Lead Me Not

chapter twenty-eight

aubrey

i was trying to finish up my homework. I had spent every day of the last week trying to get caught up.

After the disastrous night at the club with Maxx and staying up all night, only to have him show up at five in the morning high, I had made a hard decision. I had stayed up for a long time after he had passed out. He had never said a word to me. Nothing. It had hurt so badly. And I had cried for a long time after that. I had been completely depressed.

Our relationship was a mess. It wasn’t getting any better. I was going to fall hard and fast with him to rock bottom.

I needed distance.

I hadn’t been able to face his bleary eyes the next morning, so I made sure to leave before he woke up.

But then he had called me later, and I recognized the panic in his voice. He was in major withdrawal.

He had begged me to come over, and I had. I had never been able to say no to him, even when it was the best thing for me.

He had his drugs, and I had mine.

And mine was Maxx Demelo.

When I had arrived at his apartment, he seemed better, and I knew instantly he had used before I had gotten there. I wanted to cry. I wanted to scream. I want to smack the shit out of him for not caring enough about himself to stop.

But then he touched me, and even though I wanted to push him away, I didn’t. I couldn’t. My body craved him.

So I had let him take off my clothes and throw me on the couch, where he devoured me whole.

And while he thrust into me, my body wrapped around him, my heart began to break.

He was stuck in an endless cycle, and I was stuck in it with him.

This was going to ruin me.

This wasn’t a story with a happy ending. Maxx and I weren’t going to live that perfect life with the white picket fence.

The only life we could have together was ugly and messy and destructive.

And I knew without a doubt that it would kill us both.

I couldn’t save him.

There was no changing the path he was on. He wouldn’t let me. There were forces in his life that were more powerful than my love for him. The intensity of his feelings for me and mine for him just weren’t enough. I wasn’t sure they ever would be.

He was going over a very steep cliff, and if I didn’t back away, he’d take me with him.

And I wouldn’t do that to myself.

As much as I loved him, I couldn’t turn a blind eye as he obliterated himself. I had sworn I wouldn’t walk away, that I’d stand by him, no matter what. But those promises were made by a naïve fool.

I had stupidly thought that by helping Maxx, I’d be making up for the ways I hadn’t helped Jayme. As though one life could replace the other.

It was absolutely ridiculous.

Maxx wasn’t Jayme. He was his own brand of fucked-up, and he was so deep in his hell that the only way of being with him was to sink into it with him. He wasn’t prepared to fight any sort of battle to get better. He wasn’t willing to let me fight for him.

My issues about my sister were my own, and I had to find a way to forgive myself and move forward.

And watching the man I loved fall apart was not the way to do it.

But Maxx wouldn’t let me go. He was persistent. He called me over and over again. Our conversations were always the same.

He needed me. He couldn’t live his life without me. He loved me. Oh God, did he love me. He’d die if he couldn’t be with me.

He’d cry. He’d beg. He’d scream. He’d yell. He had become my own personal devil, and I was terrified of him. And for him.

I almost caved so many times. I almost rushed over to his apartment to let him hold me. Maybe, just maybe, this time he’d hear me. He’d realize that he didn’t need the drugs. That together we could get through anything.

I would almost have myself talked into it, and then the other Maxx would come out to play. And he’d become angry. He’d get nasty. And it was easy to deny the primal instinct to rush over and help him.

So I resisted. As painful as it was. I wanted him. My heart hurt from being away from him. In the short time I had known Maxx, he had become essential.

But I was doing this for me. I had to.

Then he stopped calling. He stopped coming to support group. Kristie talked about reporting his noncompliance to his probation officer. I never saw him on campus.

It was like he had disappeared.

I tried calling him, but he didn’t answer. He never answered. He had disappeared—for good this time.

“Do you want some company at the library?” Renee asked me, poking her head into my bedroom. I was packing up my books and assortment of pens, about to head to campus to try to keep my mind off Maxx and what he was possibly doing.

As much as I knew staying away from him was the best thing for me, it didn’t stop how maddening it was to be kept in the dark. The not knowing was going to drive me crazy.

Renee knew some of what was going on with Maxx. I had needed to confide in someone. But I hadn’t been able to tell her everything. She admitted to not being very comfortable around him.

“He’s hot as hell, Aubrey, and he’s crazy about you, that’s obvious,” she had said.

“But . . . ,” I prompted.

“But there’s something in his eyes. They’re so sad. But unbalanced. I’ve seen eyes like that before. Those are scary eyes to see,” Renee had told me, and I couldn’t deny it. Maxx did have sad eyes, and there was something unstable about him. I had seen that firsthand more times than I cared to think about.

As much as I appreciated the renewed confidences of our friendship, I still couldn’t tell Renee everything. I couldn’t tell her about watching Maxx sell drugs, or about knowing that every time we weren’t together, he was using.

That was an ugliness that didn’t need to be shared. It would be buried deep down in the pit of my heart.

What Renee did know was that my relationship with Maxx was in a really bad place and that I was hurting. And if there was anything my best friend understood, it was the pain only the man you loved could give you.

And I felt connected to Renee in a way I had never been before. We were linked by our love for men who could annihilate us.

“Sure, if you want to,” I said, giving her a smile.

“Let me grab my stuff, and I’ll meet you in the living room,” Renee said, walking across the hall to her room.

The doorbell rang just as I finished packing up my things.

“I’ll get it,” I called out to Renee.

My heart started to beat in triple time. Maybe it was Maxx. God, I hoped it was Maxx.

I was pathetic.

The doorbell rang again and then again. Whoever it was didn’t do patient very well.

“I’m coming!” I called out, hurrying to the door.

Please be Maxx.

It wasn’t.

It was so much worse.

“What the hell are you doing here?” I asked angrily.

“Please, I just need to talk to her,” Devon pleaded, his dark brown eyes ringed with black circles. His normally perfectly styled hair looked as though he hadn’t washed it in days.

He was trying his best to look contrite and desperate. But I wouldn’t be fooled. Devon Keeton was a manipulative snake.

“Get the hell out of here before I call the police!” I threatened Devon, before adding in a furious whisper, “I saw what you did to her, you piece of shit. If you think you’re ever getting your hands on her again, you’re more deluded than I thought.”

Devon’s face crumpled, and he cried big crocodile tears. “I didn’t mean to hit her.”

“So she just fell on your fist, then?” I asked, my voice dripping in sarcasm.

Devon shook his head. “I’ll change. I swear it, Aubrey. Just let me see her. She won’t take my phone calls. She won’t answer my texts. I love her!” His voice rose, and I tried to get him to back away from the door so I could shut it in his lying face.

I didn’t want Renee to see him. But it was too late.

“Devon?” she said from behind me. Devon shoved past me and into the apartment. Renee cringed back, and I wanted to kick her ex-boyfriend’s ass for putting that kind of fear in her.

I grabbed Devon’s arm. “I said get out!” I yelled, yanking on him. He looked down at me, and the tears were gone. He was angry. Really, really angry.

“Get your fucking hands off me or I’ll break your fingers,” he warned in a deadly quiet voice.

Well, he’d just have to break my fingers then.

“Get out!” I screamed, hoping our neighbors would hear me and come see what the noise was about.

Renee had her back against the wall, but her face had softened. I couldn’t believe it!

After everything he had done, she was looking at him like she actually missed him!

Devon was speaking to her, filling her ears with every line of romantic bullshit he knew she’d want to hear. His mouth was moving, but all I heard were the lies. To judge from the look on Renee’s face, she was believing him. Or at least she wanted to.

I knew she still loved him. Why had she given her heart to someone who treated it so poorly? It was there, plain as day, on her face. Love. Heart-stopping, kill-you-slowly love.

My heart pounded in my chest as I watched them. The sight in front of me was so familiar that it took my breath away.

As Devon spoke, it was Maxx’s words I heard. And it wasn’t Renee I saw drinking in his pleading promises . . . it was me.

Our loves weren’t so different, no matter how much I tried to convince myself that they were. They were equally destructive. Equally exhausting. And equally dysfunctional.

“Please, Renee. Just give me another chance,” Devon begged, and Renee’s eyes were filling with tears. Shit, she was going to cave.

She couldn’t cave! If she gave in, then what was to stop me from doing the same? We needed to be strong. We had to do it together.

So I did the only thing I could, I screamed at the top of my lungs.

Devon turned on me, rage making him ugly.

“Shut up, you stupid bitch!” Devon roared, knocking me backward. His blow hit my shoulder, and I fell to the floor.

And finally Renee woke up. With trembling hands she pulled out her cell phone and held it up.

“Get out, Devon. Never come back here! We are done! We have been over for a long time! I never, ever want to see your sick, sorry face again! If you don’t leave in the next thirty seconds, I’m calling the police. I’ll get a restraining order. Your ass will be in so much trouble! And then what would Mommy and Daddy say about that?” she asked, her lips twisting in a smirk I had never seen her wear. Her shoulders were back and her chin lifted. I knew Devon terrified her, but she was standing strong. I had never been more proud of her.

Devon frowned, as though not sure he had heard her correctly. “Baby, you can’t mean that. We belong together. I love you,” he tried again.

Renee started to dial numbers and then was speaking into the phone.

“Yes, I’m being stalked, and he’s here now. His name is Devon Keeton and he’s my ex-boyfriend. I’m scared for my safety,” Renee said into the phone.

Devon was furious. He looked ready to spit nails. With Renee still talking to the dispatch officer, he sprinted out the door.

I hastily closed the door behind him and locked it.

“He just left,” Renee was saying into the phone. She sagged down the wall to sit on the floor.

“I don’t think he’ll come back. You don’t need to send anyone. Okay. I will. Thank you.”

She hung up the phone, and her head dropped in her hands. I put my arm around her shoulders.

“I’ve got to go down to the courthouse and file a preliminary restraining order. But maybe he won’t do anything. Maybe he’ll leave me alone now,” Renee said, looking worn down but faintly hopeful.

“I’m not sure. But I think you should get one. For your own peace of mind,” I told her.

Renee nodded, and we were quiet for a while. Then she looked at me, her face weary.

“Why do we do this to ourselves, Aubrey? Why do we give our hearts to men who crush them? I thought Devon was my prince. God, I thought he loved me. I’m such an idiot.” She was sobbing, and I was crying with her. For her. For myself. For every shitty relationship that ended in tears.

“Love shouldn’t feel like this,” Renee said, sniffling through her tears. And she was right. This burning, aching pain deep in my chest shouldn’t be what love feels like. It wasn’t healthy. It wasn’t right. And unfortunately, it just wouldn’t go away.

I was a woman trapped.

“Come on, I’ll go with you to the courthouse. Then I’ll treat you to that chocolate cake you love from Caketopia,” I offered gently.

Renee rubbed the tears from her cheeks and gave me a brave smile.

At least someone was learning from her mistakes before it was too late.

After waiting with Renee to meet with the magistrate, I had stepped outside and, in a moment of weakness, tried to call Maxx again.

So much for my stern resolve.

But I couldn’t help it. My keen sense of dread the longer he stayed off the radar wouldn’t subside.

Of course he didn’t answer.

I had tucked my phone into my pocket, and when Renee was done I had pretended that nothing was wrong. Afterward I had taken Renee to her favorite bakery next to the campus and started plying her with baked goods.

Renee hadn’t cried. She hadn’t wavered in her decision to get the restraining order.

She was downright amazing.

“Aren’t you going to eat those?” Renee asked after polishing off her hot chocolate. I slid the plate toward her.

“Have at ’em,” I said with the best smile I could muster.

My phone started ringing in my pocket, and just like every other time, my heart gave a thrill of hope that it would be Maxx on the other end.

And just like every other time in the past week, I was disappointed that it wasn’t.

I was, however, surprised to see it was Kristie Hinkle, my support group co-facilitator.

“Who is it?” Renee asked, seeing the look on my face.

“My co-facilitator for group,” I replied as the phone continued to ring.

“Well, shouldn’t you answer it?” Renee urged.

I laughed a bit nervously and connected the call.

“Hello?”

“Hi, Aubrey. I’ll make this quick. I need to meet with you. Today, if possible,” she said, her tone brusque. We had already met for support group this week, so I couldn’t think of any reason she had to meet with me so soon afterward.

“Uh, sure.” I stumbled over my words.

“Good. I’m at my office downtown. Do you know where that is?” she asked. Her voice was cold, and I felt the tingling of alarm along the back of my neck.

“Yes. I think I do,” I responded.

“Can you be here within the hour? I have a meeting later in the afternoon, but I need to talk with you first,” she said.

“I can be there.”

“See you then,” Kristie said and then hung up.

I stared down at my phone for a moment.

“Is everything all right?” Renee asked, wiping her fingers on a napkin.

I gave her another smile, this one fake as hell. “Kristie wants to talk with me at her office in town. Are you okay to head back to the apartment by yourself?” I asked, hating to leave her so soon after the confrontation with Devon.

Renee waved me away. “I’ll be fine. I’m going to go to the library for a while. Keep my mind busy.”

I put my hand over hers. “I can call Kristie back and reschedule if you don’t want to be alone,” I offered, hoping she’d take me up on it. Instinctively, I knew that I wasn’t going to like whatever Kristie wanted to discuss with me.

Renee tried to discreetly wipe away the tears that escaped from her eyes, but I had seen them. She was struggling, and I felt like the shittiest friend on the planet for leaving her right now.

“I’ll meet up with you at the apartment later.” Renee cleared her throat, bowing her head so I wouldn’t see her now red-rimmed eyes.

“It’s okay to cry over him. You loved him. It’s only natural,” I said gently.

Renee lifted her tear-filled eyes and gave me a watery smile.

“He doesn’t deserve my tears, but God help me, I can’t help but cry for him anyway.” Renee sniffled, and I got up to give her a hug.

“I’ll hurry back,” I promised.

Kristie’s office was warm and cozy. She worked at the local community services board, which helped people with addictions and mental health issues living in the city. I had been waiting for only a few minutes when she opened her office door and ushered me inside.

Her walls were painted a golden yellow, her one window covered in a gauzy white curtain. She had several crystals and stained-glass pieces hanging on the glass, bouncing rainbows around the room.

The bookshelf was filled with books and framed photographs. Instead of clinical chairs, Kristie had a plush, red couch shoved against the far wall, complete with throw pillows.

Under any other circumstances, Kristie’s office would have felt relaxing. But I could tell instantly from the way Kristie was looking at me that something was wrong.

“Have a seat, Aubrey,” Kristie said, indicating the couch. I sat down, and instead of returning to her desk, Kristie sat down beside me.

I knew Kristie wasn’t my biggest fan. Despite her positive reports to Dr. Lowell, I knew that after my verbal outburst earlier in the semester she was just biding her time until the group was finished so she could be rid of me. I had picked up on her wariness and underlying annoyance even as she attempted to feign professional support.

So I was surprised to see sympathy on her face. She was looking at me as though she felt sorry for me. Oh shit, what the hell was going on?

Kristie turned and pulled a framed picture off her desk. It was of her and a group of women. It was easy to tell from their dress that the picture was a decade or two old. Kristie was much younger in the photograph and had actually been very pretty.

“This was taken at my first job out of college. I worked as the services coordinator for a domestic-violence shelter back in Ohio. I loved that job. The women and children I worked with were unbelievable.” Kristie put the picture back on her desk and then turned to me.

“I really struggled back then with my role there. I worked in an environment that served as the home for these people. They relied on me to provide for their basic needs: safety, food, shelter. It was easy to confuse work with friendship at times.”

I didn’t quite understand Kristie’s need to take me on a walk down her memory lane. But her next words made it all too clear why I was there.

“Boundaries get blurred. Relationships form that shouldn’t. It’s easy to get confused. We come into this field because we care. We want to help. Sometimes we take that to a place we shouldn’t.”

This was about Maxx.

She knew.

I swallowed around the lump in my throat. I was having a hard time breathing. I felt like my world was starting to implode around me.

Kristie turned back to the picture. “I started to think of those women as my friends. But they weren’t. They were clients. They were there because they had experienced an incredible trauma. They didn’t understand boundaries. It was my job, as their counselor, to model them. And I had a hard time with that. How do you assert authority over women who view you as their friend?”

Kristie looked at me, her eyes blazing. “I had to ask one of the women to leave the shelter for not complying with the rules. She got understandably angry. But the worst part was when she looked at me and said I thought you were my friend. And that’s when I knew I had screwed up. That I had allowed my personal feelings to get in the way of doing my job.”

She scrutinized me closely. “Do you understand what I’m saying?” she asked me.

I swallowed again, my mouth dry.

“I’m . . . I’m not sure,” I said awkwardly.

Kristie let out a huge sigh and got to her feet and went to sit behind her desk. It was obvious she was putting distance between us before she delivered the blow.

“I’ve been approached about something very upsetting. I was told that you were engaging in an inappropriate relationship with someone in the support group.”

And the axe had fallen.

Kristie continued. “I have to take all allegations like this very seriously. So I did some digging, and it has become clear to me that you and Maxx Demelo are in fact seeing each other.” She stopped, looking at me, as though waiting for my denial.

What was there to say? I had been busted. Just as I had feared I would one day be, though the “one day” came much sooner than I had anticipated.

“Well, Aubrey, what do you have to say about this?” Now she sounded like a grade-school teacher and I had been caught chewing gum in class. I hated feeling small, and Kristie Hinkle was making me feel very, very small.

I knew I had messed up. I had been taking a huge risk when I had gotten involved with Maxx. I had put everything on the line to be with him, and for what?

Look where our relationship was now. It was nonexistent because he had chosen drugs over me.

But I couldn’t forget how much I loved him. How in those moments when we were together, with nothing between us but breath and skin, it was perfect. Seeing him with his brother, discovering who he was before drugs had come into his life, sledding with him in a place that was special to him, watching him cook me a badly burned dinner, these moments had shown me a passionate and complicated man. A man who was worth the effort.

I wouldn’t apologize for following my heart for the first time in my life. For letting go of my obsessive need for control and to just feel.

For all the heartache, for everything Maxx had put me through, I could never regret opening myself to him. I had been closed off for so long that I was slowly dying inside—until Maxx forced me to be someone that I had forgotten I could be.

I lifted my chin and looked Kristie in the eye. “What is there to say? That I was wrong? I think that’s obvious. That I’m sorry? Well, I can’t say that. Because I’m not. I wouldn’t change a moment of being with Maxx, no matter what the consequences.” I sounded steady and strong, and I was proud of myself, even as I faced the fallout from my choices.

Kristie’s nostrils flared, and she looked taken aback. I could tell she hadn’t been expecting my defiance.

She shuffled some papers on her desk, looking uncomfortable. “I have to report this to Dr. Lowell. You do understand that this means you could be put on academic suspension? Kicked out of the counseling program?” Kristie asked, looking at me as though I had lost it.

Because what person in her right mind would throw away everything for an unstable boy? Particularly when he was the last person she should bet her future on?

Love was insanity at its most beautiful—a madness of desperation and desire that made the most improbable choice possible.

“I understand,” I replied simply.

Kristie stared at me for a beat, then seemed to come back to herself. “Well . . .” She cleared her throat and started again. “Well . . . I’m sure Dr. Lowell will be contacting you soon.”

I nodded and got to my feet. “Thanks for the opportunity you’ve given me to learn from you, Kristie. I appreciate it even if it doesn’t seem that way,” I said, surprising her again.

She shook her head. “It’s such a shame, Aubrey. You have so much potential. I hope it was worth it.”

I left her office with her final words ringing in my ears.

Was it worth it?