“But Blake was just a screwed-up kid.Youwere screwed up. You made some shitty choices. You were selfish. You were self-centered. But you were broken, too. And it’s hard to resent someone who is as lost as I am.”
And I felt it. That instant when the weight that had taken up residence in the center of my chest all those years ago actually started to lessen.
For the first time, I felt...lighter.
I looked up at the man I had gone to hell for. “I love you, Maxx. I went down this scary, dark path with you, and I thought you’d drown me.” I sniffled rather inelegantly, but I didn’t care.
I kissed his mouth softly... gently. “I was terrified of everything you were. Everything that you did. But I couldn’t stay away from you. And then the worst happened, and I thought the best thing I could do was walk away and never look back.” Maxx’s eyes were reddened and wet, and I could feel the fine tremors in his hands as he held my face. He was silent, not saying anything, letting me say my piece.
“But I was wrong. And I’ve never been so glad to be wrong in all my life. We belong together. Today. Tomorrow. Forever. Because you made it impossible for me to shut down. You reached down inside of me and yanked the heart I had almost forgotten I had to the surface, dripping and bleeding but still beating.” I closed my eyes, overcome with emotion. But when I opened my eyes again, I was smiling, tears staining my cheeks. “You’ve shown me what it means to trulylive,Maxx.”
He made a noise in the back of his throat, and then he was kissing me.
He was healing me.
He was giving me my future.
And I walked toward it happily and for the first time in a long time... with hope.
chapter
thirty
maxx
going to North Carolina with Aubrey had seemed like such a good idea.
But what I was left with in the end was a reminder of who I really was at my roots. In my dark, twisted heart.
I couldn’t stop thinking about Blake, her sister’s ex. He was a conceited little punk with an arm full of track marks and teeth rotting from meth use. He was obviously the worst kind of druggie. The forsaken kind. The type with no future.
I had looked at Blake Fields and seen myself.
The person I had been for a long time.
Aubrey had looked at him with so much disgust, and in that moment I didn’t see a whole lot of difference between him and me.
And I hated myself all over again.
Aubrey left her parents’ house happier than I had ever seen her. We talked the whole way home, but I couldn’t get rid of the heavy weight in my chest.
The fear that I’d lose her. That she’d wake up one morning and remember that I was just like Blake. A sad, sorry loser.
I took Aubrey’s bag as we walked up the steps to my apartment. The bass from my neighbor’s stereo was blasting. I unlocked the door and turned on the light.
Aubrey dropped onto the couch and stretched her arms above her head. “I’m exhausted,” she said with a yawn.
I joined her on the sofa and pulled her into my arms. It still amazed me how easily she fit against my body, like we were two pieces of the same puzzle. Yeah, it was cheesy as hell, but true.
“You seem happy,” I observed, kissing the top of her head.
Aubrey pulled back and looked up at me. “I am, Maxx. I really am. I feel like finally, after all this time, things are falling into place. Don’t you feel it?”
No, I didn’t. But damn, I wanted to.
I woke up every morning with my stomach a knot of anxiety as my mind drifted to drugs. To bills. To a thousand ways I could fail.
But looking in Aubrey’s blue eyes, shining and bright, I could believe that she was right. That maybe we were finally getting to where we needed to be.
