“So, how’s school going?” I asked, trying to think of something to say that was safe. More important, I wanted to see her smile again. I wanted us to find our way back to that laid-back easiness that had let me fall in love with her so fast and so hard.

Aubrey snorted, her eyes narrowing. “Is that really why you wanted me to come out here? To ask me about school?” I was taken aback by her anger. I had expected it, but I was still surprised by its ferocity.

“No. I just wanted—”

“You want to talk about the weather? Would that make this whole thing less awkward? What the hell are we supposed to talk about? How about the way you fucked up the last few months of my life? Or would you like to tell me how horrible I am for leaving you? Because I can assure you that any guilt trip you lay on isn’t nearly as bad as the one I’ve laid on myself,” she hissed, and I had to sit back in my chair. Her words were like bullets and they hit swift and sure.

“I get that we’ve got a lot to talk about. We don’t have a whole lot of time to get into all that,” I said calmly. I clenched my teeth and tried to rein in the frustration that I felt bubbling to the surface.

This isn’t how I wanted this to go at all.

Aubrey slammed her hands down on the plastic table with enough force to knock the ugly fake flower arrangement on its side. Neither of us moved to catch it as it rolled off the surface and fell to the ground.

“I can’t do this with you anymore, Maxx. I tangled myself up in knots over you! You took what I gave you and threw it back in my face. You lied! To my face! Over and over again! But it tore me apart to walk away from you! Yet I did. Because I knew that if I stayed you’d kill us both! But here you are, pulling me right back in! And here I am letting you!”

I held my hands up in a placating gesture. “Whoa, Aubrey, hang on a sec.” I was thrown off balance by her vehemence. There were a lot of bottled-up issues coming to the surface that I had been in no way prepared to hear.

Waking up in that hospital, alone, had been rough. Rougher in some ways than the withdrawals. But I was here, wasn’t I? I was making an effort. Didn’t that prove that I had taken her ultimatum seriously?

“I get that you’re upset with me. But I wanted you to see me. To see what I was doing here,” I said softly, looking around me, noticing that we were making quite a spectacle among the other patients.

Impulsively I reached out and grabbed one of Aubrey’s hands and held it tightly. I dug my fingers into her skin as though that would make her listen to me. To hear me. “I wanted you to see that I took your words to heart. That I am trying!”

Aubrey’s face softened for a moment and I felt her hand slacken beneath mine. Our eyes met and clung to each other and I thought that maybe, just maybe, I was finally getting through to her. But then her mouth set into a firm line and she yanked her hand away. “It takes more than a thirty-day stint in rehab to prove anything, Maxx.”

I sighed and ran my hands through my hair. I didn’t know what the hell to do. I was so used to being able to talk myself out of anything. Even Aubrey, I was ashamed to admit, had always been easy to manipulate. And although I loved her more than was good for either of us, I had used that skill on her one too many times before.

“That doesn’t change anything,” she hissed, lowering her voice so as to not be overheard. She sighed and covered her face with her hands. She looked tired. Exhausted, really. And I knew I had done that to her.

When I had practically begged her to come and see me I had only really thought about how great it would be for her to see this new, changed man. That then she could let down her guard. I had been angling for my way back in. But looking at her now I knew I didn’t have a right to be let back in. At least not yet. I had a lot of proving to do.

I reached out again, unable to help myself, and gently laid my hand on her arm. She tensed, but finally dropped her hands from her face. Her eyes were wet and I hated myself all over again.

“I want you to get better. I really do. I wanted you to stop using. I wanted you to want to stop. Not for me. Not for your brother. But for you. This is amazing, Maxx. You being here.” She waved her hand around her to indicate the facility where I had been begrudgingly living for the last three weeks. “But it’s only the first step. You get that, right?”

I pulled my hand away, hating to hear the words of the counselors being echoed from her mouth. “Yeah, I get that,” I said sharply, annoyed that we were back to this.

Aubrey grabbed my hand and squeezed before dropping it and pulling away. That momentary physical contact left me buzzing.

“Five minutes, everyone!” Stacey called out to those of us still sitting in the garden.

Crap. We had wasted almost an hour of not really saying anything. There was still so much I needed to tell her. I felt panicked. Scared that this was it. The only chance I had to say how much I loved her and how I was trying to change. For her.

“I finish up here in a week, Aubrey. I’m coming back to school. I’m hoping to finish up my degree if they let me. And then, who knows. Landon’s going off to college in the fall and I have to figure out how to help him. But I’m going to do things legit this time. I’m not going to fuck up again,” I said quickly, trying to get it all out while I still had a chance.

Aubrey was shaking her head, as if to stop me, but I ignored her.

“I want to know if you’ll let me see you. When I’m back. If just maybe you would give me the chance to show you that things will be different.”

I didn’t know much. I was an ignorant fool in so many goddamned ways. I had always thought I was so freaking smart. But at the end of the day, I didn’t really know a thing. I didn’t know how to make a relationship work. I didn’t know what it took to make a woman like Aubrey happy. I didn’t know how to be someone who wasn’t messed up and ruined.

But I did know one thing. That I loved this woman in front of me in a way that I would never be able to love anyone else. It was a deep-in-my-bones, drowning-in-it sort of love. It was desperate. It was obliteration. It was total anarchy in my heart. It was mine. It was all that I had.

Aubrey got to her feet, slinging her purse over her shoulder. She didn’t answer me. I had laid my soul at her feet and she didn’t say a fucking word.

I stood, too, and stared at her, not really believing that this was how our time together was ending. That after three weeks of thinking about nothing else, here we were, going our separate ways like strangers.

“That’s it, then?” I asked her almost bitterly. I wanted to freaking cry. I wanted to scream. I wanted to shake Aubrey and demand that she reciprocate my wild, out-of-control feelings.

But then I saw the tears start to slip down her face, and I knew that I wasn’t alone in any of this. I reached out to catch them with my finger. I brought the pad of my thumb to my mouth and tasted her salty pain.

“I don’t know, Maxx. I just don’t know,” she said, her broken words piercing my gut.

“Just don’t turn me away when I show up at your door. Don’t tell me to leave when all I want is to talk. I have to know that when I leave here, I’ll have something to come home to. Because I promise you, I won’t give up on us. I can’t.”

I was fighting dirty. It’s what I did. But I needed to know there was something for me out there. It was the only way I’d make it through any of this.

“That’s not fair. You’re not being fair!” she shouted, and then cast an embarrassed look around, realizing how loud she had been.

“This was a mistake. I’ve got to go. Good luck, Maxx. I mean that. Really,” she said, pushing past me and heading toward the side gate that led out to the parking lot.