When the mighty fell, they fell hard.

Max stopped speaking to his friends. He moved out of the Wilder Ones mansion and into a small studio apartment in Santa Monica. He stopped posting videos on YouTube.

Lexi still texted him every now and then as though she had nothing to do with the fucking knife shoved in his back. He ignored her messages. He stopped working out. He no longer cared about his appearance. At this point, he only left his place for necessities like food and alcohol. And weed. If he wasn't blackout drunk in bed, then he was getting high on the couch. Days and nights slipped by in a haze with Mondays blurring into Wednesdays until, suddenly, he looked around and the middle of May became the first of July.

For someone who had been earning six figures a year by partying and vlogging on the daily with other young attractive twenty-year-olds, Max had never felt like such a loser.

In a pathetic attempt to get his shit together, Max tried once or twice to get out on his boards. Sea and concrete used to be the cure-all whenever he needed to clear his head, but they failed him this time. Anxiety and depression had never gripped him in such a debilitating way before. Not even during high school. Some days, Max could barely find the motivation to pour cereal in a bowl for dinner, let alone engage in extreme physical activity. Grimly, he wondered if any of the girls who used to DM him religiously would find him fuckable in his current state. He doubted it. He disgusted himself, too, in more ways than one.

Maybe a little exercise would make him feel better?

There was a fitness center on the ground floor of his complex, located just a short elevator ride away. It took Max another week before he managed to wake up at a reasonable hour and drag his miserable ass down there. He hadn't realized just how much the past couple of months had wrecked his body until, halfway through his old routine, he was pretty much limping from a few sets of barbell squats to the pull-up bar. After fifteen more minutes on the treadmill, he was on the verge of throwing up. Max left the gym in defeat.

As the elevator doors opened up to his floor, he paused mid-step. Something unexpected caught his eye. Unit 310 was the two-bedroom apartment next to his place, and it had been vacant for months. Now, though, its door was propped wide open. The hallway was also bustling with activity. Movers wearing blue uniforms shuffled in and out of the doorway, unloading boxes and furniture at record speed.

A twenty-something female with blackish-brown hair followed closely behind them. The way she moved was measured and full of purpose, giving her the appearance of a much taller girl even though she looked no more than a very average five-five or five-six in height. She carried two large, heavy-looking boxes in her arms, piled up just below her line-of-sight, so Max barely caught a glimpse of her face. Regardless, she had legs for miles and the curves to make a plain cropped T-shirt and gray joggers look fuckable as hell.

Max resisted the urge to roll his eyes.

In essence, she resembled every other pretty female who moved to SoCal with a DSLR and delusions of "not being like other girls." As Max watched his new neighbor haul her crap alongside the movers, he got the sense she didn't come from money. The trust fund babies and celebrity kids he knew rarely showed up anywhere until all the heavy lifting was done, and this chick seemed like she knew how to get shit done.

It made him wonder how she was able to afford the rent here?

With a body like hers, it was possible to rack up a passable number of followers if she knew how to separate herself from the crowd and maybe even land a few sponsorships. Yet, they were also living in the heart of Santa Monica at a pretty exclusive complex. Even Max was second-guessing his ability to pay over three G's a month now that his channel was "on hiatus." Savings could only hold him over for so long.

As he walked past her, Max pulled up his hoodie and hurried by without introducing himself. He had a tendency to act awkward as fuck when the cameras were off, and he wasn't in the mood to make small talk. Once he was safely back inside his lair, he jumped in the shower for a quick rinse and then sank into his black leather couch with the melancholy of a dying seventy-year-old man. The gym really kicked his ass that morning, and he needed something to distract him from his aching everything. Max sensed it was a terrible idea, but he couldn't stop himself from reaching for his phone. Like an addict seeking crack, he started scrolling through his feed.

Instantly, his shit mood turned shittier. By now, Max should've grown accustomed to the overflow of hate and fuckery in his comment section. The internet had spoken. Lexi was to be protected at all costs. She had been cast as the innocent girl-next-door whose one mistake had been following her childhood sweetheart to the big city, only to have her feelings exploited for views by that same childhood sweetheart, who was actually a narcissistic fuckboy who couldn't Photoshop a personality to save his life.

Max tossed his phone aside when he felt sufficiently destroyed by the savagery of sixteen-year-olds that he didn't even know. He rolled over on the couch and waited for the tightness in his chest to disappear. Twenty minutes later, he passed out. By the time he regained consciousness, he still felt like shit. Just a starving piece of shit. He had slept through lunch again. No surprise there. Some In-n-Out sounded like a great idea, all of a sudden.

He decided to head out.