An abusive bully like that needed to be dealt with. But I knew sacrificing Maxx to do it wasn’t an option I was okay with.
Maxx looked at me like I had lost my mind. “Do you think I honestly give a rat’s ass about that? I can handle what happens to me. But you sure as hell can’t let him get away with what he did to you. It’s not right!” he said emphatically, as though reading my mind.
I shook my head, knowing he wouldn’t be able to change my mind. “I don’t think he’ll mess with me again. Not after you nearly put his head through the concrete,” I said with a small smile, trying to lighten the mood. If that was at all possible.
Maxx let out an exasperated breath. “You have to stop trying to save me, Aubrey,” he said, his words hanging in the air with the weight of uncomfortable truth.
“That’s not fair, Maxx, and more than a little messed up for you to say!” I bit out, feeling tears that had refused to fall earlier prick my eyes, even as I fought against them. I was exhausted. I was exposed. I was going down fast.
Maxx slid across the bed until only inches separated us. He slowly reached for my hands, enfolding them between his.
“No, that wasn’t fair. But it’s the truth. You can’t help me at the expense of yourself. You have to come first . . . not just this time, but all the time. I love you too much to have you throw away your safety to protect me. I wouldn’t be able to live with myself.” He was impassioned and emphatic. He was trying to be selfless. I got that.
Then I got angry.
I reared back and stumbled to my feet, almost falling over in my need to get away from him and his touch.
“Don’t you dare,” I warned, holding my hands out as if that would stop him.
Maxx looked bewildered and extremely hurt by my reaction. He didn’t understand that I resented his sweet sentiments and his efforts to be a guy who would put me first.
But where the hell was this guy when I was throwing my life away in order to jump off the cliff with him?
Where was this sensitive person when I was watching him fight to breathe on a disgusting bathroom floor, a used hypodermic needle at my feet?
And where was this caring, compassionate man when he had used every element of emotional manipulation in his arsenal to get me to stay with him, no matter the cost to me?
“What did I say?” he asked, getting to his feet but not walking toward me. I was having a hard time breathing. I was enraged.
“You sit there being all emotive and . . . perfect. Saying all the right things,” I hissed, barely able to look at him. “You can’t do this to me! I can’t sit on my bed with you after what just happened and have you tell me that I need to protect myself,” I all but shouted. “I’m in this fucking mess because of you! I’m still trying to claw my way to the surface after you decimated my entire life!”
We both recoiled at my words. But somehow, these things I had thought but never really said needed to be said. I had shared some of this at the rehab center when I had visited him, but obviously there was still more that I needed to say.
Maxx opened his mouth but I shook my head, silencing him.
“Don’t. Just don’t. You drew me in, you made me love you, and I was willing to do anything for you. But that wasn’t enough, was it? I threw away my career to watch you freak out every time you couldn’t find your pills fast enough! I watched you die, Maxx!” I screamed, and Maxx flinched.
“You died ! And I had to give you CPR! Do you even begin to understand what that was like? To put my mouth to yours and breathe for you, watching your chest rise and fall and then wait for you to do it on your own? And when you didn’t, putting my fingers to your neck to try and find a pulse that wasn’t there? I thought you were gone! Just like Jayme. Just. Like. Jayme!” I shrieked, gripping my hair at my scalp and pulling hard.
Welcome to Nervous Breakdown Land. Ticket, please.
Maxx reached for me, his palms outward, trying to placate me. “Aubrey, please, just calm down so we can talk about this,” he begged, tears coursing down his cheeks as he watched me slowly fall apart.
“You knew what I had been through with Jayme! You knew!” I agonized, my voice softening as I crumpled down onto the bed again. Maxx stayed where he was, watching me with hesitation, not sure if he should comfort me or leave me alone.
“I was a selfish bastard, I know that! I didn’t care about how you were feeling. All I cared about was getting what I wanted. What I needed,” Maxx stated without any hint of denial. His plain and unobstructed truth cut through the red haze of my anger.
“You were a selfish bastard, Maxx. Which is why I walked away. I couldn’t lose you. Not to drugs. Not to an addiction I had no control over. I was going to start my life over. But here you are. In my room. You saved the day like a fucking superhero. And I should want you to leave. I should open the door and kick your ass out. But I can’t. Because my heart aches for you, Maxx!” I pulled at the shirt over my chest as though I could pull the beating organ from my flesh and hand it to him.
“I’m so sorry, Aubrey! God, I’m so fucking sorry!” Maxx sobbed, his face soaked with tears, his eyes bright with pain.
“You keep saying the same old shit, Maxx! You’re sorry. You’re different. You’ve changed. But it comes down to the fact that I don’t trust you. How can I?” I spat out.
“I don’t know.” Maxx hung his head.
“I want you to leave,” I said.
“If that’s what you want,” Maxx replied, heading to my door. He looked shattered.
He had looked like that before. When he had been coming down from the drugs. When he had been at the edge of the abyss and ready to topple over.
I hated that look.
But this time it wasn’t because of the drugs.
I had put that look on his face. The desolation in his heart.
I had worked so hard to figure out what I needed to do if I was ever faced with this moment again.
I needed to tell him to leave. To turn my back and walk away. Again.
I was strong. I was in control.
But I loved him.
And watching him leave was tearing me apart.
When it came down to it, I was tired of hurting. Tired of fighting. Tired of everything.
Holding on to him had always been hard. But losing him was worse.
“Wait,” I called out, feeling a definitive snap in the air between us. Maxx looked confused. Wary. But hopeful.
“I want you to leave. I do. I know it’s what I should say. But it’s a lie.” Maxx took one small, tentative step toward me. Our eyes met and I saw my past. My present. My future.
“I want you to leave, Maxx, but I need you to stay. Please.” My lips trembled. “I’m such an idiot. I want the one thing that can hurt me the most. But I can’t help it. You’re in my blood, Maxx. You’re everywhere. In everything. I can’t escape you. I don’t want to escape you. You’ve destroyed me. But I want you to put me back together. Can you do that? Can you make everything right again?” I asked, and I knew I was asking too much. That I shouldn’t put the pressure of this on his unstable shoulders. But I was also tired of carrying the weight alone.
It was time that he started sharing the burden of our twisted love.
Maxx collapsed beside me on the bed, his hands coming up to frame my face. “I will if you let me,” he promised, running his thumbs along the curve of my lips.
“I will do everything I can to make it up to you. I swear it, Aubrey,” he whispered, and then his mouth was on mine and there was no holding back anymore. My hands came around to grip the back of his shirt as we devoured each other in a frenzy of pent-up emotion and desire.
I parted my lips beneath his and moaned deep and low in the back of my throat. Maxx pushed me backward and he lay over me, his hands coming to the front of my shirt and pulling anxiously at the buttons.
He was wild. I was ravenous. We were desperate and lost and could only be found in each other.
I pulled his shirt up and over his
head and threw it onto the floor, then fumbled at his belt buckle. We were clumsy, our fingers shaky, our kisses intense.
Maxx pulled back, bracing himself on his arms above me as he looked down at my fevered face. His eyes burned into mine, and I felt myself shudder at the heat I saw there. “I’ve dreamed every day of this moment. When I could touch you like this.” He hastily unzipped my jeans and then dipped his hand inside, his fingers teasing my wet opening. I groaned and arched my back.
“When I could taste you on my tongue,” he murmured, bowing his head to take my throbbing nipple into his mouth. He sucked hard and teased the sensitive bud with his teeth. I was a writhing mess beneath him, my hands touching everywhere, trying to get closer.
“Oh my God, Maxx!” I breathed in an agonized rush. He pushed aside the flimsy material of my panties and plunged his fingers deep inside my body. I stretched around the wanted intrusion.
“Of what it feels like to be so deep inside of you that I never want to leave,” he spoke into my skin, his tongue caressing the soft, vulnerable flesh between my breasts.
His words set me on fire. In an almost violent movement, Maxx ripped my jeans and panties down and threw them aside. I reciprocated by doing the same to the rest of his clothing.
Soon we were naked and panting and kissing and touching every inch of each other as though we’d never have the opportunity to do so again.
Maxx fit himself between my thighs, and I felt the tip of him against me as he pressed a soft kiss to my mouth. The hot pressure teased me as I moaned loudly.
I was so close to losing my head completely. All I could think about was experiencing that perfect moment that I had only ever experienced with him. Being so close to someone that you didn’t know where you ended and the other began.
Maxx slowly started to push himself inside of me. Tentative, almost, but with careful precision.
And then, suddenly, some of the fog lifted from my lust-addled brain and I pulled my hips back slightly, stopping him.
Maxx lifted his lips from mine and looked down at me. Sweat dripped from his forehead, and his hair matted at the sides from the effort it took for him to stop.
“What is wrong?” he asked, his voice rough.
Something hit me with the force of a freight train. A realization that I had never, ever thought about until just now.
“You’re not wearing a condom,” I told him, hardly able to believe that I had never, in all the times we had been together, thought to ask him to protect us. How could I have been so stupid? I knew Maxx’s history, so how had I never stopped to ensure something so vital? I had let my desire and my intense feelings for him overshadow absolutely everything.
Maxx pulled out of me and reached for his pants that hung halfway off the side of the bed. “You’re right, I’m not. I’m . . . I’m sorry,” he said, sounding contrite and almost embarrassed. His fingers were shaking as he found his wallet and produced a foil packet from the folds inside.
He sat there, staring down at the tiny square in his palm, looking strangely lost. I sat up and pulled a blanket over my chest. “I’ve never worn one with you before,” he whispered, and I could tell he was hurt and confused by my insistence that he wear one now.
I slid over until I was pressed up against him and placed my hand over the one that was holding the condom. “No, you haven’t. I never asked you to. But you and I have never even talked about past partners and whether we were clean and safe. That’s a little scary, don’t you think?” I asked.
Maxx looked up at me, his face flushed, the sweat drying on his skin. “I’m clean. I’ve never been with someone without one. I get tested regularly. I had to,” he said quietly, empathetically.
“I’m clean, too,” I said, just as quietly. “And I’m on the pill.”
Maxx nodded, chewing absently on his bottom lip. “I can’t believe we’ve never talked about this. Seems pretty fucked up, right,” he stated rather than asked.
I didn’t say anything.
Because it was fucked up. We had been so willing to get lost in each other, even at the cost of common sense and reason.
It was a scary sort of crazy.
“I just think if we want stuff to be different this time, then we have to be different. And that includes things like this,” I said, lifting the wrapped condom from his palm.
“Are we trying to do it differently, then? Are you saying you’ll give me another chance to make things right with you?” Maxx asked in the barest of breaths.
I thought about what he was asking me. Whether I was willing—whether I was able—to throw myself back into his world. Back into the messy chaos that had dominated our relationship in the past.
I knew I couldn’t.
I couldn’t be the girl living in denial. Or even worse, the girl living in a constant state of anxiousness waiting for him to fall off the cliff.
But I also knew that I didn’t have the strength to pretend that he could exist on the periphery of my life. That he wasn’t the center of it. That he wasn’t the steady, thumping pulse at the heart of who I was.
I ran trembling fingers through his hair, feeling the soft texture of his curls as they tickled my skin. “We can’t go back to who we were. To what we were. But maybe . . . we could try to be something better,” I offered hesitantly, hardly able to believe that I was doing this.
That I was back here again. Loving him beyond sanity.
Maxx leaned into my touch, his lips curving upward into a smile that was blinding in its brilliance. “Something better,” he murmured before leaning in and kissing me softly but with more passion than any kiss I had ever experienced before.
Maxx pulled the blanket away from my chest and pulled me flush against him. Skin to skin.
Heart to heart.
He carefully laid me back down onto the bed, never breaking the contact of our mouths. We weren’t rushed as we had been before. Something had changed.
And I knew instinctively that we had changed.
That I wanted to trust him. With all of me.
Eventually our slow, languid touches became more heated, and soon I was burning alive in Maxx’s unquenchable flame. I heard the rip of the foil packet and then the slight pressure as he pressed himself against me once more.
This time I didn’t stop him. I spread my legs to accommodate him. My fingers dug into his back as he pushed deep inside me. We both gasped as he buried himself to the hilt.
Maxx looked down at me, his eyes surprisingly bright. Were those tears?
I reached up and brushed away the stray wetness on his cheek. He didn’t move as we lay there, as close as two people could possibly be, our noses touching, our lips brushing against one another.
“I love you, Aubrey. I love you so much,” he said in a tormented sigh, as though the words were somehow painful.
I curled my hand around the back of his neck and brought my legs up to wrap around his hips. Maxx groaned as I moved just a fraction of an inch.
“I love you, too, Maxx. More than anything,” I said, giving him the words he had always needed to hear.
chapter
twenty-four
aubrey
afterward, we lay in bed, trying to catch our breath, silent and heavy from the moment we had just experienced together. We were both exhausted, tangled together in my sheets. Maxx traced lazy circles on my back, making me giggle. The air was warm with renewed promises and tangible hope.
“To love or have loved, that is enough,” he whispered into my hair.
“Where’s that from? I like it,” I asked, smiling into his skin.
“Les Misérables. It’s a personal favorite.”
I smiled, my eyes drifting closed. This moment was as close to perfect as I could imagine.
Then my bedroom door flew open, and we were scrambling to cover ourselves.
“Aubrey, do you have a moment, I need to talk—” Renee’s words drifted off as Maxx quickly pulled the blanket over his body.
“Uh, can you
give us a minute, Renee?” I said, my voice sounding strangled as I saw the look of total shock on my best friend’s face at the sight of Maxx . . . naked. And me . . . naked.
“Yeah, okay. Sorry,” she mumbled, and closed the door with a decisive slam.
“Shit,” I muttered, getting out of bed and rooting around for my clothes. Maxx watched me pull on my pants and shirt.
I struggled with my buttons, already trying to think of how I could possibly justify having Maxx here, like this. How was I going to explain to Renee and, dear God, Brooks, that I was willing to give Maxx another chance?
That we were together, after I had been adamant that he would never be in my life again?
I felt like a total hypocrite. A liar.
My postsex euphoria was murdered on the spot.
And then I felt Maxx’s hand on my arm, and I startled at the contact. “It’ll be okay,” he said, once again reading my mind.
I gave up on trying to fasten the buttons on my shirt and pulled it back over my head, opting for a simple T-shirt instead. I was feeling edgy, not sure what I was going to have to face when I left my room.
“Will it, Maxx?” I asked with venom.
Maxx grabbed my hands and pulled me toward where he still sat on my bed.
“I don’t know,” Maxx said after a beat. But he gave me a beautiful smile. “But we’ll try our damnedest to make it okay.”
He got to his feet and wrapped his arms around me, pressing his lips to mine.
“I love you, Aubrey Duncan,” he murmured against my mouth, his blue eyes twinkling wildly.
I sighed and couldn’t help but smile back at him. “I love you, too, Maxx Demelo.”
He squeezed me tightly, and I let myself enjoy it for a moment longer. “Let me go talk to Renee. Give us a few seconds before coming out, okay?”
Maxx nodded. “Go do what you need to do,” he urged me.
I walked out into the hallway, softly closing the door behind me with a quiet click. I stood there for a minute feeling apprehensive.
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