The marionettes were completely gone. “I thought you liked X’s paintings,” I remarked, still not taking my eyes away from the rain-soaked pavement.

Brooks snorted. “It’s like that club, just a delusional waste of time. Sure, it looks pretty, but it only hides a heart that’s rotten to the core,” he spat out. I knew he wasn’t talking about the painting.

“Why so bitter, Brooks? It takes a lot of talent to create something like this,” I argued, shivering from the cold and the wet clothes clinging to my skin.

The rain beat down on the umbrella, pouring in rivulets around us, splashing my shoes and jeans as it hit the ground.

Brooks shook his head. “I get it, Aubrey. It’s easy to be distracted by something like this. But don’t forget the ugliness underneath. It may be nice to look at, but it’s only paint, and it washes away eventually.”

Brooks’s metaphors were making my head hurt. But his meaning was crystal freaking clear. If I had wondered about the state of our friendship before, I didn’t now. I could practically taste his disapproval.

I stepped out from underneath the protection of his umbrella. I looked up into my former friend’s eyes and saw nothing of the kind, compassionate man I used to see.

“I feel bad for you, Brooks. It’s so easy to criticize what you don’t even try to understand. To pass judgment without looking at what’s really there. I’m sorry if I haven’t lived up to the expectations you had for me. That I disappointed you. But I had to come down off that pedestal eventually.” Brooks opened his mouth, looking like he wanted to say something, but then shook his head.

“I’m sorry too, Aubrey,” he said sadly.

I looked down at the ruined painting again. All that was left was a puddle of color in the grass.

“You’ll miss out on some amazing things in life if you can’t look past your nose to see the beauty that’s out there in the most unconventional places. And complexity isn’t ugliness. It’s the complication that makes it worth it,” I said softly, turning and walking away.

I pulled out my phone and tried calling Maxx again. No answer. I was freezing, the tips of my fingers going numb. But I couldn’t go back to my apartment. I couldn’t be on campus.

There was only one place I belonged. Only one person I needed.

So I walked the four and a half blocks to find him.

And when he wasn’t there, I waited.

I’d always wait for Maxx.

Chapter twenty-six

aubrey

“why can’t I come with you?” I asked Maxx as I lay naked and tangled up with him in his bed. His fingers stroked up and down my back, making me squirm.

We had been wrapped up in each other for most of the day. It had been almost a week since we were last together, and when I finally saw him again, there was no explanation for his disappearance. There never was.

I wanted to be angry with him. I wanted to be upset and sad. But I couldn’t be. Not when he touched me and held me like his life depended on it. Not when my own feelings were jangled and raw from my burst of self-realization.

I loved Maxx Demelo. I felt it deep in my bones.

I was bursting with wanting to tell him. To lay my heart at his feet as easily as he had done. I imagined the way his eyes would light up when I told him. I fantasized about his reaction. He would kiss me, make love to me, worship me with his beautiful words.

But I love you was quickly being swallowed by other things.

Primarily it was the life he led when we were apart, the life I hated as surely as I loved the man who lived it.

The need to protect what little hold I had left on my heart rendered me mute. So the words remained unspoken, even as they tattooed their presence on my heart.

“I won’t be there long. Just a few hours. Why don’t you stay here, just like this? So that when I get home, I can do this,” Maxx replied huskily, rolling me onto my back and fitting himself between my thighs.

I had learned that Maxx used sex as a way of shutting me up. When I questioned him or expressed concern, he’d flop me on my back and f**k me into silence.

And while I couldn’t help but enjoy the methods he used to control the direction of our conversations, it was also frustrating.

So when he pressed the tip of himself between my wet, warm folds, kissing me so that our talk was finished, I resisted.

I pulled my hips back even as my body begged to join with his. I tore my mouth away and turned my head to the side. I pushed against his chest. “I want to go to Compulsion, Maxx. Please, take me with you,” I pleaded.

I’m not sure why I was making a big deal about going to the club with him on Saturday. Except that I was tired of spending my weekends wondering what he was doing while he was there, though I didn’t have to imagine too hard to figure it out.

While he tried really hard to keep the drugs away from me, I knew they were still there. The bitch demanded so much of his time. While he denied his addiction was there at all, it was a constant presence in our relationship. And he gave her, his need for pills, more attention than he gave me.

I was jealous.

I was scared.

Maxx was turning me into a mess of emotions both good and bad. I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t know how to help him. Here I was, studying to become an addictions counselor, and I couldn’t do anything for the man I had fallen in love with.

Every time I had tried to bring up his drug use, he claimed that there wasn’t a problem, that I needed to stop worrying about him. He didn’t see himself the way I did, as a sad, desperate man who had no idea of the destruction he was unleashing on himself. He thought he had it under control. He thought he was in charge. He thought that he could hide the worst of it from me, that I’d never know.