Lead Me Not

chapter twenty-three

maxx

i wished Aubrey could be enough.

And even though I couldn’t stay away from her and even though I wanted to be with her all the time, I couldn’t let myself depend on her completely.

Why couldn’t I allow myself to turn to her when I was at my lowest, when I fell down and smashed into pieces?

I was a man split in two. And the part of me that craved Aubrey was fighting the part of me that craved something else entirely.

When Aubrey and I were together, I didn’t hear the noise in my head. My body didn’t ache with the cravings I had become so familiar with. I couldn’t think about anything but losing myself in her.

She was my balm. And while she was with me, her hands, her lips, her smile, her laugh were the only drugs I wanted.

Until the anger took over. Then I needed something more than Aubrey’s calm to erase the raging inside me.

And when Aubrey would leave, she took her place.

She didn’t like to be ignored. She howled in my brain and twisted my body in her rage. She needed to be appeased before she ate me alive.

In those desperate moments, I was only too happy to give in. It was as though the hours with Aubrey were a dam, and when she was gone, the waters were released, sweeping me away without mercy. It hurt to resist. So I didn’t.

I used to need only one pill to get high. Then it was two. Then three.

Now it was four pills until I was experiencing the kind of bliss that easily replaced everyone and everything.

And for a time, even Aubrey.

They were at war against each other, Aubrey and the drugs. Both had a claim on me. I needed both. But they couldn’t coexist.

I had to hide the drugs from Aubrey. I had to be careful. I understood that, given what had happened to her sister, she hated them. She was as straight-edged as they came.

She didn’t understand that it was my choice to use. That I dictated when and how much I took. That being high was the greatest form of control I had in my life.

I wished things could have been as easy as holding Aubrey’s hand and skipping off into the sunset of our happily ever after. I really wanted that.

But I had responsibilities. Landon relied on me. My uncle used me. Gash and the club had me by the nuts if I didn’t do my job. And the drugs . . . they owned me. They were my key out of the prison. And even the promise of Aubrey wasn’t enough for me to throw that key away. My heart wanted to, but my mind wouldn’t let me.

So I kept her.

We all had our secrets, and the pills were mine.

And I was Aubrey’s.

She was terrified we’d be found out. She agonized over the consequences of being with me. Without realizing it, she had turned me into something ugly and shameful. And I couldn’t even blame her for that, because I already felt those things about myself.

But when Aubrey kissed me, when I was inside her, I could pretend I was enough.

She told me I was perfect, that I was smart and worthy. She tirelessly worked on building me up so that I would never have the temptation to fall.

When we were together, I believed it all. But when she left, I doubted, at least until I was with her again.

I’d put the pills between my teeth and smile while I swallowed my self-destruction.

Is there any better feeling than knowing that every pain, every hurt, every disgusting, guilt-ridden thought could be erased . . . just . . . like . . . that?

I wasn’t expecting Aubrey until after her evening class. I had roughly five hours to kill before I had to be sober. So I decided to use the time wisely. I found the bag of oxy in my dresser drawer and shook four pills out onto my palm.

I took a quick inventory of my supply. I’d have to double my price for the remaining pills to make up the difference. I should have been more worried about using the drugs that I was meant to sell.

The beating I’d received from Gash and Vin had been the warning. I wouldn’t be lucky enough to walk away next time. Marco had ripped me a new asshole a few days after I had recovered. He was pissed as hell and feeling paranoid that our other side venture would be discovered because I was being sloppy.

My drugs wouldn’t take only me down, but Marco as well. We had been skimming a cut of the door profits for over three months now. It was not enough to be noticeable, but over time it was a good bit of cash.

I wasn’t alone in my stupidity. Marco was right there with me. Greed was as much a high as the drugs. The adrenaline rush from slipping the money in our pockets was almost as addictive as the pills.

Gash was already onto me since the money from my sales didn’t equal the supply I was given. I should have been smart enough to cover my tracks. It was a moronic move, one that I would eventually pay for.

But now I’d have to toe the line and not give Gash or his trained monkeys any reason to doubt I was doing my job. And that would keep Marco’s nose clean and far away from Gash’s fist.

My head lolled on the back of the couch, my arms heavy and my head thick. I’d worry about selling the rest of the bag over the weekend.

I wondered whether Aubrey would expect some sort of boyfriend crap. I’d been inside her, laid my heart on the ground at her feet, yet I never knew what to do around her. She had me second-guessing everything.

God, when had I become such a chick about this shit?

I still had things I had to do, and as much as I wanted to spend all of my time with Aubrey, that couldn’t happen.

Now that I was thinking about her, I couldn’t stop. Even as fucked-up as I was—unable to move my limbs, my body weighted down, and stoned out of my mind—my heart slammed madly in my chest at the memory of her face. A goofy smile stretched my lips as I thought about how easy it was to be myself around her, the person I had almost forgotten how to be.

“Yo, Maxx, let me in!” a voice yelled from the other side of the door, followed by a pounding that rattled my skull.

There was no way I was getting my ass up off the couch. Fuck whoever wanted in. They needed to take a number.

I closed my eyes, trying to ignore the persistent knocking.

“I will kick this door down if you don’t open up!” the voice threatened.

Fuck me, chill out already.

I slowly got to my feet and sluggishly made my way to the door.

Marco shoved past me the moment I opened the door. “What the hell, man? I’ve been trying to get hold of you for days!” Marco scowled as he made his way into my apartment. He headed straight for my bedroom.

The fucker had serious issues with personal boundaries.

I was having a major problem seeing straight. I knew I should be worried by Marco’s aggressive entrance, but like every time I was doped up, I couldn’t summon the energy to care.

I leaned against the doorframe and watched Marco pull out my bedside drawer, rooting around until he found the baggie of pills I had put there. He held them up to the light and started counting.

“Make yourself at home,” I slurred, swinging my hand out in front of me in a sweeping gesture.

Marco tossed the bag onto the bed and advanced toward me. My mouth was frozen in a lazy smile, which I could tell pissed Marco off.

He grabbed me by the front of my shirt and shook me. I tried to shove him off but with no success.

“What the fuck?” I mumbled, trying to get away from him.

“You’ve been taking them, haven’t you? You’re supposed to be selling them, not eating the shit for breakfast!” he yelled into my face.

Marco was a scary dude to most people. But I remembered him when he wore his pants around his knees, was covered in acne, and had no game whatsoever. He’d been a joke. Now he liked to think of himself as a badass. But a few years of weightlifting and covering his face in metal didn’t erase the fact that he used to be the biggest douche on the planet.

“Don’t start with your goddamned lectures. If I wanted advice, I wouldn’t be asking for it from the guy who let some cracked-out chick pierce his junk with a needle,” I said with a smirk, shoving Marco hard in the chest and sending him stumbling backward.

Even fucked-up out of my mind, I could still take him. I grabbed my dick crudely and flipped him off. I went to the bed and picked up the baggie, shoving it back in the drawer.

“Stay the fuck out of my stuff,” I warned, pointing at him with a wobbly finger.

Marco sneered, stretching his lips in an ugly grin.

“So what’s your great plan, Maxx? How the fuck are you going to make the money back so Gash won’t shove your nose up your own asshole? Come on, tell me your latest stroke of genius! I’m dying here.” Marco flopped down on the bed and put his muddy combat boots up on my sheets. Not that they were clean or anything, but I didn’t appreciate him messing up my shit.

“Get your boots off my bed, man,” I told him, though my voice sounded weak in my ears. Messed up and wanting a nap was not the way to have a confrontation. I could barely keep my eyes open. Marco was seriously screwing with my high. I’d have to kick his ass for that later.

Marco ignored my comment as he continued to regard me. “Look at you, Maxx. You are fucked-up. If Gash saw you like this, you’d be wearing your rib cage as a hat. What the hell is up with you?” he asked, sounding a mixture of angry and concerned.

When it came down to it, for all his shank-you-in-the-gut skinhead act, he was just looking out for me. Marco and I had been friends for years. We went back a long way. And we’d always had each other’s backs. It was because of Marco that I landed the extremely well-paying job I had to begin with, a job that allowed me to take care of my brother, keep a roof over my head, and pay for school.

“I’ll charge double,” I offered with a shrug, as if that were the most obvious answer in the world.

Marco barked out a laugh. “Are you fucking with me?” he asked incredulously.

I frowned. I had thought it was a good idea.

“Why is that so funny?”

Marco snorted. “Dude, there are enough people slinging around this city, you charging double for midgrade pills won’t make you a cent. It won’t make Gash the money he expects. You, my friend, are a fucking moron.”

“You don’t know shit, Marco. You just sit at the door and tell the chicks if they look pretty and leave the hard stuff to me,” I derided.

Marco’s face darkened. He dropped his feet down to the floor with a loud thud. “Don’t fuck around. You’re not just messing up stuff for you, but for me too. What do you think will happen if Gash figures out you’re taking more than you’re selling, that you don’t have the money to give him?” Marco got to his feet and started pacing, something he did when he was ready to lose it.

Why the hell was he freaking out so badly? I should be the one worrying. My head started to pound, and the pills across the room were screaming for my attention.

“He’ll start looking at all of us, man. I’ve been smart about the door money, but Gash could figure it out, you know! He’d have us both taken out!” Marco smashed his hand into the wall beside my desk.

“Stop being such a pussy about it. No one put a gun to your head and made you steal from the door. So don’t start bitching about it now,” I stated matter-of-factly. Marco’s jaw started to tick.

“Have you found a location yet?” Marco asked, changing the subject.

I shrugged. “Not yet,” I said unemotionally. I really should have more of a sense of self-preservation than this. I was walking on some pretty thin ice.

Marco gripped his skull, which was covered in a badly done tribal tattoo. Dude really had bad taste when it came to body art.

“Are you trying to kill me? Seriously. Well, get your shit, we’re finding something now. Gash expects the information tonight.” Marco marched past me and into the hallway.

“I can’t make it tonight. I’ve got plans,” I called after him, trying not to laugh as he became even more enraged.

“The hell you can’t. Get. Your. Shit. We’re leaving,” Marco announced, slamming my front door behind him as he left.

I should have called Aubrey. I should have explained that I wouldn’t be home this evening.

But I didn’t.

The drugs made everything but the here and now a vague, hazy memory.

They made it easier to think I could just deal with it all later.

Marco pulled up outside an unassuming office building a few hours later. It was a little after eight, and Marco and I had just returned from finding a run-down middle school. We had gone through the building, and even though it looked one step away from being condemned, it would work for the club.

Marco had stopped at a diner on the way to Gash’s office and plied me with food and coffee in an attempt to sober me up. I was already coming down, which of course left me shaky and sick to my stomach.

The burger I had eaten earlier threatened to come back up. I grabbed Marco’s arm before we headed into the office. “Dude, do you have anything?” I asked, trying not to beg. “Seriously, I just need one.”

Marco grunted, giving me a look of disgust. “You’ve really got to get your shit together, man,” he muttered, fishing in his pocket for a small bag. He shook out one tiny white pill and held it up between his thumb and forefinger.

I went to snatch it from his hands, but he held it back. “Aren’t you supposed to be going to some support group or something? Because if this is how the whole twelve-step thing works, it sucks,” he commented.

I glared at him, not bothering to correct the twelve-step comment. I was too busy swallowing down the bile that filled my mouth. “Just give it to me and save the sermon for someone who gives a damn,” I said as I tried not to throw up on my buddy’s shoes. My head had started hammering, and I knew there was no way I could face Gash without something to take the edge off.

Marco shoved the pill in my hand. I hurriedly put it in my mouth, crunching it between my teeth. “Just give me a second,” I said, leaning against the side of Marco’s beat-up Volvo.

Ten minutes later, the shakes had stopped, and the nausea was almost gone. I still felt spaced, but I was good enough to go inside.

Gash’s office was not what you’d expect from the guy who ran the most successful underground club on the East Coast. The first time I had come here, I had anticipated black lights and mood lighting, and at least a muscled henchman or two.

It was completely empty, which wasn’t surprising given that it was after eight in the evening. Gash kept . . . unusual hours.

The place was sterile and nondescript. The office was in the kind of building where you’d expect to run into a herd of accountants. Marco and I stuck out like sore thumbs in this environment of cream walls and bad art reproductions.

In Gash’s other life, he was known as Trevor McMillan, and he worked as an IT analyst for a small security firm.

So how did Trevor become Gash? That was the question of the decade. There were plenty of rumors as to how he’d started Compulsion, just as there were a million stories of how he had earned the nickname he was known by—and I seriously doubted any of them were true.

Who the fuck knew? Did it really matter? The answer didn’t change the fact that he was one scary motherfucker for a scrawny IT guy who played club manager goon on the side.

Marco knocked on the door and went inside without waiting for an answer. Gash sat behind a plain wooden desk, his head bowed over a keyboard. He could have passed for someone’s pedophile uncle or a used-car salesman. He wasn’t particularly intimidating, just sort of smarmy . . . until he looked at you.

His cold, dead stare could make a lesser man squirm. I wasn’t too macho to admit I’d been close to pissing myself a time or two in his presence.

Marco closed the door and had a seat at one of the two upholstered chairs against the wall. I followed, hands shoved in my pockets, shoulders hunched defensively. You never knew what you were going to get when you had a meeting with Gash.

Some days he was fine, civil even, though he very rarely cracked a smile.

Then there were the days when you were waiting for him to pull a knife from his coat and slit your throat. He was unpredictable, which should have made Marco and me think twice before stealing from him. We should have been smarter than to mess with a guy like Gash. But as I said, money and drugs were a temptation neither of us could turn away from, sad, sick bastards that we were.

Marco handed Gash the slip of paper where he had written the address for the old school. Without looking at either of us, Gash turned back to his computer and started clicking away, looking at a map on the screen.

“Is this in a residential area?” he asked, finally looking at us. He turned his unemotional stare on me.

I shook my head. “It used to be, but the area is run-down now. Most of the houses have either been foreclosed or abandoned. Not many people still live there, and the few that do are old. No families. No kids,” I reported.

I curled my hands around the arms of the chair. I was sweating bullets. Damn, I needed another pill.

“Police?” Gash asked.

“The police station is on the other side of town. The force just laid off three officers, so they’re bare-bones right now. I don’t see much of a problem,” Marco piped up, filling in what I should have already known.

This is the sort of research I normally would have done. Marco was picking up the slack, and I definitely owed him one.

“I’ll get one of the guys to poke around a bit, see if there’s someone we can talk to about making sure we don’t have any problems on Saturday,” Marco said, glancing at me out of his peripheral vision. Could it be any more obvious I hadn’t done a thing?

And it wasn’t lost on Gash. He regarded me as though I were shit on his shoe.

“And what the fuck have you been doing while Marco has been doing your job? What the hell am I paying you for? A little painting here and there doesn’t cut it. Sit up and stop fucking slouching!” Gash demanded. I felt like a kid in the principal’s office. Would my punishment be detention or an ass beating?

I sat up in my chair slowly. I couldn’t help but be oppositional about it. I was a tit like that.

“I’ve had a lot of shit going on,” I offered by way of an excuse, though I knew it was lame at best. My pathetic justification obviously made Gash really, really angry.

He leaned over his desk, his lips peeled back to bare his yellowed teeth, lines forming between his eyebrows. “I don’t care what is going on, you have a job to do, so do it! Marco shouldn’t be doing the shit I pay you for.” Gash jerked his thumb at Marco, who had all but disappeared into the upholstery of the chair. Not drawing attention to yourself when Gash was pissed was a matter of survival, plain and simple.

I nodded curtly. “I get it; it won’t happen again,” I said.

“Vin said he dropped off the week’s product to you a couple of days ago. I want the money on Sunday. Not Monday. Not Tuesday. But fucking Sunday! I’ve got my eye on you and I’m not happy with what I’m seeing,” Gash warned, running his finger along the scar under his eye.

He had been stabbed in the face by a junked-out crackhead a few years ago. The crackhead was dead. Gash was still here. Point made.

I nodded again. “You’ll get it, not a problem.” Too bad it was actually a very big problem.

“You’re looking a little shaky. You all right?” Gash asked, eyeing me shrewdly. He was no dumb shit. I knew that he knew I was coming down . . . hard.

“It’s those downers. You need something to bring you up. Try this. Just get yourself together. I don’t need a damned junkie selling my shit. That’s a liability I do not want,” he growled, tossing a baggie of dried leaves in my lap.

I opened it and gave it a sniff. What was this? It didn’t smell like weed. Maybe it was some crazy hallucinogenic.

“It’s an herbal tea, dipshit. Ginkgo biloba, a little bit of ginseng. It’s good for the blood flow to the brain. Go home and make yourself a cup.”

I wanted to laugh my ass off at the irony. Gash, the biggest drug pusher this side of New York, was offering me a bag of herbal fucking tea.

I chanced a look at Marco, who was chewing the inside of his cheek as he also tried not to laugh at our boss peddling his hardcore herbal remedies.

“Sure, sounds great,” I said, tucking the bag in my pocket.

Gash pointed at me. “I’m serious, you have this weekend to show me you can still handle all of this. Because next week I’m getting a shipment of stuff up from Mexico that can make everyone a hell of a lot of money. I need to know you’ll do what I need you to do.”

Marco and I got to our feet. “You got it, Gash,” I promised.

“And drink some of that tea,” our boss instructed as we left. I patted my pocket in agreement.

Out in the parking lot, I wiped sweat off my forehead. I needed to get home. I needed to even myself out. Fuck the tea.

“You got off pretty easy in there, Maxx. You need to listen to what Gash was telling you,” Marco lectured.

I rolled my eyes, sick of hearing the same ol’ shit.

It’s only when I’d gotten home and had taken another couple of pills that I remembered Aubrey. Before passing out, I wondered if she had come by. Maybe I should call her. Explain what had happened.

But then the high took over, and I forgot all about Aubrey.

I forgot about everything.