Lead Me Not

by A. Meredith Walters

I swallowed thickly and averted my eyes while he dressed. The urge to chance a peek was overwhelming, but I refused to give in. It wasn’t right to ogle the guy after everything he had been through. Sure, I had crossed every boundary in our relationship, but I had some lingering morality left.

  “Have you seen my phone?” he asked a few minutes later. I turned to look at him and squelched my disappointment at finding him fully clothed. I pointed to his desk.

  “I put it over there. It was in your jeans pocket,” I told him.

  Maxx grabbed it and put it to his ear. He looked up at me, and I knew that currently I wasn’t welcome. It was time for me to go.

  He turned his back, shutting me out as surely as if he had slammed a door in my face.

  I bristled at his rejection, infuriated by his dismissal.

  Even more humiliating was the burn of tears I felt in the back of my eyes. I never cried anymore. I hated tears.

  I stood there for another moment listening to Maxx leave a frantic message on Marco’s voice mail. He was talking in quiet, quick sentences that I couldn’t quite hear. One thing was obvious: Maxx was agitated.

  I quietly closed the bedroom door and made my way back to the shabby living room. I had made an effort to clean up while Maxx had been in the shower, but not much could be done to make the space comfortable.

  I thought about leaving a note, but then decided against it. What was the point?

  I grabbed my purse and dug out my car keys, ready to make my escape.

  “Where are you going?”

  I looked over my shoulder to find Maxx walking toward me. He looked drawn and tired, but some of the spark had come back to his eyes.

  “I just thought I should head home. You know, get out of your way,” I said, lifting my chin defiantly.

  Maxx put his hand flat against the front door, barring my exit. His face, which had been hard and anxious a few moments earlier, was now troubled and vulnerable.

  He leaned down until his face was a mere few inches from my own. I could smell the mint from his toothpaste on his breath. His eyes drilled into mine, piercing me.

  “What you did, how you helped me, stayed with me . . . I don’t know why you did it. But thank you,” he said quietly.

  And there it was, the acknowledgment I had wanted. But now that he had given it, I wasn’t sure what he wanted from me. Or what I wanted from him.

  I leaned back against the door, his proximity overwhelming me.

  “It was nothing,” I replied, shaking my head.

  Maxx brought his other hand up to rest on the wood beside my head. I was captured between his arms, no room for escape.

  “It wasn’t nothing,” he argued. “Why were you at the club?” he grilled.

  “I don’t know . . . ,” I started, but he interrupted me.

  “You do know, Aubrey. Why were you there?”

  “For you, Maxx. I was looking for you,” I admitted breathlessly, my heart pounding in my chest. “I was worried about you.”

  “You don’t even know me, Aubrey. Why would you concern yourself about me at all?” he pressed.

  I closed my eyes, needing some distance from the intensity of his gaze. “I just . . . I wanted to help you.” I opened my eyes and looked unflinchingly up at him. “I care about what happens to you. You seem to need someone to give a damn. And I do, Maxx. So much,” I said, my voice barely above a whisper.

  Maxx swallowed, his lips trembling at my admission. His bruised face twisted with an emotion I couldn’t quite read. He dropped his face and pressed his forehead against mine, our noses brushing.

  “You shouldn’t. I’m not worth it, Aubrey,” he pleaded in a strangled groan.

  I slowly moved my hands up to gingerly touch his face, my fingers sliding down the length of his cheek. He leaned into my hand and seemed to be at war with himself.

  “You are worth it, Maxx. You need to learn that and believe it,” I said. Maxx captured my hand, his eyes opening and blazing into mine.

  “You need to know that if you decide to do this with me, I’ll never be able to let you go. Not ever.” His words quivered. A small part of me was terrified by his promise.

  But a larger part of me hoped he would hold me tight . . . forever.

  I pulled my hand from his and touched his face again. I brushed my thumb along the curve of Maxx’s mouth. He parted his lips, kissing the soft pad of flesh, his tongue tentatively tasting.

  I shook at the tidal wave of emotion that simple touch unleashed in me.

  “Maxx, let me help you,” I begged, knowing I was slowly climbing over his wall.

  His hands were around me in an instant, pulling me to his chest. I could hear the thudding of his heart beneath my ear. “You already are,” he said, his voice vibrating in my head.

  I pulled back slightly to look up at him. He looked grieved, as though he hated himself for what he was doing but couldn’t help it.

  “What are you doing to yourself?” I asked, cupping his face with my hand, gently touching the bruised skin.

  Maxx didn’t answer me. He grabbed my hand and pressed a kiss to my palm before resting it over his heart. And then we held each other tightly, neither of us willing to let go, neither wanting to upset the tenuous beauty of the moment with the ugly reality he lived in.

  Because for now, we had this.

  “My mother died when I was ten and Landon was five. It was cancer. I don’t remember much about her being sick. I have vague memories of her being in bed for long periods of time and going to the hospital to visit her. But other than that, my mind seemed to have blocked it out. I guess I carried on my life like nothing earth-shattering was going on.” Maxx snorted in disgust, his arms tightening around me.

  We were sitting on the couch. It’s where we had been for the past two hours. We hadn’t talked much; Maxx had been mostly quiet. I was hesitant to break the silence, not knowing what would come next.

  He seemed to need to hold me. He ran his fingers through my hair and softly kissed my temple. That was all. For him, right now, that appeared to be all he needed.

  I couldn’t help but continue to notice the fine tremors in his body, his erratic heartbeat under my palm, the fine sheen of sweat on his face. He was still trying to climb out of his horrible withdrawal. He was unhealthily pale, dark circles ringing his eyes, their normally vibrant blue dull and listless.

  I had grown accustomed to the silence, so when he spoke I started in surprise. The noise was almost obscene in the hush.

  “What sort of person doesn’t remember his own mother dying?” he asked. I wasn’t sure he was looking for an answer, but I gave him one anyway.

  “You were a child, Maxx. You couldn’t possibly understand what was going on.”

  Maxx was quiet again. I wasn’t convinced he even heard what I said. His hold on me was as tight as ever, his fingers digging into my skin as though he was trying to fuse us together.

  “My dad sort of disappeared from our lives after that. He was there, but he wasn’t. He worked a lot, and I took over taking care of Landon. I would get him breakfast and dinner, help him with his homework. I made sure he had clean clothes to wear and went to bed when he was supposed to. He became my responsibility. I became a mom and a dad at ten fucking years old.”

  I wasn’t sure what I had been expecting him to tell me. I had conjured up a thousand explanations about how he may have come to be the way he was, what had pushed him into the dark world he lived in. But hearing about a boy who had lost both his parents and was forced to become an adult before he was ready wasn’t what I had expected.

  I had guessed at a less-than-rosy past. Maxx hid too much away for his childhood to have been idyllic.

  I had seen his protectiveness toward Landon. It had been more than obvious that he felt responsible for the younger boy. But the story Maxx began to share showed a side of him that was sad, yet it strangely gave me hope for the person he could be.

  “And then my dad died of a heart attack two weeks after I sta
rted high school. I don’t think I ever really knew him. I don’t even remember the person he had been before my mom died, when he wasn’t depressed and grieving. Christ, I don’t know what the fuck I’m talking about,” he muttered, running his hand through his hair while his other arm still clung to me tightly.

  I could tell he was trying to sort through everything going on in his head, trying to find the words he wanted to share with me.

  “After that, I realized there were varying degrees of shit. And the shit before my dad died was nothing compared to the shit after he died,” Maxx said, his voice cracking a bit.

  “My uncle David had never been in the picture. I barely even knew that he existed. He’s my mom’s younger brother. It was pretty obvious after we went to live with him why we never knew him. He’s an asshole. Worse than that, he’s a self-serving, sadistic asshole, a guy who gets off on treating others like shit if it makes his life easier. He got custody of Landon and me because there was no one else. Both sets of our grandparents were dead, and my dad was an only child. So that left just David. At first he refused to take us on. But when he realized we came with a hefty Social Security check every month until we turned eighteen, that changed his tune pretty damn quickly. The fucking douche bag took our money and made sure we never saw a dime. He said it’s what we owed him,” Maxx growled.

  I took his hand in mine and laced our fingers together. “I’m so sorry, Maxx,” I said earnestly, hoping I didn’t sound condescending. There was something so ridiculous about the words I’m sorry. As if I could in any way empathize with what he had experienced. For all the crap I had gone through with my parents after Jayme had died, I didn’t understand what it was like to feel unloved and unwanted.

  My childhood before Jayme’s death had been pretty close to perfect. I had parents who gave me everything. I couldn’t fathom the feelings of abandonment and isolation Maxx must have experienced. And to have had to take on the role of parent when he was only a child himself was unimaginable.

  I had lost the relationship I once had with my parents in the last few years. But for the first time I wondered whose fault it was. Did the blame completely rest on my parents’ shoulders, as I had convinced myself? Or had I been too lost in my selfish grief to realize I was pushing away the two people who had loved me the most in my life?

  Self-realization was a scary business. It shook your foundation to the core. How strange that it was this fucked-up boy, with a life full of pain, who made me question what I thought I knew about myself.

  And how strange that he could make me doubt absolutely everything.

  “I just want to take care of my brother. It’s all I’ve ever wanted. But David is his legal guardian, and he holds that over my head every chance he gets. I try to make sure Landon has money to live on, but David just ends up taking it all. I’d kill the bastard if I could. I’ve thought of so many ways to get that fucker out of our lives. Sometimes this anger”—Maxx gripped the fabric of his shirt over his chest and pulled it—“it hurts. It hurts so fucking badly. I can’t think, I can’t see anything beyond it. The hatred eats me alive. I hate David for using my brother and me. I hate my parents for leaving me. Sometimes I even hate Landon for depending on me so much. And most of all, I hate myself. Because I’m weak and selfish. Because I don’t want the responsibility of taking care of anyone but me. I just want to live my life for me and not for anyone else. I hate knowing that in my heart I feel that way. I hate that I resent Landon and my parents for the shit they’ve put on my shoulders, whether they meant to or not. I feel like I’m drowning with no way out.”

  Maxx’s face contorted in grief and self-loathing. It ripped a hole in my heart. God, I just wanted to take all of his pain away.

  “How did you end up at Compulsion . . . doing . . . what you do there?” I asked tentatively, not sure how to pose the questions I wanted to ask. I wanted to know how he ended up immersed in that dark and scary scene, how he had grown so comfortable in a place that seemed to suck you dry and leave you with nothing but regret.

  “I’ve known Marco most of my life. He’s a few years older, but I knew him from high school. After my dad died and Landon and I went to live with David, I was in a pretty fucked-up place. I didn’t know if I was coming or going. I was depressed. And then Marco handed me a flyer for Compulsion. He got me in, introduced me to Gash, who runs the place. I wanted somewhere to belong, to do something that made me feel good. It started simply enough. I’d help Vin scout locations for the club every week. I was getting paid decent money, but it wasn’t enough for me to take care of Landon. And then I got accepted by Longwood University. I had applied on a whim, convinced there was no way in hell I would ever go, even if I got in. But then the letter came, and I thought, Hey, this could be my chance to get out of here, to build that life for Landon.

  “But that took money—a lot of it. Between school tuition, finding a place to live, and making sure Landon was okay, I couldn’t survive on the little bit of money location scouting was bringing in. Then I realized I could make so much more selling club drugs. You know, some ecstasy, a little oxy. A bit of cocaine here and there. Maybe some crank. Before I knew it, I was flush with cash. Gash gave me the drugs, and I sold them, taking my cut. And because of it, I was living the life I had always wanted. I lived on my own terms, no one else’s. I was on top of the world.”

  Maxx’s eyes had gone unfocused as he talked. He was showing me the bigger picture, and I felt like I was finally being given a glimpse of who he really was. No pretenses. No illusions. This was Maxx. The real Maxx.

  “For the first time, people were seeking me out. They wanted to be around me. They liked what I offered. And I was the only one who could give it to them. For the first time in years, I was somebody people knew. Someone people needed. Someone people wanted.”

  Maxx’s face brightened with a fanatical light, and I knew that this power, however wrong it was, fed something inside him. It gave him a purpose, no matter how shady it was.

  “I like how it makes me feel, Aubrey. I won’t apologize or feel bad about that. It helps me take care of my brother. It keeps a roof over my head. It lets me stay in school and try to make something out of this shitty life I’ve been given,” he stated defensively.

  “Do you honestly like the way you’ve felt the past two days? You’re hurting yourself, Maxx,” I tried to reason. I brought his hand up to my lips and kissed his knuckles, positioning my body so that it pressed against him.

  “You don’t need that stuff to feel good about yourself. You have so much more going for you than that,” I appealed to him.

  Maxx laughed humorlessly, pulling away from me slightly. Even though it was only the barest of inches, it felt like miles now separated us.

  “I know what you think. I see the way you’re looking at me. How you always look at me. I know you think I’m just like every other fucked-up junkie out there. That I can’t function without drugs. That I’d suck dick for a fix if I had to.” I tried not to cringe at his anger. He was pissed.

  “But I’m not like that, Aubrey. I’m not some cracked-out fiend who wakes up in the morning thinking of where and when he can get high. I can function without it. I was able to live most of my life without it. I can quit any time I want to. But why would I want to when it can give me something nothing else can?”

  I frowned in confusion. What was he talking about? I didn’t understand. I couldn’t even pretend to. I didn’t get his logic at all. But I could tell that in his mind, he was making perfect sense.

  “It stops me from thinking, Aubrey! And for a guy like me, thinking sucks! I need the peace,” he explained, as though it were the most obvious thing in the world.

  I wanted to shake him. I wanted to smack him upside the head and tell him to wake up and see the state of the world he was living in. I wanted to tell him that his few moments of peace came at a hefty price. He might not remember the violently ill, barely conscious person he had been two nights ago, but I did! And from what I c
ould see, those pills weren’t giving him peace; they were pushing him that much closer to total obliteration.

  He honestly thought he didn’t have a problem. He had a clear idea of what it meant to be an addict, and in his mind, he wasn’t ticking any of those boxes. His delusions would destroy him.

  I remembered clearly the person who had lain curled up in a ball on his bed, throwing up on the floor, shaking and sweating as the drugs left his system, and the way he had cursed and threatened me when he couldn’t get the fix he thought he needed. This was not a person who could quit when he felt like it.

  His mind wouldn’t let him quit, and his body sure as hell wouldn’t either. He was trapped in the prison of his addiction, whether he realized it or not. And his denial was what was keeping him there.

  But I wouldn’t argue with him about it. It was a waste of time. You couldn’t help someone who wasn’t willing to help themselves. All I could do was be there and hopefully stop him from losing everything. I’d be there if he fell, and I would pick him up when he hit bottom.

  I needed to do this for him. I needed to do this for me.

  As I listened to Maxx talk, I could see my sister, crying out for the help I never gave her. Not this time. I’d hold on tight to Maxx and weather this storm with him.

  “I want to be the guy who can take care of his brother. The guy who can go on and save the fucking world like my mother thought I could. But I also like being the other guy, the one who doesn’t let anything touch him, who can’t be dragged down—the guy who can be everything. And I want to be that guy for you,” Maxx said, with so much conviction it was easy to believe he could be all those things. But the cost of that was too much.

  “Why can’t you just be Maxx Demelo? I kind of like that guy,” I said, cupping my hand behind his neck.

  Maxx smirked, a ghost of the smile I was familiar with. “I can be so much more for you. I want to be everything you could ever want.”

  I shook my head, not understanding where this was coming from. Why did he feel like he had to be superhuman? Why couldn’t he just be happy with the person he was?