“But you made it happen anyway,” I say, breathless. Why in the hell am I breathless all of a sudden?
“I wanted to put in more effort with you. Show you that I cared.” Max’s hand runs down the length of my arm. I watch his fingers move down to my hand, glad my body doesn’t react to his touch anymore. “What happened to us, Shakes?” His voice is low, anguished.
“Life,” I say quietly, turning to face him. “Life happened, Max.”
The features of his face become tight, his honey-brown gaze hardening as it drops. His jaw begins to tick and he takes a step back, looking anywhere but at me.
“Yeah.” His voice is thicker. “Life can be so fucked up.” He looks at me again. “Do you hate me for what I put you through?”
I answer immediately when I hear the hurt in his voice; see it in his eyes. “Max, no.” I grab his hand and squeeze it. “You ask me that all the time. I don’t hate you. I could never hate you.”
“Good.” He sighs, as if he’s truly relieved. “I can’t have you hating me.”
“I don’t think I can hate anyone. I don’t even hate my mother, and she completely abandoned me and Tessa.” I give off a sarcastic laugh, as if that will heal the pain I feel when I speak of my mom, but it doesn’t. It never does.
“You got through it. That’s all that matters,” he says.
“But what if I hadn’t?” I sit down on the bench. “What if I would have turned out to be just as careless as her? Where would I be right now? Would I even have this disease? Would Tessa be hopeless? Would I be dead?” I slide my gaze over to at him as he sits beside me.
“There’s no way you can be anything like your mother, Shannon. You’re too good—a fucking gem, honestly. Everything you went through happened for a reason.”
I drop my head, fiddling with the strap of my backpack. “I wrote to my mother once,” I say. “To tell her I had OP. She wrote back and completely avoided the conversation. Talked about her life in prison a lot, some friends she’d made. The books she’d read while in there.”
Max is unsure of what to say.
“She got out early for good behavior. She came by once and I told her never to come back again. Now that I’ve had time to think about it, I probably shouldn’t have said that to her. I mean, I would love to make amends with her, but I doubt she’ll drop by after what I told her. I was just so angry and hurt and she was trying to take advantage and—” I clamp my mouth shut and bite the inside of my cheek. Then I shrug. “I guess it’s better for things to stay this way, though. Let her continue not to care. That way when I die, she won’t be another person who feels a ton of guilt.”
“Don’t say shit like that,” Max snaps. “She will feel guilty. She’s human. She’ll recognize the mistakes she made with you eventually and she’ll have to own up to it.”
I look into his eyes. “It’s true,” I say. “I’m done lying to myself about the shit that’s happened in my life, Max. I don’t have time for that anymore. Might as well face the facts. My mother is a piece of shit and it is what it is.”
He stares me right back in the eyes, lips pressed thin. “Stop making it seem like you’re not worth anything.”
“I’m not worth anything, Max. Maybe I was before, but not anymore. I’m sick. The doctors don’t even want to replace any portion of my lungs because I could die right on the operating table.”
Max balls his fists on his lap. Shutting his eyes, he breathes as evenly as possible through his nostrils, as if he can’t believe I’m even talking this way. I guess I’m not surprised. I was never the one to talk negatively before all of this. I always kept my faith, held onto hope even during the darkest, most depressing moments of my life, but it’s hard to do that anymore with death knocking at your door.
Unclenching his fists, Max straightens his back and pulls me in for a tight hug. He groans and then sighs.
“You know something?” he asks in a quiet voice.
“What?”
“If I had the opportunity to donate anything that could help you, I would.”
“John says the same. Tessa too.”
“Because we fucking love you and you have yet to put that through your thick skull.” He presses a finger to my temple and I laugh. “When you love someone you will do whatever it takes to keep them happy. Safe. Healthy.”
He releases me and I twist my lips, sitting back and fiddling with the strap of my backpack again. “If only it were possible to do something and keep everyone alive. It’s just too much of a risk.”