Lead Me Not

chapter four

maxx

the group was a joke. But if I didn’t want to end up in the slammer, I’d have to suck it up and spend the next twelve weeks of my life talking about my fucking feelings. I had been to enough therapy in my twenty-one years to know the score. I knew how to play the part to get me through it.

Share a sob story. Act like you believed the line of bullshit they threw at you. Then get your ass so far on the other side that you never had to think about it again.

But I had been stupid, a little too cocky, and I had gotten myself busted, though I had been lucky and had just sold most of what I had on me that night, leaving only a couple of pills. Possession, not intent to distribute, meant the difference between community service and mandatory counseling as opposed to sitting in a jail cell worrying about getting ass-raped after I dropped the soap in the showers.

So I would become the Maxx who felt guilt and shame, a guy who regretted his decisions, even as I planned how I would do it all over again.

Because choice had been taken from me a long time ago, and there was no place for guilt in the world I lived in.

I had walked into the room on Tuesday evening, expecting it to be the fucking mockery that it was.

What I hadn’t been expecting was to see a girl with long blond hair and eyes that had the power to cut through me like a knife. She had knocked me sideways, leaving me scrambling to find my footing.

I was drawn to her. I couldn’t help it. Some things were impossible to ignore—and the way my dick twitched in my pants as I stared at her long legs was one of them.

I laid it on thick. I knew how to say and do what was necessary to get what I wanted.

Except I got the distinct impression she wasn’t buying what I was selling. And I wasn’t sure what the hell I was supposed to do with that. It messed with my head, and it pissed me off.

But it also made me determined.

And whether she realized it or not, her dismissal was all the motivation I needed.

So I watched her watching me, and I figured that maybe this support group thing wouldn’t be half bad.