Chapter 6 #3
She hit me again. Closed fist this time. My lip split open.
"You're weak. Pathetic. This is your fault. Your body. Your sickness."
Then she made me kneel on the tile floor. For hours. Until my knees bled and I couldn't feel my legs anymore. Until I was sobbing and begging her to let me up.
"This is what you deserve," she told me. Standing over me. Looking down at me like I was something she scraped off her shoe. "Omegas like you need to be punished. Need to learn their place."
I learned.
I learned to hide everything. To take my pills. To make myself small and quiet and invisible.
I learned that wanting anything was dangerous. That my body was something to be ashamed of. That I was fundamentally wrong.
And tonight—tonight I proved she was right.
Because I went down to that basement knowing. I heard the music and I KNEW it was Zero and I went down there anyway. My body was already reacting before I even saw him. Getting hot. Getting slick. Wanting something I shouldn't want.
When he told me to leave, I didn't.
When he kissed me, I kissed back.
When he bent me over that bench, I let him.
No—I wanted him to.
I'm so fucked up. There has to be something wrong with me. Because Zero was ROUGH. He hurt me. Used me. Said things that should have made me hate him.
He called me pathetic. Said I was just a hole. That I belonged to him. That my body was his property.
And instead of being horrified or angry or disgusted—
I got off on it.
I came harder than I've ever come in my life while he was degrading me.
That's not normal. That's not okay. That's exactly what Linda always said about me.
That I'm broken. Wrong. That there's something sick inside me that needs to be beaten out.
Maybe she was right to try.
Maybe I deserve the way Zero treated me. Maybe that's all I'm good for. All I'll ever be good for.
The entry keeps going. Page after page. Max's handwriting loosening as the words pour out faster.
But here's the thing I can't stop thinking about:
For those few minutes in the basement, I felt ALIVE.
Not invisible. Not nothing. Not the quiet kid who doesn't matter.
Zero looked at me like I was the only thing in the world that mattered. Like he was losing his mind over me. Like my body, my scent, my very existence was driving him crazy.
He couldn't control himself around me.
ME.
He said he was mad at me. That I made him want things he shouldn't want. That I was ruining him.
Good.
Because maybe it means I'm not nothing.
Maybe it means I matter.
Even if it's twisted. Even if it's wrong. Even if the only way I matter is as something he wants to destroy.
At least I'm SOMETHING to him.
I'm hard.
I'm crying and I'm hard and the two things exist in the same body at the same time and I don't know what to do with either of them.
The tears track down my cheeks—hot, silent, the kind I haven't cried since my mother died. Not the performance of grief. The real thing. The bone-deep recognition that I am the villain of someone's story and the evidence is written in shaking handwriting in his own diary.
He bent me over a weight bench and took my virginity.
His virginity. I took it on a basement bench and didn't know. Didn't ask. Didn't look at him afterward. Said clean yourself up and walked away like he was nothing.
Maybe I deserve the way Zero treated me. Maybe that's all I'm good for.
The words gut me. This boy—this person who wants to be chosen, who's spent his whole life being discarded—sat on his bedroom floor bleeding and crying and wrote maybe I deserve it. Because of me. Because of what I did.
But my cock is straining against my jeans because Max wrote I went down to that basement knowing and when he kissed me, I kissed back and I wanted him to. Because he wrote I felt ALIVE and he couldn't control himself around me and then—
Good.
One word. Underlined. The most defiant thing in the entire entry. Max Carter—broken, bleeding, degraded—looking at what I did to him and finding power in it.
Finding proof that he matters. That he's not invisible.
At least I'm SOMETHING to him.
I undo my belt. Shove my jeans down. Wrap my hand around myself and it's wrong, everything about this is wrong—I'm sitting on his bed reading his private thoughts with tears on my face and his scent in my lungs and I can't stop.
I'm not thinking about the basement. Not exactly.
I'm thinking about what it would be like to do it right.
To pin him against a wall and growl his name and take what I want—but ask first. To be brutal and real and honest and say I want you, tell me you want me back, say the word and I'll give you everything the dark part of me has to offer and I'll stay.
I'll stay afterward. I'll hold you. I'll look at you.
My hand moves faster. Rough. Punishing. Max's scent everywhere—the pillow, the sheets, the t-shirt I'm still holding balled in my other fist.
I came harder than I've ever come in my life while he was degrading me.
He wrote that. About me. In shaking handwriting with ink bleeding through the page.
Maybe she was right to try.
And he wrote that too. In the same entry. On the same night. Pleasure and self-destruction braided together so tight you can't separate them.
I come.
Hard. Violent. My vision whites out and the sound that tears out of me is Max's name—wrecked, desperate, soaked with grief and want and self-loathing so total it tastes like blood.
I come into my own hand on his bed, surrounded by his scent, holding his t-shirt, with his words carved into my chest like a brand.
At least I'm SOMETHING to him.
Yeah. He's something to me. He's everything to me. And I proved it in the worst possible way—by taking what I wanted without asking and leaving him on a basement floor to bleed.
But Max—Max didn't just write about the pain.
He wrote good. Wrote alive. Wrote he looked at me like I was the only thing in the world that mattered and found something in that wreckage that looked like power.
Like proof of existence. Like maybe being wanted violently was better than not being wanted at all.
And there's a part of me—the dark, selfish part that lives in my gut and drives everything I do—that reads those words and files them away. Not as permission. Not as absolution. As information.
As the knowledge that Max Carter, who is terrified of me and drawn to me in equal measure, felt alive in my hands.
I want to hurt him again. Not the way I did—not the careless, selfish taking. But the other kind. The honest kind. The I see exactly what you are and I want it and I'm not going to pretend otherwise kind.
I want to pin him down and hear him say my name. I want to feel his body open for me and know he chose it this time. I want to be the person who makes him feel alive without making him write maybe I deserve it afterward.
I want to deserve the word good.
I don't know if I can. The thing inside me that held him down in the basement—it doesn't have a leash. It doesn't respond to commands. It's the same thing that makes me good at violence and bad at everything else.
But Max isn’t a victim in this game. He’s defiant. Certain. He found power in my wanting and I want to give him more of it—on his terms, with his consent, with my hands and my mouth and my name in his throat.
I'm too selfish to give him up. That's the truth of it.
Too selfish to step aside and let Atlas protect him with measured words and breathing exercises.
Too selfish to let Bane be the one who holds him in the dark.
Too addicted to his scent and his voice and the way he wrote ME in capital letters like he couldn't believe someone wanted him that badly.
I want him. All of him. The scent and the scars. The body and the bag by the door. The boy who wants to be chosen and the omega and all the fucked up parts of him he writes in here.
And I want to do it right this time. Not gentle—I can't be gentle, that's not what he wants and it's not what I am. But better. Honest. Present. The kind of brutal that asks first and stays after.
I don't know if I can be that. But sitting on Max's bed, holding the private words of a boy who wanted me to stay—
I want to try.
FUCK.
For the first time in my life, I want to try.
I clean myself up. Zip my jeans. Wipe my face with the back of my hand.
I put the notebooks back. All of them. Bottom of the chest, same order I found them. Close the lid. Won't tell Max I read them. Won't use them.
But I'll remember every word.
I go to Atlas's office. He's at his desk, blueprints spread, phone to his ear. He hangs up when he sees me. Looks at my face—the red eyes, the split knuckles, something different behind the usual violence.
"You okay?" he asks.
"No."
I sit down. The chair creaks under me. I look at everything scattered across his desk don't see anything. I see a red notebook. A blue notebook. Shaking handwriting. Ink bleeding through paper.
"I read Max's journals."
Atlas goes still.
"All of them," I say. "From when he was a kid. Some fucking cunt named Linda. The foster homes. Everything."
Atlas doesn't speak. Waits.
"He wrote about the basement."
The silence changes texture. Thickens. I can feel Atlas's eyes on me—sharp, assessing, the gears turning behind the gray.
I clear my throat and drag my hand through my hair. "He was a virgin, Atlas."
I watch it land. Watch my brother's jaw lock. Watch his hands—flat on the desk, steady, always steady—curl into fists so slowly it's almost imperceptible. The knuckles go white.
"I didn't know." The words sound pathetic. They are pathetic. "He never said—I didn't ask. I didn't check. I just—" I stop. Swallow. "I bent him over a weight bench and took his virginity and I didn't even know. I told him to clean himself up and I left."
Atlas's breathing changes. Controlled. Deliberate. He's deciding whether to destroy something or file it away for later.
"He bled," I say. "He went upstairs and cried and bled and then he sat on his floor and wrote about it in his diary. He wrote that maybe he deserved it. That maybe Linda was right about him. That maybe that's all he's good for."
Atlas stands. The chair rolls back and hits the bookcase. He's not looking at me—he's looking at the wall, hands braced on the edge of the desk, arms locked, the muscles in his forearms corded tight. His shoulders are a line of barely contained violence.
"If you're going to hit me," I say, "I won't stop you."
His head turns. Just enough. The profile of his jaw could cut glass.
"I mean it. You can punch me. I deserve it. When we get Max back, you can beat the shit out of me in the driveway and I'll stand there and take it."
Atlas's jaw works. His fists flex on the desk. I can see the calculation—the part of him that wants to put me through the wall warring with the part that knows we need every body standing for what's coming.
"But you won't keep him from me."
His eyes snap to mine. Full-on now. Burning.
"You heard me." I hold his gaze. Don't flinch. Don't look away. "I know what I did. I know what I am. I read every word that boy wrote about me and I will carry it for the rest of my life. But I'm not walking away from him. Not you. Not Bane. Nobody is keeping me from Max. So get used to that."
The silence stretches. Ten seconds. Twenty. Long enough that I can hear Atlas's breathing and my own heartbeat and the clock on the wall ticking like a countdown.
"You read his journals," Atlas says. Low. Measured. Every word a controlled detonation. "You violated his privacy. Again."
"Yes."
"And you're sitting here telling me you assaulted him. That he bled. That he wrote about deserving it."
"Yes."
"And your response is to tell me I can't keep you away from him."
"Yes."
Atlas stares at me. And I see it—the war behind his eyes. The older brother who wants to break my jaw. The strategist who needs me functional. The man who cares about Max and knows, on some level he'll never admit, that I care about him too.
Even if my version of love looks like wreckage.
"When we get him back," Atlas says, "you will tell him what you read. Every notebook. Every page. You will not hide it. You will not use it. You will put it in his hands and let him decide what happens next."
"I won’t do that either."
"You will. And if he tells you to stay away—"
"He won't."
"If he does—"
"Then I'll stand outside his door until he changes his mind.
I'll sleep in the hallway. I'll wait. However long it takes.
" I lean forward. "I'm not good at gentle.
I'm not good at patient. I'm not good at any of the things Bane is or you are.
But I can do stubborn. I can do relentless.
And I can do honest, which is more than I've ever given him before. "
Atlas holds my gaze for a long time. Then something shifts—not softening, not forgiveness, but the grim recognition of a man who knows he can't change what's already happened and has to work with what's in front of him.
"When we get him back," Atlas says again, quieter now, "and he's safe, and he's home—you and I are going to have a conversation in the yard. Just us."
I blow out a breath, some tension leaving my shoulders.
Good. I’ll bleed for Max.
Then I’ll show him what it feels like to be truly seen.