For a second they looked like any other couple goofing around. How I wished that was all they were. But watching them, I knew a lot more was going on.
“I’m not doing that here. In front of everybody,” Jayme said, casting a nervous look at her friends.
She was such a pretty girl, finally growing into her body. Her acne had begun to clear up, and she had lost a lot of the baby fat that had clung to her frame until recently, much to the detriment of her self-esteem.
“I don’t care, Jay-Jay. You know what you have to do if you want any more. You’re a greedy girl,” Blake taunted, and there was something in his tone that made my skin crawl. I hated that guy. I hated how he treated Jayme. I hated how she defended him even when it was obvious what a jerk he was. Most of all, I hated that he was introducing my naïve sister to a world she should never have to know, one that I didn’t know at the time would ultimately kill her.
Blake unbuckled his belt and pointed at his crotch. “No one sucks my dick like you do, baby,” he crooned, as if that should be a compliment. No way would Jayme fall for that sleazy line of bullshit. I could tell she was uncomfortable.
So it was with complete and total shock that I saw her drop to her knees in front of him, her dress filthy from the dirt she took no notice of. She tilted her head up and opened her mouth. Blake laughed, knowing he was getting his way. He opened the bag and dropped two pills onto Jayme’s tongue.
Then her hands were on his zipper, pulling it down, and Blake’s hand went around to the back of her head, pushing her forward.
I looked away then, feeling sick. I stumbled away from the scene without intervening. I hadn’t done a thing to stop my sister’s degradation. I had walked away, wanting to forget I had seen anything at all.
And I never spoke to Jayme about it. I never offered any sisterly advice, explaining that no guy would ever respect her if she didn’t have any respect for herself. I should have said those things to her.
But I never thought to until it was too late to say anything at all.
I left the disturbing scene behind me and hurried home, taking a shower and going out with my friends, trying to pretend I hadn’t seen my sister barter a blow job for drugs from her shithead boyfriend.
And I spent years trying to forget that I had done nothing when it had mattered most.
Looking at Maxx, I could only see Jayme and Blake and the sick, twisted joy on both of their faces as they got exactly what they wanted in the worst way possible.
I felt a flash of hatred so strong it took my breath away. It was at war with the love I felt just as strongly for the fucked-up man making a living by selling the shit that had killed my sister.
How could I love someone like that? How could I have become so enamored that I overlooked the fact that he stood for everything I should run far, far away from?
It was too much.
I couldn’t handle it.
I pulled my phone out and called a cab.
Without a word to Maxx, I left.
I didn’t want to see him. He terrified and disgusted me in equal measure.
Yet I loved him deeply all the same. And the love won out. My heart betrayed me again.
I told the cabdriver to take me back to Maxx’s apartment.
I was such an idiot.
Feelings sucked.
chapter
twenty-seven
maxx
aubrey had left. One minute I was high as a kite, the next I was freaking the fuck out. I started looking for her in the crowd but couldn’t find her. I searched for her red dress and blond hair. She should have been easy to spot. She was the most beautiful thing in the room.
I soon became frantic.
Because she was gone.
“Where’s Aubrey?” I barked at Eric, grabbing his arm from across the bar.
Eric startled and tried to pull away from me. “Who?” he asked, his eyes darting around nervously. The buzzing in my head kicked into overdrive. The drugs hummed in my bloodstream, making me want to rage and tear shit apart.
I squeezed Eric’s arm hard enough to crunch bone. “My fucking girl! Where is she?” I demanded, my vision becoming tinted with red the angrier I became.
“I don’t know, man. I haven’t seen her in a while. I swear!” Eric stammered. I lunged across the counter and grabbed hold of his shirt, wrenching him closer until I was within spitting distance.
“If you’re fucking lying to me, I’ll break your face,” I seethed, baring my teeth in warning.
Eric squirmed in my grasp. “I’m not, X! I swear it! I haven’t seen her!”
I released Eric’s shirt and backed away. I pulled my cap off and ran a hand through my hair. Shit. She was gone.
My drugged-out brain was going into meltdown mode. I couldn’t think about the situation rationally. I should never have gotten high when she was there and could see everything. And now she was missing, and I needed to find her before I lost my mind.
Soon I had completely lost touch with reality. I was smashing beer bottles, throwing bar stools, shoving people in my rampage.
“Aubrey!” I screamed at the top of my lungs. Everyone was giving me a wide berth as I destroyed everything around me.
And then someone had me in a headlock and was pulling me through the club. I struggled against the painful grip.
Suddenly I was outside and deposited on the ground. Marco punched me square in the jaw, and I fell backward into the gravel.
“Snap out of it, Maxx! Before Gash gets wind of your little tirade!” Marco snarled, flexing the hand he had just used to lay me out.
I rubbed at my face, working my jaw to make sure nothing was broken. “I can’t find Aubrey,” I explained, not caring how pathetic it sounded.
“Is that what’s set you off?” Marco rolled his eyes and pulled out his cell phone, handing it to me. I looked at it, not registering what he was trying to say.
He threw it in my lap. “Call her, dipshit.”
I picked up the phone with trembling fingers. Why hadn’t I thought of that?
I could barely dial her number, I was shaking so badly. When I finally put the phone to my ear and listened to it ring, I wasn’t sure I could handle the wait for her to answer. What if she had left me for good? What the hell was I going to do if she was finally done with me? I wouldn’t be able to survive her leaving me.
“Hello?” Her voice sent a flood of relief through my body.
“Aubrey!” I let out in a rush.
“Maxx,” she said. She sounded strange. Not upset . . . but different. But I wasn’t interested in that right now. All I wanted to know was why she had left me.
“Where are you?” I asked, my heart in my throat as I tried to control my panic.
She sighed in my ear. “At your apartment.”
“Why are you there?”
“I felt sick. I didn’t want to ruin your night.” There was that tone again. The one I should probably spend more time paying attention to.
“I’m coming home. I’ll take care of you,” I promised her.
“Okay,” Aubrey said softly. We hung up after that, and I gave Marco his phone back. I got to my feet, a smile on my face. Marco arched an eyebrow at me and snorted.
“All better now?” he mocked. I punched him in the shoulder just hard enough for it to hurt. Call it a little payback.
“Oh yeah,” I said, already going back into the club.
I told Aubrey I would come home. But I didn’t go home. Not right away. I had a pocketful of pills I still had to sell, which Marco was sure to remind me of.
So I continued to sling the pills and made my money, selling them at double the price. Club kids were fucking stupid. They had too much of Mommy and Daddy’s money and not enough brain cells. But it worked out well for me.
Many of my customers shared the joy, and I was able to get a nice, good high without dipping into the supply. Now that I knew Aubrey was safe, I could enjoy the rest of my night.
After a while, I comple
tely forgot that I had told her I was on my way home.
Until I got there and found her waiting up for me. I was fucked-up and tired. I just wanted to sleep.
She was angry with me, I could tell. But the state I was in, I didn’t care. She tried to talk to me, but I walked by her and went straight to my bedroom, where I promptly passed out.
I woke up ten hours later, my body aching and sore and already in the throes of some heavy withdrawal, and Aubrey wasn’t beside me. She was gone again, though this time she had left a note. I picked up a piece of paper from the pillow beside me and squinted in the late-afternoon light that filtered through my window. I scanned the contents, trying to make sense of it.
Aubrey had gone back to her place. She wasn’t coming back tonight. She’d see me during the week.
Shit. I had really messed up.
I knew she was upset with me. And in the harsh light of sobriety, my body trembling, my stomach ready to heave, I just couldn’t handle it. I needed her. I needed my girl, who made it all better.
Without a thought about what I was doing, I picked up the phone and called her. She answered right before it went to voice mail, as though she had been debating whether or not to pick up.
“Please come back,” I cried, my voice breaking on a sob. I didn’t allow her to say anything. I just cried into the phone, pleading with her to come back to me. I needed her so fucking badly. I ached. I hurt. I wanted more pills. But for the first time I was pretty sure that I wanted her more.
“I can’t, Maxx,” she said regretfully.
I wouldn’t accept that. “Aubrey, please! I want to hold you. I just need to be with you right now. I’ll come there if I have to,” I said desperately. I would do whatever she wanted so long as I could touch her. Just touch her. I craved it.
Aubrey sighed, and I knew I had her. “I’ll be there in a few minutes,” she finally said, giving me exactly what I needed.
She arrived at my apartment fifteen minutes later, looking like the answer to all of my prayers, if I was a praying sort of guy. I pulled her to the couch and buried myself in her. And she gave herself to me just as she always did.
I was in too much emotional chaos to feel that there was a distance that hadn’t been there before, that she was pulling away from me.
I was too thankful to have her naked body beneath me, her mouth on mine. I ignored everything else.
It wasn’t until after we were finished, and she was making her excuses to leave, that I realized what was missing.
Her.
I had had her body for a time, but I didn’t have her heart. And that made me wild.
Later that evening, after I had taken a few pills to even myself out and was feeling more in control, I decided to confront her. Aubrey had just walked into my apartment, and I watched as she dropped her purse on the table and came over to the couch where I was sitting.
She gave me a smile that seemed disingenuous. She didn’t reach out to touch me like she normally did. She didn’t lean in to kiss me. She sat beside me, a careful distance between us. Her altered behavior distressed me.
“What’s going on with you, Aubrey? I feel like you’re purposefully holding back from me,” I said, trying not to sound as pathetic as I was feeling. I watched as a myriad of emotions flickered across her face. I grabbed her hand and lifted it to my lips, unable to hold myself back from touching her a moment longer.
She yanked her hand back, and I watched as anger settled over her features. She gave me her coldest stare. “Why should I give you everything when you give me nothing? When you’re willing to stop the crap you do, then maybe I can trust you with all of me.”
My mouth hung open in shock. Aubrey never talked to me like this. She never got angry and pissed. “What?” I asked as she got to her feet. It was then that I saw the tears in her eyes, and I was at a loss.
She leaned down and kissed my lips. “I care about you so much, Maxx,” she said, making my heart clench violently in my chest.
She never said I love you. I had given her my heart, so why couldn’t she give me hers? Why couldn’t she tell me what I needed to hear? That she loved me? I felt alone in this torment of feeling. Her silence, her refusal to say those three little words, made me insecure. It made me doubt her.
It made me doubt us.
“Don’t leave me,” I begged. “I love you!” I was fighting dirty. I knew I was using those words as my weapon. But I didn’t care. I’d use anything I could to make her stay. I needed her, now more than ever.
I started to cry. Ugly tears slid down my cheeks, and I watched as Aubrey’s face softened. Maybe the tears would do it. Maybe they would make her stay. She wiped the wetness from my face, then turned her back on me. I sobbed more loudly as she picked up her purse from the table and opened the door.
She didn’t turn to look at me. She refused to look at the tears, which were entirely her fault. “Get yourself together. Please.” And then she left.
She abandoned me to my misery.
I couldn’t sleep. I had taken a few pills earlier and knew it was only a matter of time until they wore off.
I had tried calling Aubrey a dozen times since she had left me earlier in the evening, and she never picked up.
I was becoming desperate.
I was losing it.
I was losing her.
I was in a bad place. I couldn’t see my way through.
Not able to toss and turn any longer, I threw on some clothes, laced up my boots, and grabbed my art supplies, throwing them in a large canvas sack.
I got in my car and started driving.
Given where my head was at, was it any surprise that I found myself outside Aubrey’s apartment building at three o’clock in the morning?
Her street was empty. The air was cold and quiet. My breath puffed out from my mouth like fog.
The drugs should have made me mellow and relaxed. But things with Aubrey were making me anxious and restless.
I needed to get it out somehow.
I positioned the pots of paint on the sidewalk and grabbed my biggest brush. I popped open the top of the blue paint with a flat-head screwdriver and dipped my brush. Paint coated my freezing fingers as I swept the bristles in long, even strokes along the pavement.
I was frenzied while I worked. Focused. Manic.
I don’t know how long I was out there. I didn’t care that I could be discovered.
I just needed to paint.
I needed her to know what I was feeling.
How much I loved her.
How much she was breaking me.
When I was through, I dropped the brush and stood back, looking down.
Why couldn’t I for once paint something that wasn’t fucked-up?
I sagged to my knees in front of the portrait of my despair.
I had painted the broken shards of my face. My mouth was open and screaming. It was obvious it was me in the shattered glass.
And then there was Aubrey, with her long blond hair, sweeping me into a heap of dust, gathering my pieces as she prepared to dump them in the trash.
This was Maxx.
And this was X.
This was both of us, bled out on the sidewalk for Aubrey to see.
Maybe she would finally know how much I wanted to give her all of me. Even as I fought it, the desire was still there. I didn’t want her to throw me away. I needed her to not give up on me.
And maybe one day I’d be able to give her everything she wanted.
I had fallen asleep quickly after I had gotten home from my late-night painting excursion. I woke up a few hours later sick and achy, but with a clearer head than I had had for some time.
Aubrey had been right. I was fucking up everything. The club, Gash, the drugs, they were taking over. There was little room left for anything else. Let alone Aubrey.
But I couldn’t let her go. The pills. The high. They felt too good. I had become too attached. How could I say good-bye to the one thing that kept me sane?
&n
bsp; But I hated my need for it. I hated that when things got rough, that’s what I turned to. I looked into Aubrey’s eyes, and I saw myself as she did, a sad, pathetic excuse for a person.
But I couldn’t give her up. My habit was my truest love. The one I couldn’t live without.
Could I give up Aubrey?
No.
My obsessive painting last night should prove that.
I was in a bind. I couldn’t do without either of the things vying for my love, my attention, my soul.
Yet my relationship with Aubrey wasn’t the only thing falling apart.
I was spiraling. Worse than ever. I was losing the control I thought I was holding on to so tightly. My probation officer was breathing down my neck. It was costing me an arm and a leg to keep stocked with the herbal supplements I needed to fool the piss tests I was required to take every week.
That afternoon I was called into my academic adviser’s office. Dr. Ramsey was a stuffy dude who had the bulbous red nose of an alcoholic. I had a good idea of exactly what he kept stashed in that locked drawer in his desk.
He sat me down and looked at me over the rim of his glasses. “You’re failing everything, Maxx,” he said in his nasally drone.
I knew I hadn’t been doing that great, but I hadn’t thought I was actually failing.
“Well, shit,” I said, tapping my foot on the floor, already feeling antsy and agitated. I needed to get home. The pills I had taken before I had come to campus were already wearing off. I tried not to think about how it was starting to take more and more drugs to keep me on an even keel.
“That’s one way of putting it,” Dr. Ramsey said mildly, his brows furrowed in disapproval.
I knew he hated me. Just like I hated him. It was a match made in hell.
I took in the diplomas and certificates hanging on the wall. It was obvious Dr. Ramsey liked to show off, probably because he didn’t have anything else going for him but his modicum of success. Guys like him bugged the crap out of me.
Lead Me Not Page 32
