And I want you, Aubrey. All of you. Every tiny, perfect part. I want you to belong to me, only to me, so that you’ll never leave. Please don’t leave.

But I had left.

I threw the pillow back onto the bed and abruptly got to my feet. I stomped back out to the kitchen and opened the cabinet beneath his sink. I was glad to see several bottles of generic cleaner. I grabbed the paper towels and pulled the trash can over from its spot by the wall.

I started scooping the trash off the counter and into the bin. I began to spray down the counters and scrub them clean. I found a broom and systematically swept the remains of food and garbage from the floor.

When I was done, I began to attack the piles of dirty dishes, washing and drying them, then putting them away. I wouldn’t allow my mind to ask the questions about where he was and what he was doing. I couldn’t let myself consider how much not knowing bothered me.

I just kept cleaning.

After half an hour the kitchen was spotless, but I wasn’t finished. I moved on to the living room, gathering up dirty clothes and putting them into the hamper. Maxx didn’t have a vacuum cleaner, so I made do with the broom.

I straightened the couch cushions and wiped down the coffee table, trying not to gag as I disposed of the moldy food. I wasn’t entirely sure why I was doing it. Cleaning had always had a calming effect on me. It was the best way I knew to find some control in a world that had lost all sense of order.

And maybe there was a part of me that wanted to make this space clean and safe again. That maybe by scrubbing the dishes and washing his clothes, I could get rid of the remnants of the chaos that had defined both of our lives. That putting things in order would allow me to rid myself of the ghosts of this recent past. Erasing and removing the hurt and persistent longing.

And maybe if and when Maxx came home to his pretty, clean apartment, he’d be able to turn his life around.

Stop thinking about what-ifs, Aubrey! It doesn’t matter! I chastised myself.

With an armful of cleaning products I went back to his bedroom. Turning on the light, I could only stand there and look around as I was assaulted by a thousand memories that threatened to gut me all over again.

The nightstand was overturned; empty bottles were strewn across the room. I could see Maxx, in my head, searching desperately for his drugs. And then when he couldn’t find them, turning to the stuff that had almost killed him.

He had nearly died from a heroin overdose. I never realized he was messing with hard-core stuff. The pills had been bad enough, but shooting dope into your veins was something else entirely. How hypocritical it was of me to turn the other way when it came to him swallowing a few prescription meds but drawing the line when it came to a syringe full of smack.

The guilt flooded me with the excruciating memory of our last conversation. Of Maxx’s anxious pleas for me to stay. And how I had denied him the one thing he wanted so much.

I started carefully gathering the empty prescription bottles and tossing them into the garbage bag I had brought with me. There were at least thirty littering the floor. Thirty dirty little reminders of how deep into his addiction Maxx had been.

The cold plastic bottles practically burned my fingers as I picked them up. They disgusted me. Maxx disgusted me.

I disgusted me.

I turned my attention to the clothes that lay in piles everywhere. Some I put into the hamper to be washed. Others that appeared to be clean I put back in neat, tidy piles in his drawers. I straightened the clothes, my hands digging among the socks and shirts. My fingers brushed against a cool smoothness.

Knowing what I had found, I pulled out the crumpled photograph of Maxx with his family. Looking at the innocent smile on his boyish face hurt too much to bear. I quickly shoved it back into its hiding spot, unable to deal with the sight of a family that had been torn apart and the boy who would grow up to be a man hell-bent on destroying himself.

When I was finished with the clothes, I finally made my way to the bed. The disheveled sheets looked as though Maxx had just gotten out of them. With shaking hands I started to pull up the covers and line up the pillows.

Images flashed in front of my eyes. Memories of being tangled in these sheets, Maxx wrapped around me. Whispered words of love against sweaty skin.

I’ve been waiting my entire life for you. Maxx’s words had enfolded my heart and squeezed mercilessly. I had become addicted to those moments of sincerity and vulnerability that, to me, seemed to reveal the real man beneath the mask.

I blinked, clearing my head before another memory assaulted me.

He was on his side, his face pressed into the floor. His left arm was bare and stretched out beside him with a thin white strip of plastic tied tightly, just above the elbow . . . I laid my ear against his chest, listening to the strained beats. My tears soaked his shirt as I watched his chest stop moving and the beat of his heart fall into silence.

Then I lost it.

I fucking lost it.

I collapsed into a heap onto his bed, curling into a fetal position as I hugged his pillow tight to my chest.

When would it ever stop hurting so much?

Love was ruthless.

Love was pitiless.

Love was cruel.

Love fucking sucked.

Finally, when I had no more tears left, my body started to unclench, and I found that after the violence of my despair I could be soothed into relaxation. Because no matter the anguish Maxx had unleashed on my world, I felt the strongest sense of peace in his space, with his scent around me.

And there in the bed of the man I had loved and lost, I fell into an exhausted sleep.

chapter

three

maxx

there was a five-inch crack in the plaster above my head.

If I stared at it long enough, it seemed to grow and move right before my eyes.

I blinked and it stopped. Then it would start all over again.

Right now, that fucking crack was the most interesting thing in my life.

What a depressing realization.

“It’s time for group, Maxx.”

I didn’t bother to look toward the voice coming from the doorway. The air was stale with the smell of sweat and too much Axe cologne. My roommate, Dominic, an obese pothead, seemed to think that dousing himself in that shit replaced the necessity of a shower.

It was day eighteen at Barton House, a state-run rehab facility that had, for a brief period, seemed like the ticket to starting over.

I was now starting to rethink everything.

It had been easy to make the decision to come here. In the beginning I had been coming off the worst withdrawals of my life. I was still reeling from the fact that I had almost died and that all the people I loved had left me.

I had been alone.

Completely and totally alone.

I had not been in a good place.

So I came here thinking this was my new lease on life. This was my opportunity to show everyone that I didn’t want to end up another scary statistic in a brochure about addictions.

I would beat this shit before it beat me.

But then the days started to drift into each other, and once the initial desperation had worn off, I was left with the second-guessing.

Because the physical withdrawal was long gone. The seventy-two hours in the detox unit had taken care of that.

Now I was left with all the urges that came after my body had returned to stasis. The ones that were entirely in my head. The ones that made it really hard to stay.

Because the longer I stayed here, playing the part of the recovering addict, the harder it would be to face what waited for me out there.