Lead Me Not (6 page)

My contradictory feelings were also unethical and completely unprofessional. I was here as a facilitator. I was in a position of authority, however tentative, and I shouldn’t be lusting after a guy who was here for treatment.

What was wrong with me? This was so out of character that it shocked me.

Maxx looked around the room in a leisurely way, taking his time to make the circle until his gaze finally settled on me. His tongue darted out to wet his bottom lip, and I couldn’t help that my eyes fell to his mouth. Fucking hell . . .

A flash of some unidentifiable emotion heated his face. Just as suddenly as it appeared, it was gone, as though it had never been there. His tongue disappeared behind his teeth as he grinned at me, making me wonder if he could read the inappropriate thoughts I was having.

And that pissed me off.
He
pissed me off. Which was irrational. I didn’t even
know
him.

My neck flushed bright red under his scrutiny. The strange familiarity I had felt when he arrived only increased the longer he looked at me. When his attention finally shifted away, my breath came out in a noisy rush that embarrassed me.

Kristie gave me a strange look before turning back to Maxx. His lips quirked as though something about all of this amused him. But then, as if he’d flicked a switch, his face smoothed and
his eyes became serious. It was like watching someone put on a mask. It was seamless and complete.

“I’m Maxx Demelo,” he began, his voice soft and rich. I swallowed around the thick lump in my throat.

That voice. I knew it. But from where?

Maxx lifted his hands in the air, his broad shoulders heaving in a shrug as though he was about to reveal the secrets of his soul. His eyes flicked to me again, and he said with absolute sincerity, “And I came here to be saved.”

Was this guy for real?

I looked at the other group members and quickly realized they had all swallowed his Kool-Aid. Kristie seemed to think seriously about his statement as she leaned forward to rest her elbows on her knees.

“That seems like a pretty tall order, don’t you think?” she asked him, and I could tell she was as fascinated by Maxx as the rest of us. Everyone, even Evan and April, was fixated on the blond-haired, blue-eyed boy who wore his vulnerability like a badge of honor. It was so at odds with the cocksure, mocking guy who had walked in only fifteen minutes earlier. It was as though he were playing dress-up, trying to decide which character to be.

Maxx crossed his legs at the ankle and rested his hands in his lap. “I don’t think so,” he said. His eyes drifted my way again, and I felt like a mouse in a snare. I really wished he would stop looking at me.

“I’ve found my way into hell, and wanting salvation is the only thing that keeps me going.” His words were quiet and controlled, and I couldn’t tell if he was feeding us all a line or if he meant it.

“I’m ready to be saved. I
need
it, Kristie. So I will do whatever I have to do to get it.” He sounded almost angry. Everyone was quiet
for a few minutes as if his words had struck a chord deep inside them.

Finally, Kristie blinked as she smiled at the group, shaking off the spell Maxx had created. “Well . . . ,” she began, and cleared her throat. “Let’s hope you find it,” Kristie said, a little too brightly. I watched Maxx and knew without a doubt that he was something dangerous.

He was something primal and unfettered—a force that could take everything and everyone down with him, burning it all in a violent flame. And then afterward he would dance on the ashes.

He was terrifying.

chapter

four

maxx

t
he 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.

chapter

five

aubrey

“a
re you going to answer that?” Brooks asked from my couch, where he was doing a damned good impersonation of a deadbeat beer guzzler.

My phone vibrated on an endless loop as it danced across my coffee table. We were three hours into our weekly cram session. I was trying to study for my Developmental Psychology quiz, while Brooks made a good show of writing his paper for Behavioral Genetics.

Brooks and I were both pretty intense when it came to our course work, though perhaps at times I put a little more emphasis on the work part than Brooks did.

I had barely registered the fact that my phone had been going off for the past ten minutes. Brooks leaned across the coffee table and snapped his fingers an inch from my nose.

I scowled and batted his hand away. “Stop it!” I grumbled, flipping the page in my textbook, already immersed in language acquisition in children. Riveting stuff.

“Pick it up or turn it off, Aubrey, before I chuck it out the window,” Brooks threatened. I gave him an amused smirk, knowing the sound of his bark all too well. Brooks looked fried. His hair stood on end, and his eyes gave him more than a little bit of a harried look.

“Okay, okay. Settle down, boy,” I teased, grabbing my phone
just before it fell onto the floor.

“Hello?” I said, without bothering to check the caller ID. Stupid Aubrey! I should have known by now to
always
check the caller ID.

“Bre. Finally! I’ve been trying to call you for over an hour!” my mother chastised into the phone. I instantly cringed. Not only at the sound of my mother’s disapproving voice but at her insistence in using
that
nickname.

It was a nickname that should have been buried with the person who had given it to me. But my mom continued to use it, and I knew that had everything to do with the pain it inflicted every time it was uttered.

“Sorry, Mom. My ringer was off. What can I do for you?” I asked, abandoning any semblance of civil small talk and opting for straight to the point.

I hadn’t spoken to my parents in four months. We had an understanding to leave each other alone, communicating only when necessary.

I hadn’t returned home to North Carolina in over two years. It had stopped being home for me after Jayme died.

“That’s ridiculous. What if something had happened? No one would have been able to reach you!” my mother reprimanded, digging that knife just a little deeper. She sounded concerned, but appearances were deceiving.

“Sorry, Mom,” I repeated. But an apology would never undo the damage of the last three years.

My mother gave a huff, obviously feeling righteous in her indignation. My mother wore martyrdom well. She was the self-sacrificing matriarch of an ungrateful family.

The whole thing made me sick.

“You need to come home,” my mother said without further preamble.

My chest squeezed, and I clenched the phone so tightly in my hand that I started to cut off circulation to my fingers.

I stayed quiet, not trusting myself to speak. I breathed in deeply through my nose. I didn’t dare look at Brooks, who I knew was watching me curiously. He had no idea of the emotional land mine I had walked into just by answering the phone. He wasn’t privy to the side of my life that I worked hard to hide from.

“Bre! Did you hear me? This is important. I wouldn’t bother calling otherwise,” she said harshly, cutting me open with the truth of her words.

“Why?” I finally asked, clearing my throat around the huge lump that had formed there.

My mother’s annoyed snort was loud in my ear. “Are you serious? Do I really need to remind you of what next weekend is?” she declared hatefully.

The lump dissolved around the flood of my anger. Fuck, no, I hadn’t forgotten! Forgetting would
never
be an option for me. She wasn’t the only person who had lost Jayme. But my parents acted as though they alone grieved the loss of the fifteen-year-old girl who had disappeared from our lives too soon.

“No, Mom. I didn’t forget,” I replied through gritted teeth. I wanted to yell and rage at her cold disregard for my feelings. But Aubrey Duncan was a master at containing emotion. I had to be. It was the only way I got by.

“The local teen center is doing a memorial in Jayme Marie’s memory, and they want us there. Your father is planning to say something. The newspaper will be there, as well as a local TV crew. The
entire
family should be present for it.” My mom’s words were final, not allowing any argument.

I was expected to obey, no questions asked.

But I wouldn’t.

I
couldn’t.

As much as a part of me wanted to repair the gaping hole in my family, I couldn’t return to Marshall Creek. I couldn’t go back to the two-story brick house where I had grown up. I couldn’t walk past the closed door that would never open again.

No way.

“I can’t make it,” I said quietly, already bracing myself for the fallout.

“You
can’t make it
?” my mother asked angrily.

I shook my head, even though my mother couldn’t see me.

“You’re telling me that you won’t come home for a memorial in memory of your baby sister? You can’t take a couple of days out of your life to honor your sister?
You
of all people should understand how important this is!
You
owe this to her!” My mother’s voice cracked as it rose to a shrill screech.

I closed my eyes and tried not to let the hatred overtake me. Hatred for my mother, who would never allow me to forget how I had failed Jayme. Hatred for the drugs that had taken my sister before her time. Hatred for the fucking asshole who had given them to her.

And most of all, hatred for myself.

That hatred was a ferocious thing that smoldered in my belly. It was always there. It never went away. And my mother knew just how to stoke it into a full-blown forest fire.

“I have to go, Mom,” I said, not bothering to try to explain myself to her, to tell her that returning to Marshall Creek was like ripping a bandage off a wound that was only now starting to heal. There was no point. My mother wouldn’t have listened.

And maybe I
was
being selfish. Maybe I should make myself go home. But I just knew it would never accomplish what I would want it to. I wouldn’t be able to go there and honor Jayme the way she deserved. Because that memorial was about my parents and their refusal to let go, not the reality of the person my sister had
been.

“I can’t believe how selfish you are,
Bre
,” my mother spat out. The mechanical click indicated she had ended the call.

I dropped the phone back on the coffee table and gathered up my textbooks and notes, shoving them into my backpack.

“What was that about, Aubrey?” Brooks asked, concerned.

“Nothing,” I replied shortly, grabbing handfuls of pencils and highlighters and throwing them into the bag.

Brooks’s hand gripped my wrist, stilling me. “That didn’t seem like nothing. You look like you’re about to go throw yourself off a bridge. What the fuck was that about?” he asked firmly.

I gave a humorless laugh. “Sheesh, Brooks, let’s hope I never need you to talk me off a ledge. Your suicidal de-escalation techniques suck.”

I slung my backpack up on my shoulder and grabbed my keys.

“And you’re seriously evading. You’re going to be a counselor, Aubrey. You know how important it is to talk about stuff and not bottle it up. That’s what leads someone to take an Uzi into a McDonald’s. Friends don’t let friends become mass shooters,” Brooks remarked drolly.

I rolled my eyes. “Why don’t you try out the free psychotherapy on someone who needs it,” I barked, trying really hard not to take my frustrated bitterness out on him. But he was there, and my hostility was about to go thermonuclear.

“Okay, so a heart-to-heart is out of the question. Just tell me where the hell you’re going. You’re freaking me out a little here,” Brooks said.

I leaned down and gave him a kiss on the cheek. “Stop being such a worrywart. I’m fine. I just forgot that I need to grab a book from the library for my Social Psychology paper that’s due in a few weeks. I’ll only be an hour or so. You can hang if you want. Renee won’t be back until later,” I told him, trying to be as nonchalant as possible.