I was getting entirely too worked up, and I knew it. Renee shook her head. “So what if he’s in rehab? What would that change?”
“Everything,” I let out on a breath, admitting the thing that I would never be able to voice to anyone else.
Renee frowned again, two thin lines forming between her eyebrows. “How does Maxx being in rehab change anything, Aubrey?”
I twisted my fingers together over and over, not sure I could admit what lay in my heart.
“I don’t know!” I agonized, covering my face with my hands. I was confused. I was angry. I was irritatingly hopeful.
I was a freaking mess.
Renee gently pulled my hands away from my face and gave them a squeeze. The naked sympathy on her face curdled my gut. I knew what she was thinking.
That I was dancing back toward that place I had only just left behind. That seeing me losing my head over the man I had sworn to have nothing to do with only proved how incapable I was of letting him go.
Was she right?
Damn it, yes, she was.
“What if I told you Devon was getting help for his anger? That he was in counseling? Would that automatically erase all of the things he did to me? Does it change the fact that together, we were dysfunctional and unhealthy?” Renee asked quietly.
“The situations are completely different,” I countered sharply. Why was I being so defensive? What was I trying to convince her of ? Or was I trying to convince myself that hearing the news that Maxx might be in rehab could quite possibly open that door again.
What was wrong with me?
“Are they? Because three months ago, I know what your answer would have been. You would never have let me hold on to the unrealistic possibility that the man who hurt me so badly would change. This isn’t a romance novel, Aubrey. Love can’t make things all better. No matter how much we want it to.” Renee’s face was wet and her lips quivered.
“You spent the last year watching me lose myself in a relationship that almost destroyed me. I didn’t see the damage my love for Devon was inflicting. But now that I’m on the other side of it, it’s easy to see those same mistakes in someone else. Aubrey, Maxx loves you. I have no doubt. But he is not someone you can depend on. At least not right now. You made the right choice when you walked away. You almost lost everything, and now your focus needs to be on you and fixing what went wrong inyourlife.”
I needed her realism. Her heavy dose of common sense. It was the medicine I had to swallow no matter how bitter the taste.
“Don’t think about Maxx and what he’s doing. You can’t. You have to think only about you,” Renee said firmly.
I knew she was right. Of course she was. But I had to admit that it still hurt to hear. And it didn’t dissolve the shame I felt for allowing myself, for one brief, insane moment, to fall back into the chaos only Maxx could create.
I thought about how out of control I had felt as I watched Maxx lose himself to the drugs. I had isolated myself by being so wrapped up in his dysfunction. But I had been happy to drown in him, because he was all that I wanted.
And look where it got me. I wouldn’t be that girl again. I needed a decisive break. I knew, deep down, that I had been holding on to the painful hope that Maxx would come back a changed man and sweep me off my feet.
It suddenly hit me that I had been waiting for the crumbs of confirmation that Maxx was getting help. I had been inadvertently living in a delusional fairy tale with a warped happily-ever-after. But what I really needed was to let him go before I lost myself all over again. I grabbed my keys and rattled them in my hand, feeling agitated.
“I need to get out of here for a bit. Clear my head. I’ll be back later,” I explained, not making eye contact.
I needed to get my head together. To cleanse Maxx from my system before I suffocated.
“Do you want some company?” she asked, getting to her feet.
I shook my head.
“I’ll be fine. I just have some processing to do,” I told her.
Renee’s lips twitched into a shadow of a smile. She was upset for me, and I wished I could tell her she needn’t be. That I would be all right.
“Is that your clinical opinion?” she joked.
“Absolutely,” I said softly.
I couldn’t tell her I was all right. But I would be able to soon.
