Chapter 8: Snuff

So if you love me, let me go
And run away before I know.
My heart is just too dark to care.
I can't destroy what isn't there.
Deliver me into my fate.
If I'm alone, I cannot hate.
I don't deserve to have you.
Oh, my smile was taken long ago,
If I can change, I hope I never know.

When Max walks back into the house, Adam behind him, Liberty comes running over. Even in the midst of all the pain and confusion, Max can't help adoring the little girl who has very quickly become one of the little beams of sunshine in the darkness he feels himself sinking into when he thinks about what's happened with Adam. Despite the ache in his hip, he leans over and gives her a kiss on top of her curly head of hair. He's doing his best to hold it together here, and somehow, the sweetness of Cody and Brandi's daughter has done something to heal him when he didn't think healing was possible.

Healing things with Adam? Still may not be possible, but Max has this sick feeling that, if he lets Adam walk away – more like hobble away – and doesn't at least hear him out, a part of him will always wonder what could've happened… how things could've gone differently. After what Cody said in the car, he hasn't been able to stop thinking about what that might mean, and here he is, throwing caution to the wind… or at least very carefully setting it aside for the time being.

Before they go down the hall to Max's current room, Brandi walks up to them both, and despite himself, Max has to smile when she draws herself up to her full height and stares daggers through Adam. Pointing her finger in his face, she curtly tells him, "You listen here, and you listen good, because I'm only going to say this once. The only reason you are standing in my house right now is because Max deserves the chance to ask you anything he feels like asking. I would've left your ass on the front step when you got here today. I don't like you. I don't like backstabbing, lying people in my house and around my daughter. So you can give him the truth, or you can go ahead and get the hell out. Do you understand me?"

Adam glances over her shoulder to where Cody is calmly watching them with Libby now in his lap, but Brandi quickly puts an end to that. "Don't look at my husband to help you. This is my house, my family, people who I care about and have space for. You? You're nobody to me. So, again, I ask. Do. You. Understand. Me?"

"Yes, ma'am," Adam replies quickly. It's not snarky as it might have been in other circumstances. He knows this is his last chance to make things right, and he won't get the chance if he doesn't show the Rhodeses the respect they're due. "I understand."

Dustin, who is sitting near Cody, turns to his younger brother and neither of them can help smiling. Brandi is a force to be reckoned with, and she doesn't need any man to back her up. She's got more balls than the four men in this room put together.

Max smiles, too, and meets her gaze. "Thank you, Brandi," he says.

"Psh," she replies, her tone lighter with Max, teasing instead of truly angry. "I don't like you either, Mr. Better Than You. I'll kick you out, too. Don't try me."

"You got it," he says, grinning at her. "I'm on my best behavior."

"You better be," Brandi says, before backing away to let Max and Adam go.

After they're both in Max's room, he shuts the door behind them, and sits down on the bed, nodding toward a chair for Adam. He's not in any mood to have Adam sitting beside him on the bed. It's still not easy being this close to him, and Max is going to have to figure out how to build up to this if he's going to do it. He slides back on the bed so he can lean against the wall, and Adam puts his injured foot up on the footboard.

"What do you want to talk about?" Adam asks softly, figuring if Max has asked him to come inside and talk, he must have something to say.

"I don't want to talk," Max replies. "I want you to talk and tell me what the fuck you're doing here. If this is the Adam Cole apology tour, I want to hear the whole apology. Not just you telling me over and over that you came to apologize. Start apologizing. Here's your chance."

Adam's caught off guard, and he tilts his head to one side a little in confusion. Max almost smiles at that, remembering how he always thought Adam looked distinctly like a golden retriever when he did that in the past. But the near-smile is quick to fade, and Adam speaks without having seen it at all. "What… I… What made you change your mind?"

"Cody," Max says simply. "And myself, really."

Though he wants to dig deeper into that, Adam doesn't want to throw away the one shot Max is giving him to say his piece, so he turns his focus to his own apology. Funny, when he left to come to Cody's house, he had known exactly what he was going to say when he saw Max… but now that he has the opportunity to speak, he can't remember a fucking word, and he feels like the biggest idiot of all time. He pauses, looking at Max and finds himself overcome with emotion. How the hell has he managed to fuck this thing up so fucking badly?

"I'm sorry, Max," he finally says, feeling the truth of that simple statement down to his bones. "I'm sorry for everything. For lying to you. For using you. For not giving you the chance to show me what you really are like when you care about somebody. I'm sorry that I didn't listen to you, and that it took me seeing that fucking video to realize that you weren't bullshitting me."

"Wait," Max interrupts, holding up a finger and raising an eyebrow. "What video?"

Adam's caught off guard. That video has been breaking news ever since it went up last night on just about every conceivable wrestling related news site, and Adam has been operating under the assumption that Max knows that. Apparently, once again, he's made an assumption that isn't rooted in reality. "The… The karaoke video? From the bar last night?"

The groan Max lets out is heavy and tired, and Adam hates that he's the one who has the dubious pleasure of revealing this information to his former best friend and lover. "Of course that was recorded and shared with the world… Every other truly awful moment in my life has been. Might as well throw that in for good measure."

Adam shakes his head. "I… It wasn't until I saw that video that I realized that you really meant the shit you said to me."

"Of course I meant it, you idiot!" Max shoots back, staring at Adam in disbelief. "Do you think I just go around telling people I love them for shits and giggles? Seriously? I mean, I get that you do that, but I don't even really say that shit to people I do love. The fact I said it to you meant something. Or to me it did, anyway."

"I've seen how quick you've turned on people before, Max," Adam says. "King of the hug turned to the low-blow, and I wasn't really interested in getting kicked in the dick." He pauses. Telling Max that he's the asshole instead of Adam isn't really the route he's trying to go here, and he takes a moment to change course. "Look, I… I didn't trust you, but it felt like I could, and that… That was the scariest shit to me. Of course I know Roddy and Wardlow and those guys will stab me in the back. But it's the whole keep your friends close and your enemies closer thing, right? I keep them close so I can watch them… so I'm a step ahead of the knife. But with you, I felt… I came into things with you not trusting you at all, and planning to fuck you over, but the more time I spent with you, the more I wanted to trust you, and the more I was afraid of what that meant."

He shakes his head, blue eyes blinking against the emotion of what he's trying to say. "I'm okay with assholes I can't trust. I know the guys I'm working with. I've been those guys my entire life. So I felt like… Like I could believe that you were going to do MJF shit and fuck me over, and all I was doing was staying ahead of that knife in my back. It's like… Remember that whole shit in Pirates of the Caribbean that Jack Sparrow says about how you can trust dishonest men to be dishonest, but you can't trust honest ones not to do something stupid?"

Max holds both hands up in front of him, "Adam, I swear to god, I give you the opportunity to say what you need to say and your nerdy ass is quoting Disney movies at me? Seriously?! I should kick you out right now. Jesus Christ."

The tears welling up in Adam's eyes are suddenly replaced by a choked bark of laughter, because that may be the single most Max thing that he's heard Max say since that night at World's End. "Fine. But you get the point, right? You were a straight shooter with me, and I've always worked better with lying motherfuckers I couldn't trust. It's easier that way."

The younger man shrugs his good shoulder. "Sure. And I've always been a lying motherfucker you couldn't trust until… I wasn't. I get that. I don't trust people either, but I trusted you. The time we had together – not just at work and shit, but at my place… That was trust. I don't let people into my house like that. Piper's the best cat that has ever existed, and I know people like you would catnap her because your pets could never."

Adam's still somewhere between laughter and tears, but he shakes his head at Max. "I'm sorry. I thought I was protecting myself from the inevitable betrayal if I betrayed you first. But now, I just…" He waits just a moment for the right words. "You don't get drunk and karaoke confess your love for somebody you've been planning to fuck over since day one. You weren't going to betray me, and I couldn't let myself give you the chance to prove it… Even if all I wanted was to be able to believe it."

Max is quiet for a moment, processing what Adam has said. He doesn't know how he's supposed to respond, but he needs to say something, and he feels at a complete loss. He meets Adam's gaze with that very thoughtful look that he usually wears right before he roasts someone within an inch of their life. Only this time, he doesn't dive in for the kill. "I get it," he says carefully. "I do, I mean… I have a literal neurological condition that makes me think everybody hates me. There's a reason it's so fucking easy for me to throw people under the bus and get rid of them. But you know what that's gotten me, Adam? Nothing but an empty house and a world where the only person I really trust is my cat. I didn't even know if I could come here and talk to Cody after everything, but he seemed like the only truly honest person I knew, and hell, even if he kicked me out, he wouldn't make me think he wasn't going to before he did."

"I don't really know what I'm supposed to do," he adds. "I want to believe you, as fucking stupid as that sounds. I want to believe you mean what you say. But when I look at you, I just see you in that chair with your cronies around with my devil mask like… like the greatest moment of your life was throwing me away."

Adam nods. "I don't know what to tell you, Max. There's nothing I can do that's going to undo the way I fucked you over. There's no way of erasing the past. As much as I wish there was. I want to make this right, but I don't know if I can. Whether you ever talk to me again or not, I want you to know that I was… am… sorry for what I did to you. I'll regret it for the rest of my life. And the time we had together gave me some of the best memories I'll ever have. Whether or not we can work things out between us… you weren't wrong to think that I loved you. I did. I still do. I hate myself for what I did. But that's not what matters here. What matters is… Max, anybody in the world who could ever call you a friend would be a lucky son of a bitch. And if you never speak to me again, I need you to know that much is true. I love you. And I will never forget the time we had together. Even if it would hurt a hell of a lot less if I could." By this point, his eyes are flooded with tears, and he uses the sleeve of his hoodie to brush them out of his eyes.

Max is crying, too, and he feels like the world's biggest loser for crying over the guy who broke his heart. But somehow, right now, in this moment, it feels like an okay thing to do. "I… I think I'm going to need some time, okay?" he says slowly. "I want to be able to just go back to how we used to be, but I can't. There's… I'm going to need to see that you mean what you're saying. I'm not sure that will be enough, either, but… Fuck. I don't know…"

"You tell me what you need from me," Adam says. "Whatever it is. However long it takes. I'll do it."

Max pauses and swallows hard. "Right now? I think I need you to go," he says. "Not… I don't mean forever. I just mean… For now. And I need to know you're not going to go straight back to your crew and tell them what a huge sobbing pussy I am. I have no idea how you're going to prove that to me, but I need you to say it at least. Whether I can trust you or not."

"I won't go and tell Roddy and the guys what we talked about. They don't need to know. It's between us. Whatever it takes, Max."

Adam pushes himself up out of the chair, and Max manages to get up from the bed. They stare at each other in silence for a moment, and then Adam wraps his arms around Max and squeezes him tight like it might be the last time. Without even thinking about it, he presses a kiss to the other man's cheek and whispers into his ear, "I'll talk to you soon?"

Max nods. "Yeah. Soon. Let me know when you get back home safely, okay?" Heartbreak or no. Betrayal or no. Max wants to know that Adam is safe. Everything else is secondary to that.

"I love you," Adam says, pulling back to look Max in the eyes.

Max doesn't say it back, but he nods silently before finally saying, "Have a safe flight."