“I don’t know that I believe that. You should talk to him,” Dante said.
“We’re not a family that talks about their feelings.”
“Well, maybe it’s high time we did. Because I can see now, Maximus, that you have been living in some kind of private hell and I let you. What kind of friendship is that?”
“Your friendship is not the issue here.”
“Well, perhaps it should be.”
“This is not your concern. I can handle this alone.”
“Clearly you can’t. And speaking as someone who lived under a shroud of their own darkness for a very long time, I can tell you that you shouldn’t have to. Minerva saved me. Loving her saved me. You can laugh all you want about castles and ponies, and you can recoil in horror at the fact that I’m sleeping with your sister, but I love her. I love everything about her. And she forced me to change. She forced me to heal. And it was the cruelest, kindest thing anyone has ever done for me. She did not leave me to die in my brokenness. Your family gave me so much, Maximus, but not even your father’s caring, your mother’s love or your friendship healed me. It was Minerva, and the way that she demanded I love her back. She was the one that changed everything. That fixed everything. It was her love. So if you found a woman that is demanding you give her your heart, then you damn well do it. And if something stands in your way, that is the thing that you should destroy, not the love that could be between you.”
“You don’t understand what kind of man I am.”
“I don’t need to. Does she understand what kind of man you are?”
“She says she does.”
“So listen. Believe her.”
“Why should I?”
“Because the other choice is a life lived alone. And believe me when I tell you it’s not even a half life. Because I’m standing on the other side of it, and I’m telling you.”
“Her whole family died. And she says she loves me. The world treated her in the worst possible way, and she still loves me. And I...I was betrayed and I just... I spiraled into darkness, and I think I might like it there. I think I might not have the strength to walk back out. Because when you live in the darkness, nobody sees what you do. You don’t have to be accountable for anything. For anyone.”
“I can see the appeal. But what’s the point of it?” He looked around the room. “Why did you come here in the first place?”
“Because she needed help.”
“And that mattered.”
“I don’t know why in hell it did. Only that it did.”
“I think you do know. It’s because even then she called to your heart. Because even then you cared, whether you wanted to or not.” Dante stared at him. “Talk to your father.”
And then his friend was gone, as if he had not flown across the world to see him. A part of Maximus wondered if he had hallucinated the entire thing.
He poured himself a glass of whiskey, and he started to take a drink. But then stopped. He stared down at the amber liquid. And then he reached for his phone and called his father.
“Hello?”
“I blame you for Stella’s death.”
There was a long pause on the other end of the line. “I know you do. I blame myself. Because it was my fault.”
“But worst of all, I hate that I idolized you and you didn’t live up to it. I don’t know how I can ever trust anyone or anything ever again. Especially because...in the end, I’m not any different than you. I’m two different men. I don’t know how to reconcile that with anything.”
There was nothing but the sound of broken breathing on the other end of the line. And when his father spoke, his voice was heavy.
“I failed you, Maximus, and nothing has ever brought me greater pain. Everything I did was for our family. For our betterment. And I’m responsible for the death of the woman you loved. I hate that. I hate how short my focus was. How arrogant I was about my own resilience. How I might’ve felt like I was untouchable, but didn’t take into account the fact that my family was not. And that my family made me vulnerable. But...I’m not two different men. I am one. I’m very flawed. I care about the people in my life, but I can get blinded by my greed. By opportunity. I have a difficult time saying no. It’s why I’ve engaged in business deals I should’ve walked away from. It’s why I... That in the moment sometimes I forget my own principles. Because it’s easier to say yes to what’s right in front of me. Since Stella’s death I’ve been better. But it doesn’t take away what I did. It would be comforting to think that I was two men. But I’m just one broken one.”
It was the strangest thing. That realization. Maximus remembered how he had felt in Annick’s arms. Like he was one. The man and the beast. It had been comforting in a way. Even though in another it was easier to believe that one man was real and the other was a facade. Whichever felt better at the time.
Annick was the only one who knew. She saw him as one, and she claimed to love him anyway. She saw him. And she made him want to know what it would be like if he let go of everything that had happened in the past. Of the betrayal of his father, the loss of Stella and every black act he’d committed along the road to this point and accepted it. If he let go of the flaws in the world.
And knew the fact that he could never really quite balance the scales.