Renee looped her arm through mine and I found myself leaning on her, appreciating the sign of solidarity. “Oh come on. You’ve got this, girl. If there’s one thing I know about my friend, it’s that she’s a survivor. And you can get through this.” Brooks nodded in agreement.

I began to feel bolstered with a renewed sense of strength. Dr. Lowell was right: I needed to take the time to sort myself out. To prove to everyone I wasn’t a total head case.

Brooks walked on my other side, a few feet away from us. His presence was surprisingly comforting, considering how strained things had been between us recently. Our friendship had taken a hit after he had found out about my relationship with Maxx. He had been understandably disapproving. And it didn’t help that Brooks also happened to be my ex-boyfriend.

At the time I had been infuriated by his censure. But Brooks had been right all along: I’d been building a relationship with a man who was hell-bent on self-destruction. And that relationship had torn everything apart: school, my friendships, my self-respect. In the end, Maxx had almost died, and I had come perilously close to losing it all. Now here I was, standing in the rubble, trying to figure out how to put all of the pieces back together.

I looked over at Renee, who gave me a reassuring smile, and realized that one good thing had come out of all of this ugliness. Our friendship was stronger than ever. We had a connection that hadn’t been there before.

If anyone could understand how difficult it was to move past a destructive relationship, it was Renee. Like me, she was trying to rebuild a life that had gone dangerously off track as a result of her love for the wrong man.

Brooks reached out and grabbed ahold of my arm, pulling me to a stop. “Hey, you’ll be fine. You’re one of the strongest people I know. And you won’t let anything or anyone hold you back.” Brooks took hold of my hand and gave it a squeeze.

“I know you’re still beating yourself up. But that needs to stop. I think it’s time you let all of that past shit go. Move on. It’s way past time,” he advised, and I knew he was right.

He had given me versions of this speech many times in the last two weeks, and I hadn’t been ready to hear it. But walking away from the psychology building and experiencing one of the lowest points of my life, I think that perhaps I was finally hearing him. Finally taking it in.

I gave him a small but genuine smile and then extracted my fingers from his and tucked them into my pockets. Even though I appreciated his faith in me, I was discomfited by his expression of physical affection. We hadn’t held hands since we’d dated a few years ago, and his touch, with its familiar intimacy after all this time, felt strange. Not exactly wrong, but not exactly right either.

Not when my skin still remembered the feel of hands that I missed more desperately than I should.

“Thanks, that means a lot,” I said sincerely.

“If you’re okay, I’ve got to head to my study group. I can come by later . . . if you want,” Brooks suggested, sounding uncertain. His hesitance was obvious, as though not entirely sure he should even be making the offer.

I jerked my hand out of its hiding spot in my jacket pocket and took his again, feeling the need to give him some reassurance. I had to force my hand to curl around his. My fingers seemed to have a mind of their own and almost flinched at the contact.

It’s just Brooks. I care about Brooks. There’s nothing wrong with touching him this way.

Why did I feel like I had to convince myself? What was I trying to prove, anyway?

“Of course I want you to come over. But only if you bring the new Nicholas Sparks movie,” I teased, trying for some normalcy to drown out the abnormal feelings that raged inside me. As I looked up at Brooks, his dark hair falling into his eyes, I wondered if things between us would ever be easy again. The discomfort made me edgy.

Brooks held on to my hand, his fingers lingering on mine for a moment too long. My stomach twisted, my heart recoiled, and I immediately moved away. Something that looked a lot like disappointment flickered in Brooks’s eyes as I took an obvious step back.

Brooks gave me a lopsided grin that was more than a little forced. “You got it,” he said, hoisting his book bag up over his shoulder, and looked at my silent roommate.

“See ya, Renee,” Brooks said offhandedly as he turned to walk away.

I let out a sigh and pulled my scarf tighter around my neck to ward off the late afternoon chill. I was tired of the achy cold. I felt it from the inside out and longed to feel warm again.

But I wasn’t sure that was possible.

Renee walked beside me, her chin tucked into the collar of her jacket. “It’ll get better, Aubrey. I promise. This is your second chance. Your time for something more.”

I hoped she was right. I was desperate for that something better.

I can be so much more for you. I want to be everything you could ever want.

It had only been a matter of weeks since Maxx had said those words, his intense blue eyes staring into mine, and had given me his heart. Only weeks since he had made promises he hadn’t been able to keep. It was such a short amount of time for my entire life to change.

But it had changed. And now all I could do was accept it and move on. If only it were that simple.

My eyes were drawn to the brick wall that ran along the edge of the green. The once vibrant colors of Maxx’s street art had faded, but I could still see the painting of a woman walking off a cliff. The word Compulsion was woven into her familiar blond hair. It was a small part of the complicated man who continued to own me. The tiny, intricate X’s dotted throughout the picture seemed to scream at me. Taunting me with their presence.

Even when he was gone, Maxx was everywhere. His art. His love. His chaos.

I couldn’t escape him. And I was terrified that in the darkest recesses of my heart I still didn’t want to.

chapter

two

aubrey

monotony.

Routine.

Blasé consistency.

That is what my life had deteriorated to.

At one time I had wanted these blissfully mundane adjectives to define my life. I had sought out the plain and unassuming. But after losing my sister, Jayme, in my senior year of high school, I hadn’t been in a position to be spontaneous or exciting. Impulsivity scared the shit out of me.

Jayme had danced on the edge and had fallen over. So I wanted my feet firmly on the ground. I needed to know what came next. That there was a B after A. That when I walked out my door every morning I knew exactly what to expect. So I became boring. And that was A-OK.

Until Maxx had stormed into my life and turned everything upside down. His intensity had scared me. He pulled me under by the force of his passion, and when I threw myself into his wild world, I found a piece of myself that had lain dormant for entirely too long. In a way, Maxx had brought me back to life. And I had loved him for resurrecting the girl who’d disappeared long ago. But when we lost control, when he hit rock bottom and I tumbled along after him, I made the decision that spontaneity and chaos simply didn’t have a place in my life anymore.

But I missed it. Life on the edge of the blade had been exhilarating. Now that he was gone I found myself trying to fit back into a life that I had so obviously outgrown. To become a woman I no longer knew how to be. And no matter how much I tried to force my feet back into those shoes, they didn’t seem to fit anymore. That piece of me that Maxx resurrected was there, lurking beneath the surface.

“Dude, are you still breathing?” Brooks asked, poking my arm from his spot beside me on my worn-out couch.