder to shoulder.
The fluorescent hum fills the silence. It should be awkward. Two people in a concrete cell with nothing but time and proximity and the memory of everything that's been said between them—the cruelty, the confession, the kiss, the distance.
It's not awkward. It's the easiest silence I've ever sat in.
"How old were you?" Max asks in a quiet voice. Not looking at me. "When your mom died."
He must have seen something in my face that I thought I was hiding.
"Fourteen."
A nod. Small. Like the number confirmed something he already suspected.
"What was she like?"
Nobody asks me that. Atlas doesn't talk about her—it's the one room in his otherwise immaculate emotional architecture that stays locked. Zero breaks things when her name comes up. Richard remarried. And I—I put on the suit and got straight A's and never let anyone see the crater.
"Kind," I say. The sedative pulls the word out before I can dress it up. "She was kind in a way that had nothing to do with weakness. She'd tell my father he was wrong to his face. She'd tell Atlas to stop trying to be perfect. She'd—" I stop. Swallow. "She'd sit on my bed at night and read to me. Even when I was too old for it. Even when I pretended I didn't want her to."
Max's shoulder presses against mine. Just slightly.
"We handled it. When she died. Atlas ran things. Zero went off the rails for a while. I kept my head down." I shrug. The gesture feels stiff. Performative. The same shrug I've been giving people for ten years when they ask how I coped. "It was fine."
"It wasn't fine."
I look at him. He's not pushing—not the way Atlas pushes, with questions designed to crack you open. He's just stating a fact. Quiet. Certain. The way someone who knows what not fine looks like recognizes it in someone else.
"No," I say. "It wasn't. I was young and everyone expected me to fall apart, so I just... didn't. I became the easiest person in the house. Never complained. Never cried. Never gave anyone a reason to check on me because there was already enough chaos to manage. And after a while, everyone stopped looking. Which was the point. Which was also the worst part."
"Did it work? Being easy?"
"It meant nobody worried about me. It also meant nobody saw me. So yeah. It worked. It just cost everything."
The ghost of a smile. "I know that math."
