Her walls were painted a golden yellow, her one window covered in a gauzy white curtain. She had several crystals and stained-glass pieces hanging on the glass, bouncing rainbows around the room.

The bookshelf was filled with books and framed photographs. Instead of clinical chairs, Kristie had a plush, red couch shoved against the far wall, complete with throw pillows.

Under any other circumstances, Kristie’s office would have felt relaxing. But I could tell instantly from the way Kristie was looking at me that something was wrong.

“Have a seat, Aubrey,” Kristie said, indicating the couch. I sat down, and instead of returning to her desk, Kristie sat down beside me.

I knew Kristie wasn’t my biggest fan. Despite her positive reports to Dr. Lowell, I knew that after my verbal outburst earlier in the semester she was just biding her time until the group was finished so she could be rid of me. I had picked up on her wariness and underlying annoyance even as she attempted to feign professional support.

So I was surprised to see sympathy on her face. She was looking at me as though she felt sorry for me. Oh shit, what the hell was going on?

Kristie turned and pulled a framed picture off her desk. It was of her and a group of women. It was easy to tell from their dress that the picture was a decade or two old. Kristie was much younger in the photograph and had actually been very pretty.

“This was taken at my first job out of college. I worked as the services coordinator for a domestic-violence shelter back in Ohio. I loved that job. The women and children I worked with were unbelievable.” Kristie put the picture back on her desk and then turned to me.

“I really struggled back then with my role there. I worked in an environment that served as the home for these people. They relied on me to provide for their basic needs: safety, food, shelter. It was easy to confuse work with friendship at times.”

I didn’t quite understand Kristie’s need to take me on a walk down her memory lane. But her next words made it all too clear why I was there.

“Boundaries get blurred. Relationships form that shouldn’t. It’s easy to get confused. We come into this field because we care. We want to help. Sometimes we take that to a place we shouldn’t.”

This was about Maxx.

She knew.

I swallowed around the lump in my throat. I was having a hard time breathing. I felt like my world was starting to implode around me.

Kristie turned back to the picture. “I started to think of those women as my friends. But they weren’t. They were clients. They were there because they had experienced an incredible trauma. They didn’t understand boundaries. It was my job, as their counselor, to model them. And I had a hard time with that. How do you assert authority over women who view you as their friend?”

Kristie looked at me, her eyes blazing. “I had to ask one of the women to leave the shelter for not complying with the rules. She got understandably angry. But the worst part was when she looked at me and said I thought you were my friend. And that’s when I knew I had screwed up. That I had allowed my personal feelings to get in the way of doing my job.”

She scrutinized me closely. “Do you understand what I’m saying?” she asked me.

I swallowed again, my mouth dry.

“I’m . . . I’m not sure,” I said awkwardly.

Kristie let out a huge sigh and got to her feet and went to sit behind her desk. It was obvious she was putting distance between us before she delivered the blow.

“I’ve been approached about something very upsetting. I was told that you were engaging in an inappropriate relationship with someone in the support group.”

And the axe had fallen.

Kristie continued. “I have to take all allegations like this very seriously. So I did some digging, and it has become clear to me that you and Maxx Demelo are in fact seeing each other.” She stopped, looking at me, as though waiting for my denial.

What was there to say? I had been busted. Just as I had feared I would one day be, though the “one day” came much sooner than I had anticipated.

“Well, Aubrey, what do you have to say about this?” Now she sounded like a grade-school teacher and I had been caught chewing gum in class. I hated feeling small, and Kristie Hinkle was making me feel very, very small.

I knew I had messed up. I had been taking a huge risk when I had gotten involved with Maxx. I had put everything on the line to be with him, and for what?

Look where our relationship was now. It was nonexistent because he had chosen drugs over me.

But I couldn’t forget how much I loved him. How in those moments when we were together, with nothing between us but breath and skin, it was perfect. Seeing him with his brother, discovering who he was before drugs had come into his life, sledding with him in a place that was special to him, watching him cook me a badly burned dinner, these moments had shown me a passionate and complicated man. A man who was worth the effort.

I wouldn’t apologize for following my heart for the first time in my life. For letting go of my obsessive need for control and to just feel.

For all the heartache, for everything Maxx had put me through, I could never regret opening myself to him. I had been closed off for so long that I was slowly dying inside—until Maxx forced me to be someone that I had forgotten I could be.

I lifted my chin and looked Kristie in the eye. “What is there to say? That I was wrong? I think that’s obvious. That I’m sorry? Well, I can’t say that. Because I’m not. I wouldn’t change a moment of being with Maxx, no matter what the consequences.” I sounded steady and strong, and I was proud of myself, even as I faced the fallout from my choices.