Lead Me Not

chapter sixteen

aubrey

there was a lot to be said for keeping busy. If you kept yourself focused on trivial things, the more serious stuff began to seem less important.

School and studying did that for me. It put everything in its place and kept me moving forward. There wasn’t room in my world for sexy blue eyes and passionate pleas that made me forget everything.

All of this agonizing made me desperately wish that I had someone I could talk to. Someone I could confide in about these conflicting feelings that were wreaking havoc inside me. I missed Renee so much more during this emotional turmoil. I longed for the days when I would have been able to tell her everything.

I felt lonely, even when I was with other people. No one could know the truth of my heart, that it was slowly and surely being given to someone who I was terrified would destroy it.

“I’m thinking of asking Charlotte out,” Brooks announced out of nowhere in the middle of our marathon cramming session. I looked up from my notes in surprise. Brooks never really talked to me about girls. It’s not as though I would have a problem having this kind of conversation. We were friends. It’s what friends did. But we weren’t the sort to sit around giggling about dates.

“Who’s Charlotte?” I asked, reaching for the bag of pretzels on the coffee table. I was relenting on my “no food in the living room” edict for the time being. Studying required sustenance. And I didn’t want to read my notes while sitting in a cramped position in the chairs around the kitchen table.

Brooks stretched out his legs, his feet brushing against mine. I never shied away from touching him. He was my friend. So why did it all feel so . . . strange . . . all of a sudden? Ever since Maxx’s show of territorial possession before support group that night, I had felt a shift in my relationship with Brooks, one I couldn’t explain or understand, and one that my good friend seemed reluctant to talk about.

“She’s in my senior symposium. Blond hair, tits for miles,” he explained, looking at me as he took a drink of his beer. He watched me closely. Too closely. What the hell was his problem?

I gave him my most encouraging smile. “Sounds great. I say go for it, buddy,” I said, tossing him a pack of Oreos. Brooks caught it in midair.

“Yeah? Well, maybe you could meet her. Tell me what you think,” he suggested, still watching me. It was disconcerting, and I didn’t like it one bit.

“It’s not like you need my approval, Brooks. You like her, ask her out. It’s as simple as that,” I stated matter-of-factly, hoping to make this conversation less stilted.

Brooks slowly opened the package of cookies and pulled one out. “Well, I’d like to know what you think of her. There’s nothing wrong in that, right?” he challenged. What did he want me to say? Why did I get the feeling I wasn’t giving him what he wanted to hear?

I shrugged, tightening my ponytail, which had come loose. “Sure, if you want. I’m around all weekend.”

Brooks munched on his cookie and seemed to be mulling something over. “Why don’t you ever go out, Aubrey? I hope I didn’t ruin you for guys forever?” he teased, and I was relieved that he seemed less serious.

I snorted. “Yeah, after you I’ve started to rethink lesbianism,” I joked. The skin around Brooks’s eyes tightened, but his lips curved into a smile.

“Now, that would be such a waste,” he replied, and I chuckled a bit nervously.

“What’s up with that guy from your group? The one in the hall? He seemed kind of weird.” And here it was. The topic we had both been avoiding.

I cleared my throat and trained my eyes back on my notebook. “He’s just a guy. I don’t really know him,” I lied. My mind instantly flashed to him and me in the hallway last week. His hand stretching and pressing the most intimate parts of me, the look of wild desire on his face.

I crossed my legs in an effort to stave off the sudden warmth between my thighs at the memory of the foolish, extremely stupid, but mind-blowing things we had done. If I closed my eyes and concentrated, I could still feel his fingers moving inside me, his breath on my neck as I came.

Fuck.

“Really? Because the way he was looking at you was downright . . . proprietary,” Brooks said lightly, though I didn’t miss the underlying accusation or the flash of potent jealousy.

Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.

“What are you saying?” I asked defensively, not appreciating his insinuation, no matter how truthful it was.

Brooks’s eyes shifted away, and he looked ashamed. “Nothing, Aubrey. Forget I brought it up.”

I thought about pressing him. I wanted to hear his suspicions, and just maybe I could share what had happened with him. I hated the secrets. I hated the guilt. And most of all I hated the bone-crushing want that dampened my will. I needed to talk to someone about this dangerous place I found myself in with Maxx. I worried that I was entirely too close to making the worst mistake of my life.

I must have been experiencing early senility if I thought for one second that Brooks was the person I could confide in. Whatever our friendship was, seeing his face, pinched and unhappy, I knew that confessing my sins where Maxx Demelo was concerned was not wise.

The silence in the room was deafening. Neither of us said anything. You could taste our discomfort, and it was bitter on the tongue.

Brooks let out a noisy sigh. “Aubrey . . . ,” he began, but before he could finish his thought, the front door flew open and Renee hurried inside.

Brooks met my eyes in astonishment as we both took in the sight of my roommate. She was huddled in her black leather coat, her red hair matted down the sides of her face. Her head was bowed low as she shuffled into the apartment.

Her shoulders quivered, and I knew she was crying. She didn’t say a word as she dropped her purse on the floor and practically ran back to her room. Her door clicked softly as she disappeared behind it.

“What was that about?” Brooks asked, our earlier weirdness gone. I looked down the hallway, knowing that something was most definitely wrong.

“I don’t know, but I think I’d better go back there and find out,” I told him, getting to my feet, thankful, in a completely selfish way, for Renee’s timely entrance, whatever the reason.

Brooks grunted in frustration. “Don’t put on the white knight getup just yet. It’s probably just another slice of the Devon Keeton bullshit pie. You don’t need to get bogged down in that crap,” he warned me, and for the first time his dismissal of Renee irked me.

“Well, she’s still my friend, and I should check on her. I think you’d better head on out,” I said shortly, letting him know by my tone that I didn’t appreciate his comment.

Brooks frowned, knowing he’d pissed me off. “Look, Aubrey, I didn’t mean anything by what I said. But this is the same ol’ rodeo, you know. Don’t start thinking you can make this all better for her, because there are some people who don’t want the help. The sooner you realize that, the better off you’ll be,” he said angrily. I had to wonder whether it was Renee we were really talking about.

“Wow, that’s so compassionate of you, Brooks. Glad to see you’re going into the right profession,” I bit out. Brooks’s jaw clenched.

“Okay, well, I’ll just talk to you later,” he said, gathering his stuff. I instantly felt shitty. Whatever had been going on between us earlier didn’t change the fact that he had my best interests at heart. Always.

“Wait, Brooks . . . ,” I started, but he shook his head.

“Go see what’s up. I’ll talk to you later,” he said, not giving me the chance to make right whatever had gone wrong between us. It felt horrible.

So I did nothing. I let him leave and then turned down the hallway to see about Renee.

I knocked on her door. When she didn’t answer, I went on inside. She was curled up in a ball in the center of her bed. She hadn’t taken her shoes or her coat off. She looked as though she was trying to disappear inside herself.

In my mind, I flashed back to another time and another person who had been curled up as though she would fall apart if she let go.

I thought about the time I had gone into Jayme’s room a few months before she had died. Our rooms were beside each other, and I had heard her coming in hours after her curfew. Mom and Dad had been out of their minds with worry when she hadn’t come home at eleven like she was supposed to. They had been after me to go find her, but I had a huge research paper due on Monday, and I had convinced them she was just acting out in a stereotypical teenage rebellion. I had been the good girl. Jayme had been the wild one from the time she started her period.

How easy it had been to dismiss her behavior as typical.

I had planned to go into her room and chew her out for worrying our parents. I had been puffed up on self-righteous moral superiority. I didn’t make Mom and Dad worry. I did what I was supposed to. Jayme should have been trying to emulate me. She could have learned a thing or two from her straitlaced older sister.

What I had found when I walked into her room had made all my platitudes die on my lips. My fifteen-year-old little sister had been curled up on her bed, much like Renee was now. Her entire body had been shaking with the force of her sobs.

When I had sat down beside her, she had crawled over and put her head in my lap, her long blond hair, so much like mine, tangled in her face. She had been shaking uncontrollably, her cheeks pale and her eyes bloodshot from crying, and from, as I would learn later, the drugs she had taken that night.

I had asked her what was wrong, but she didn’t answer. She had only clung to me and cried and cried and cried. And I didn’t question her. I hadn’t demanded answers. I had only held her until she finally fell asleep. I had then carefully removed her shoes and tucked her under the covers, wiping mascara from her face with my thumb.

The next morning Jayme had acted like nothing had happened. She never mentioned why she had been crying. And I had never asked. I had gotten sidetracked by finishing my paper, and my parents had again threatened to ground her, though they had never followed through. She was their baby. The favorite. They forgave and excused her each and every time.

And then two months later Jayme was dead. And I had never asked her what made her fall apart that night. Why she had needed me to hold her so badly. And I hated myself every single day for not finding out. Because maybe I could have helped her.

I made the vow then to never make that mistake again.

I went immediately to Renee’s side and got up on the bed next to her. I pulled my friend into my arms. She resisted at first, holding herself away from me, but I wouldn’t give up.

And finally, she gave in and fell into me, her head in my lap just as Jayme’s had been all those years ago. I found myself repeating actions that were oh so familiar: smoothing her hair away from her face and just letting her cry.

This time, though, I didn’t stay quiet. I wouldn’t pretend that my friend wasn’t detonating right in front of me.

“What happened, Renee?” I asked quietly once she had calmed down. Renee rolled her head away from me, covering her face with her thick red hair.

“Please, just tell me what’s wrong,” I pleaded gently. Renee slowly sat up, her head bowed, hair obscuring her face.

“I’ve been so stupid,” she whispered, her voice breaking as she began to cry again. She pushed her hair back and looked at me almost defiantly. I bit back on a gasp as I looked at her.

Her skin was red and splotchy from crying, but that wasn’t what made me recoil in horror. It was the sight of the purple bruise ringing her eye. Her upper lip was busted and crusted over from where it had been cut open.

I covered my mouth with my hand, trying not to scream in rage at the sight of her pretty but now horribly mangled face. There was no need for me to ask who had done this. The savage grief in her eyes was all the confirmation I needed.

I was going to kill Devon Keeton.

“What happened?” I ground out.

Renee shook her head, her hair falling back to conceal her from view. “He was just so angry. I’ve never seen him so angry. I didn’t do anything!” Her voice rose in hysteria, and I reached out to hug her. She relented easily this time, not fighting my efforts to comfort her.

I rubbed her back slowly, gently. “I know you didn’t,” I murmured, all the while plotting a hundred ways to turn her shithead boyfriend into a paraplegic.

“Why do I let him do this to me?” she sobbed into my shoulder, and I couldn’t stop myself from pulling back.

“Has he done this before, Renee?” I asked, my words clipped and hard.

Renee’s eyes darted in panic as she read the violence in my tone. “Just once,” she said in a rush, and I closed my eyes at the flush of my anger. God, I was really going to hurt that bastard.

I hugged her again and let her cry herself out. And when she finally settled down, we lay on her bed the way we used to do, staring at the ceiling while we talked about the things that were the hardest for us to say.

I let Renee do most of the talking, and I listened. And most of all I was there. I couldn’t help but think of Jayme and how many times I had turned my back because I had other things going on. I had my life—school, a few friends, homework, and college prep. I had my world. And I had been blind to my baby sister, who had just started high school, floundering as she tried to find her place in the big sea of teenage acceptance.

Renee told me about Devon’s anger and jealousy, the way he had lost it in the bar when she talked to a guy from her Econ class, punching him in the face and dragging Renee outside by her arm.

Devon had taken her around the side of the building, where it was dark, and screamed at her, accusing her of cheating. He had smacked her in the face and then punched her in the chest. He told her she was ugly and stupid, that she was lucky he even looked at her, that no one would ever want her but him. And then, ignoring her staunch denials, he had threatened to do worse if she ever looked at that guy again. He had laughed when she begged him to stop. He had become furious at her tears.

“I can’t see him ever again, Aubrey. Ever!” she cried, covering her battered face with her hands.

I held her as she began crying again, my mind distracted from my own rage by memories of my sister.

“He loves me, Bre. He doesn’t want me to even look at another guy. He says he’ll die without me,” Jayme said, desperate for me to understand.

I had walked in earlier to find my sister and her boyfriend, Blake Fields, in her room fighting. He had her against the wall, his hands pinning her as he yelled in her face. Jayme had been crying, and Blake had only yelled louder. The idiot was lucky it was me and not my dad who walked in while he had his hands on Jayme like that.

I had interrupted and told Blake to leave. When he looked at me, I knew instantly he was on something. His eyes were glazed and bloodshot. I barely noticed that my sister’s eyes were also glassy and unfocused. How had I been so blind?

He hadn’t put up a fight. He hadn’t bothered to say another word to Jayme before he left.

My sister had been furious, her behavior erratic. She had told me emphatically to mind my own business. And I had already started to dismiss the earlier scene as teenage drama, something that I had thankfully opted out of as I grew up.

I waved my hand in dismissal, rolling my eyes at her dramatics. “That’s ridiculous, Jay. What kind of nut job says something like that?” I asked, condescension dripping in my voice. What did Jayme know about love? She had just turned fifteen. She was a freshman in high school. She didn’t know the first thing about real relationships.

This guy she was dating, Blake, was a junior and had just transferred from another school. I hadn’t taken a whole lot of notice of him. He was nondescript in that trying-too-hard-to-be-unique-but-I’m-actually-just-like-everyone-else way. He subscribed to the emo thing a little too religiously. With the black, side-swept hair that fell over his eyes and the skinny jeans and guy-liner, he looked like he had stepped out of the pages of Teen Angst Magazine.

I had seen the people this Blake dude had chosen to hang out with, and it was common knowledge they were the druggie crowd. But they seemed more interested in playing the part of hardcore fringies than actually walking the walk. I didn’t take them seriously.

Nobody did.

Jayme crossed her arms over her barely there chest and glowered at me. She was only just now starting to develop boobs. She had been complaining for years about how flat she was and her ass being like a piece of cardboard. My sister was a late bloomer, and she was fixated on it. Her lack of curves seemed to hit her self-confidence hard. She would say she was ugly, that no boy would ever look at her. So when Blake showed interest, she had been sucked in by his compliments and attention.

She didn’t see him for what he really was—a pathetic bully who preyed on girls like Jayme. And she didn’t see herself as Mom, Dad, and I did—as a beautiful young girl with her life ahead of her.

She only saw what Blake wanted her to see. She became the girl he wanted. She followed in his dark footsteps eagerly.

“I love him, Aubrey. We’re going to be together forever,” she said with the passion of inexperience. I rolled my eyes again, not believing her in the slightest.

“What’s the rush, Jay? Why can’t you just date around and see who you like? Why does it have to be all blood and guts?” I asked, wishing she’d shut up already so I could get back to my reading. I had a mountain of homework to get through, and the longer she stood there talking about her stupid boyfriend, the less time I had to get it finished.

“He’s the only one who gets me. You just don’t understand,” she wailed, stomping out of my room and slamming the door. I honestly didn’t understand her constant need to rush things, why she had to jump in with both feet before she had even learned to swim. But Jayme had always been in a hurry to live. In a hurry to love.

In a hurry to die.

I hadn’t seen the way Jayme had slowly started to change every tiny thing about herself. Eventually she stopped talking to me altogether. We became strangers living in the same house as she pulled further and further away from her family and into the world of Blake Fields and his friends.

And I hadn’t noticed she had gone anywhere until it was too late.

Until the night Jayme Marie Duncan never came home.

Until she was found asphyxiated on her own vomit in an alleyway outside a notorious druggie hangout, overdosed on drugs I pretended she didn’t take.

I noticed then. When it didn’t matter anymore.

“Just take it one day at a time,” I whispered to Renee as she started to drift off to sleep, exhausted from crying her soul out.

Renee nodded, her eyes drooping shut. “Thanks, Aubrey,” she muttered before falling asleep.

I lay there a long time afterward, staring at the ceiling and thinking about all the ways my life had gone wrong, and how now, when I thought I was finally getting it right, I was poised to screw up all over again.

I wondered what Maxx was doing. Was he out up to something nefarious and shady? Was he stoned out of his mind, overdosing in a gutter?

I thought about him selling drugs to those people in the club, and how smug and entitled he had seemed. I hated that man.

But then my mind switched gears, and I thought about Maxx telling me about his brother and worrying that he’d fail him. I couldn’t ignore the pull of him and the way he made me want to help him. How easy it would be to fall down the hole with him.

I rolled onto my side and stared at the bruised face of my friend. She and Jayme were all mixed up in my head. And they were twisted with the memory of Maxx when I confronted him about Compulsion. The way he had split himself open when he realized I had seen him. He had been devastated.

He had broken.

And goddamn it, I wanted to gather up all those pieces and put them in my pocket. I wanted to make sure he could put himself back together again.

I would never be able to turn away from Renee.

And I couldn’t turn my back on Maxx.