name
noun
a word or set of words by which a person, animal, place, or thing is known, addressed, or referred to.


Max is pretty sure she had been doing a good job of hiding the calls, and continuing to avoid suspicion.

Spencer never mentions the calls or pushes her on anything, not in the bath tub, or when they watch the sunsets and sunrises on her couch with Thai food.

He doesn't ask in his bed, or against the book shelf, or when they watch every Lord of the Rings movie, or when they take walks in the park, or sit around and read books of their off days.

He doesn't ask, and Max thinks she might could live the rest of her life like this, pretending.

Maybe that's exactly what he's needed too- someone to pretend to be normal with.

Because she was starting to feel like she had good life, for once, or at least a carefully curated one.

She liked being "Max Brenner" more than ever.


He starts telling her everything: about his mom, about Mauve, about the Dilaudid, about Gideon, about prison, and even about Cat Adams.

Max is a great listener, after all.

He gives her the story behind every scar on his body.

Each story might make a truly normal person want to spill their guts in reciprocation, but not Max.

Each story made Max think about how strong and pure he was.

How Spencer took bad hands he had been dealt, and came out better.

She tried to ignore how different she felt than him on the inside.

But always in the back of her mind, she wonders how she would respond to certain questions... because the calls from prison didn't stop coming, particularly when they are together.

She continues to hide them, pressing 'ignore' every time.

She starts to believe that maybe she's fooled him in to second guessing any suspicions he had.

Or better yet, maybe it was all in her head to begin with, and he's always believed she is just plain old sweet Max Brenner.

With everything he has been through, he needs someone like that, she thought.

She could be that, if she keeps playing her cards right.

And she was, until a few months pass, and she screws everything up, again.

Because as most know, all games must come to an end.


"Max wake up. Wake up!" She hears someone say from a distance.

She hears gun shots, and ripping sounds, and laughter, and yelling, and her only thought is...

Fight!

"Ow! Max!" she hears, and she opens her eyes.

Spencer is looking at her with shock, a hand covering nail marks from just below his collar bone, down his bare chest, and a shiny red mark under his eye.

"What the hell Max?" He says.

When she doesn't say anything his mood shifts.

He's mad.

He scoffs and walks into her bathroom, and she can see marks on his shoulder as his back turns.

She follows him and finds him wetting a rag, and dabbing at the cut on his chest, blood coming off on it.

She reaches for him, but he shrugs her off.

"I... I must have been having a crazy dream, I'm sorry" she tries, grabbing at the neck of her tee shirt, and frantically thinking of ways she could play this off.

"You were hyper ventilating and screaming." Spencer says as he drops his hands to either side of the sink and glares at her through the mirror.

"I tried to wake you up and you attacked me," He continues.

He touches the mark on his face, then instinctively reaches over behind him, discovering the scratches on his shoulder this time.

They stand there frozen for several beats until she remembers the bottle of rubbing alcohol in the cabinet behind her.

"Will you just, sit down." She says pulling his arm to motion him to sit on the toilet, and grabbing a cotton ball from the container on the sink.

He does, and when she turns to him again, his face is level with hers, a serious look plastered on it.

She pours the alcohol, and touches the scratch.

Her eyes trail from his clenched jaw, to his collar bone, to the angry red scratch contrasting off his honey colored skin, then up to his face which is starting to soften, minus the jumping vein in his forehead.

"Max..." He says in a small voice, and she doesn't meet his eyes.

"Are you going to make me ask?" he says, there is a weight behind his words that breaks her.

There it is, she thinks.

He knew you were lying about the calls, and all of the other countless subtle and not so subtle things you have probably done in the past few months that he has either ignored, or chose not to acknowledge.

He's a profiler, Max.

He's known this whole time you have been keeping things from him.

He's been waiting this whole time for you to stop lying...

But why? So he can catch you in some thing?

Make you slip up so they can finally get you...?

She takes in a breath, her own jaw tightening as she continues to dab the cut.

"Max," he says again, softly grabbing her wrist to to stop her.

She lets out a whimper and meets his eyes.

The paranoid thoughts wash away as she looks into hazel, knowing if she doesn't say something now, all of this is over.

It's probably over either way, she thinks.

She knows with 4 words she can tell him almost everything he wants to know.

Just 4 words and you can keep him, or maybe lose him regardless.

There is no avoiding it any longer.

She fingers the mark on his face with her free hand, no doubt in her mind that she made it.

She hadn't had an episode like this in a while.

Perhaps her subconscious mind refused to continue with the ruse any longer.

Chaos is in your DNA, after all— and the body keeps score. A voice tells her.

She meets his eyes, her oldest friend, 'numbness,' taking over her.

She knew her eyes must be betraying her, letting him in on the darkness inside, because she notices the tiniest flicker of fear in his eyes.

That's right baby, you should be afraid. She thinks.

And it was the fear that, as much as it made her sick to admit it, emboldens her, and maybe even excites her, so she says it.

"I am Harlowe Mills." she says.

The hand holding her wrist loosens and falls.


✈️

"Fear of a name increases fear of the thing itself." -Hermione Granger