Lead Me Not

chapter eighteen

maxx

my chest felt tight, and my head screamed in agony. Every joint, every limb, ached and burned. It hurt to move. It hurt to breathe. I felt sick to my stomach, and bile rose up in the back of my throat.

I was going to puke.

I tried to lift my head, but even that small movement set off a wave of nausea that quickened the vomit rising up my throat.

I rolled onto my side and retched. And then I retched again. And just for good measure I retched some more.

I moaned, rolling onto my side. I had the sense to know I was on my bedroom floor, though how I had gotten here was a good question. Everything after I had arrived at Compulsion last night was a complete blank.

There were flashes here and there of things I think I’d prefer to forget.

I tried to hoist myself up onto the bed, but instead I started to dry heave. My face and the back of my neck were slick with sweat. The acrid smell of my puke filled my nostrils, and I started to shudder with the need to spew again.

“Jeesh,” I heard someone mutter, followed by a pair of cool hands on my upper arms as they pulled me back onto the bed. I recognized the voice, though my fuzzy mind couldn’t connect the dots.

I tried to open my eyes but found only one of them was working. Shit, why couldn’t I get my fucking eye open?

I started panicking. I slowly patted my face and hissed in pain as my fingers made contact with very raw flesh.

Christ, I was going to be sick again.

“Hold on,” the voice urged. There was no holding on to anything. I opened my mouth to throw up, but nothing came up. My stomach was officially empty. But that didn’t stop my body from attempting to bring up my stomach lining.

I was shaking uncontrollably, and those cold, soft hands touched my face. I think I moaned at how good it felt. Don’t stop touching me.

“I’m not going anywhere,” the voice soothed. And for the brief second before I passed out again, I felt comforted. And it made the free fall into blackness that much sweeter.

“Fuck,” I groaned. I tried to sit up, but my body wouldn’t cooperate. My limbs felt weighed down, and the tips of my extremities were on fire. I felt like I was simultaneously boiling alive and freezing to death.

My teeth chattered and my head pounded. My stomach was sore and clenched, ready to expel whatever might be left inside me out onto my bedroom floor.

I thought I was dying.

No, I knew I was dying.

I knew this horrible feeling all too well.

I didn’t want to die.

I wanted to live.

I wanted to feel good again.

“Please,” I begged, not sure anyone was around to hear my pathetic pleas. I vaguely remembered hands and words spoken in my ear before I blacked out. But I didn’t give a fucking shit about any of that.

“Give me my fucking pills,” I growled, trying to sit up again, though more forcefully this time. My fingers curled into claws as I reached for my bedside table and the bottle I knew I kept there.

“Maxx, lie down. You need to rest,” the voice said softly.

The room was dark. I couldn’t see who the voice belonged to. I didn’t care who it belonged to.

“Give me my fucking pills, now!” I screamed. The voice would give me what the fuck I wanted or I would fucking kill it!

I lunged for the drawer, my body not working properly. My arms felt useless, my hands weak and feeble. I slapped at the top of the table, knocking off my lamp, not flinching as glass shattered on the floor.

“Maxx, it’s okay,” the voice soothed. I was going to kill that voice! I hated that voice! It was keeping me from the only thing that could make me feel better!

“I will stab you in the goddamned throat if you don’t give me my fucking pills!” I swore, lunging in the direction of the voice.

“Maxx,” the voice cried out, sounding sad.

My body was on fire. My movements made me sick. I leaned over the side of my bed as more stomach acid surged up my throat and out of my mouth, dribbling down my chin.

“Please,” I sobbed between full heaves.

The voice didn’t say anything. But hands held me as I shook and trembled.

I pushed the hands away. “Please, just give them to me!” I begged, falling onto my side. I tried to bring my knees up to my chest, but I thought I would be snapped in half. I felt as if I were being flayed alive.

“Please!” I screamed. And the voice cooed something in my ear. And the hands rubbed my back. And all I could do was cry and cry and cry. I cried for the thing I needed but the voice wouldn’t give me.

And then everything went mercifully black again.

“You need to drink something.”

I stirred as the soft voice whispered into my ear. A strong hand gripped the back of my neck, pulling me up. My greedy lips touched the edge of a glass, and cool liquid reached my tongue.

At first my throat convulsed, and my stomach threatened to throw the liquid back up. The glass disappeared while I gasped for breath and tried to control my body’s painful revolt.

When I was able to keep from upchucking, the glass was placed at my lips again, and this time I drank more water. My mouth was painfully dry, and my tongue stuck to my lips.

“That’s enough for now,” the voice murmured as the glass was taken away from me. My mouth gaped like a fish’s, desperate for more.

Hands pushed me back down onto the bed, soft fingers caressing my face. I grabbed the hand and held it firmly, the small fingers crushed in my much larger ones.

“Stop it, you’re hurting me,” the voice gasped, and my eye flew open, still only the one, and I stared up in horror at the beautiful face that hovered over me with a pained expression.

I dropped Aubrey’s hand and tried to sit up but found that even that simple action was beyond me. I had zero energy. Moving my head was about all the effort I could expend at the moment. Hell, even blinking was enough to make me want to take a nap.

Everywhere ached and hurt like I had been run over by a Mack truck. My head beat with the constant throb of ten thousand tiny needles burrowing their way into my skull. My stomach felt as though someone had taken it apart, twisted it up, and shoved it back inside my body.

All in all, I felt like a dead man’s asshole.

And the last person I wanted to see me like this was Aubrey Duncan.

“What the fuck are you doing here?” I asked harshly, not even attempting to be nice about it. I was way past niceties. The confident guy she was used to seeing was gone. That guy had died a swift and apparently very painful death.

I wasn’t sure why Aubrey was there. I sure as hell didn’t know how she’d found my apartment. I just knew that I wanted her to leave me to my misery.

If Aubrey was insulted by my less-than-stellar manners, she didn’t show it. She went about straightening my blankets and tucking them around me like I was some five-year-old who only needed a kiss and a cuddle to feel better.

“You should try to eat something,” she said, getting to her feet. I noticed that her clothes were creased and looked as though she had been wearing them for a while.

Crap, what the hell had happened?

My head was a fuzzy mess. I couldn’t remember anything.

Before Aubrey could move away from me, I grabbed her wrist, bringing her up short. “Why are you here?” I asked harshly, wishing I didn’t sound like such an ass.

“I couldn’t leave you the way you were,” she answered simply, giving me a bland look.

I shook my head and instantly regretted it as the needles pierced my head again. “What happened?” I asked, opting to try a different angle.

Aubrey sighed and tugged at her blond ponytail, which was half falling down around her shoulders. She looked tired. And sad? Could that be right?

But she looked fucking gorgeous. She always looked that way.

And she needed to leave.

“You need to get out of here,” I said, forcing my weak body to sit up. Aubrey looked as though she wanted to push me back down, but she didn’t move. She leveled me with an even look.

“I’m not going anywhere,” she said shortly.

For the first time, I looked around my room and was startled by the state of it. “What the hell happened in here?” I was asking that a lot.

Aubrey snorted. “You were what happened. You don’t remember, do you?” she asked softly, her face wearing an expression that I hated. Pity. And sympathy and every other fucking emotion that was totally and completely useless to me.

I didn’t need her pity, or her lectures.

“Seriously, Aubrey, get the fuck out. I don’t want you here,” I gritted out, swinging my legs around to rest on the floor. The cold air hit my bare legs, and I realized I was wearing only a pair of boxers.

Fuck me, did Aubrey undress me? Normally the thought of Aubrey taking my clothes off would be a full-on cock-hardening fantasy. Not now.

Right now, I was mortified.

“Get me my goddamned pants!” I barked, swaying with the effort to hold myself upright. And yes, I felt like shit for yelling at Aubrey like that. I didn’t miss the way she flinched. It was like a knife to the heart. This girl did something to me that made me feel things I wished I didn’t.

Guilt, shame, the desperate fucking need to be with her all the time.

But I realized there was good stuff too. She made me feel like a little kid on Christmas morning every time I knew I was going to see her. She filled me with anticipation and something else entirely—a desire to be something better.

And that made me both want to run as fast as I could in the other direction and to hold on to her with everything I had.

Aubrey slowly walked across my destroyed bedroom, leaned down, and picked up my jeans. Deliberately she closed the space between us. My chest felt tight. I was twitchy and weak. Watching her out of one eye was throwing me off-balance. I wanted to back away. I wanted to crouch in the corner and cower in shame. I hated her seeing me at my worst. I never wanted to be anything but my best around her.

But here we were. And there was no escaping the reality of what I knew she saw.

She gripped my pants in her hand and held them out for me to take, her eyes never leaving my face. Normally I would have met her bold stare head-on. I would have taken her challenge and enjoyed it.

This time I looked away, my gaze dropping to the floor to escape her.

I grabbed my jeans and put them on as quickly as my quivering body would allow.

“You’ll probably need some help,” Aubrey said matter-of-factly, holding up a button-down shirt. Why in the hell would I need help getting dressed?

I yanked the shirt out of her hand, not bothering to respond. But when I lifted my arm to push it through the sleeve, I was bowled over by a sharp pain in my ribs. It wasn’t that sort-of-hurts kind of pain. This was a cry-like-a-little-pussy-and-curl-into-a-ball agony.

My hand went up to the right side of my ribs, and the barest touch made me wince and gag. I looked down to see my rib cage covered in a pattern of yellow and green bruising.

“I think you’ve got some cracked ribs. Now that you’re awake, you should probably go to the hospital. Get yourself checked out,” Aubrey said. I glanced at her and noticed she hadn’t moved any closer to me. She hadn’t left, but she was giving me space.

I was both thankful and masochistically hating it.

I gingerly ran my fingers down the length of my battered flesh, and vague memories of Gash and Vin tickled my subconscious. I had the feeling I had gotten myself into some serious trouble.

As much as I wanted Aubrey to leave to spare myself the awkward embarrassment of admitting I needed her to help me, I was stuck. Right now I couldn’t do this on my own.

I needed her.

My god, I really fucking needed her.

The weight of that thought hit me with a bone-crushing force.

“Can you help me?” I asked begrudgingly. I wouldn’t meet her eyes when I conceded defeat. It was too much.

Aubrey didn’t say a word, but I felt her, I smelled her, I could practically taste her on my tongue as she stood in front of me, her fingers carefully buttoning up my shirt. Her hair brushed my face as she bent her head down. I couldn’t help but lean in, my nose brushing the crown of her head as I breathed her in.

She made sure not to touch my bare skin as she hastily did up the buttons. When she was finished, she gripped me by the arms and pushed me back down on the bed.

“Let me get you something to eat,” she said firmly, propping me up against my pillows. I couldn’t remember the last time I had been taken care of. Definitely not since my parents had died.

I had still been young when my mother passed away and my dad stopped caring about himself, let alone his two small sons, after she was gone. And then he had died too, and with him the last person responsible for taking care of me at all.

I had forgotten how it felt to be tended to. To be treated gently.

It had been a long time since anyone had done anything for me. I didn’t know what to do with the unexpected feelings Aubrey’s innocent offer to make me food created inside me. She made me feel cared for. Wanted. The blossoming of emotion in my chest suffocated me with a violent awareness. This woman could change everything.

“I’m not hungry,” I lied, trying to swallow the thick lump in my throat.

Aubrey ignored me and left me alone with my out-of-control emotions and aching body, lost in a minefield of feeling that was ready to detonate in the worst way possible.

I had too many questions and zero answers. If the state of my room was any indication, things had gotten ugly. I only hoped it had happened before Aubrey had arrived on the scene.

And what the hell was she doing here at all? That was the question I was having the hardest time wrapping my head around.

I reached over to my bedside table, searching for my tried-and-true fix to any problem. I pulled out the drawer and realized that it was empty.

“Shit,” I groaned, pulling myself off the bed, ignoring my protesting muscles as I fell to my knees to search for the bottle that was always there.

“Looking for something?”

I sat up so quickly that I felt light-headed. Aubrey put a bowl of soup down on the same bedside table I had been ransacking before squatting down beside me. I sat back on my haunches and put my hands through my hair.

“No, I was just . . .” I didn’t have an explanation and fuck it, she didn’t need one. This was my home. My room. My business.

Aubrey pulled something out of her pocket and held it up.

“What the hell?” I growled, reaching out with a trembling hand for the bottle she held.

Aubrey got to her feet, still holding my salvation between her fingers without a care for what that small brown bottle meant to me. Right now, it was everything, more than the girl who dangled it in front of me like a fucking carrot.

Was she taunting me? I saw red.

“Give it to me, now!” I demanded, advancing on her. I forgot about how shitty I felt. Adrenaline coursed through my system as I focused on getting the bottle away from her.

Aubrey looked unsure. In fact, she looked scared. I didn’t blame her. I could imagine what I looked like stalking toward her, ready to wrench the bottle from her fingers, viciously if necessary. I didn’t give a shit if I had to snap each one of those pretty little digits, I’d get what my body needed.

“Now, Aubrey,” I whispered, my voice shaking with anger. Aubrey’s lips trembled, and I could see she was trying not to cry. I didn’t care. There was only one thing I cared about right now.

She held the bottle out to me and hurriedly crossed the room to the door. I snatched it up and shook it. It was deafeningly silent. I ripped the top off and turned it upside down.

Empty.

“Where are they?” I roared. My rage was white-hot. Aubrey was shaking. But she didn’t leave the room. She didn’t run from me. She faced me on unsteady feet.

“They’re all gone, Maxx,” she said quietly.

No, I couldn’t have heard her right.

“That’s not possible,” I bit out, throwing the bottle across the room.

Aubrey shook her head, her hair flying around her face. “I swear, they’re gone. There’s nothing left,” she said.

I clenched my fists. I was going to fucking lose it.

And then Aubrey did the strangest thing. She walked back toward me and grabbed my face between her hands.

I tried to wrench myself away from her confining grip. I took hold of her wrists and squeezed them hard enough to crunch bone. Just then, I hated her. I wanted her to hurt the way I hurt.

Yet . . . I wanted her . . .

“Maxx, you don’t need that stuff,” she told me, with such confidence that if I were in my right mind, I would have believed her.

I yanked her hands off my face, still squeezing her wrists. “Don’t tell me what the fuck I need!” I yelled.

Then she kissed me. That crazy, delusional girl kissed me.

As if that would make me forget what it was I wanted.

As if she could ever replace what my body craved.

I pulled my mouth back from hers, infuriated. Enraged. She was breathing heavily, her eyes glassy with tears.

“Please, Maxx. Don’t do it. Be here. With me,” she begged. And then she was kissing me again, and she was telling me “I won’t leave you. I won’t ever leave you.”

And there was something about those words and the feel of her lips on mine that broke through the red haze of my anger, the inconsolable need that plagued me.

She wouldn’t leave me.

How could she know how desperate I was to hear that from her? From anybody?

And then I was kissing her back. Devouring her as though she were the drugs I hungered for. And for that brief moment she was something even better.

“Don’t leave me,” I sobbed against her mouth, my teeth bruising her lips as I punished her with my tongue. I meant it with every fiber of my being. I couldn’t survive without her. What a terrifying thought that was. But it was the honest-to-god truth. In that split second she had become the most vital thing in my world. She was the thing that could keep me sane. Keep me here. Keep me from diving off the cliff after the drugs my body wanted so badly.

She was the string holding me together. She was the only person to stay by my side even when I hadn’t asked her to. I hadn’t demanded a thing of her, yet she had given me everything. How could I not latch on to that like a parasite? How could I not try to suck every last drop out of her to keep myself alive?

How could I not begin to live in a fanciful delusion where she would be all that I needed and everything would be okay?

But she wouldn’t leave me. Those words held a promise I’d cling to.

The kiss began as the pinnacle of every hateful emotion, every negative, self-loathing thought. It wasn’t hearts and flowers and skipping through the sunshine. This was soul-filled angst shit that no one should ever want but delusional people chase after anyway.

But somewhere, somehow, it morphed into something else entirely. Aubrey took control and gentled the kiss. Her lips softened, her tongue an inviting caress. Her fingers curled into my greasy, filthy hair as though she never wanted to touch anything else ever again.

And then I wasn’t assaulting her mouth but worshipping it. Loving it. Tasting and enjoying it.

I knew I needed Aubrey. I needed her in the worst way possible. I was selfish and frantic, and I honestly didn’t care if I took her to hell with me because she would make the trip the sweetest thing I had ever experienced.

She was mine.

And I’d never let her go.