Share a sob story. Act like you believed the line of bullshit they threw at you. Then get your ass so far on the other side that you never had to think about it again.

But I had been stupid, a little too cocky, and I had gotten myself busted, though I had been lucky and had just sold most of what I had on me that night, leaving only a couple of pills. Possession, not intent to distribute, meant the difference between community service and mandatory counseling as opposed to sitting in a jail cell worrying about getting ass-raped after I dropped the soap in the showers.

So I would become the Maxx who felt guilt and shame, a guy who regretted his decisions, even as I planned how I would do it all over again.

Because choice had been taken from me a long time ago, and there was no place for guilt in the world I lived in.

I had walked into the room on Tuesday evening, expecting it to be the fucking mockery that it was.

What I hadn’t been expecting was to see a girl with long blond hair and eyes that had the power to cut through me like a knife. She had knocked me sideways, leaving me scrambling to find my footing.

I was drawn to her. I couldn’t help it. Some things were impossible to ignore—and the way my dick twitched in my pants as I stared at her long legs was one of them.

I laid it on thick. I knew how to say and do what was necessary to get what I wanted.

Except I got the distinct impression she wasn’t buying what I was selling. And I wasn’t sure what the hell I was supposed to do with that. It messed with my head, and it pissed me off.

But it also made me determined.

And whether she realized it or not, her dismissal was all the motivation I needed.

So I watched her watching me, and I figured that maybe this support group thing wouldn’t be half bad.

aubrey

“are you going to answer that?” Brooks asked from my couch, where he was doing a damned good impersonation of a deadbeat beer guzzler.

My phone vibrated on an endless loop as it danced across my coffee table. We were three hours into our weekly cram session. I was trying to study for my Developmental Psychology quiz, while Brooks made a good show of writing his paper for Behavioral Genetics.

Brooks and I were both pretty intense when it came to our course work, though perhaps at times I put a little more emphasis on the work part than Brooks did.

I had barely registered the fact that my phone had been going off for the past ten minutes. Brooks leaned across the coffee table and snapped his fingers an inch from my nose.

I scowled and batted his hand away. “Stop it!” I grumbled, flipping the page in my textbook, already immersed in language acquisition in children. Riveting stuff.

“Pick it up or turn it off, Aubrey, before I chuck it out the window,” Brooks threatened. I gave him an amused smirk, knowing the sound of his bark all too well. Brooks looked fried. His hair stood on end, and his eyes gave him more than a little bit of a harried look.

“Okay, okay. Settle down, boy,” I teased, grabbing my phone just before it fell onto the floor.

“Hello?” I said, without bothering to check the caller ID. Stupid Aubrey! I should have known by now to always check the caller ID.

“Bre. Finally! I’ve been trying to call you for over an hour!” my mother chastised into the phone. I instantly cringed. Not only at the sound of my mother’s disapproving voice but at her insistence in using that nickname.

It was a nickname that should have been buried with the person who had given it to me. But my mom continued to use it, and I knew that had everything to do with the pain it inflicted every time it was uttered.

“Sorry, Mom. My ringer was off. What can I do for you?” I asked, abandoning any semblance of civil small talk and opting for straight to the point.

I hadn’t spoken to my parents in four months. We had an understanding to leave each other alone, communicating only when necessary.

I hadn’t returned home to North Carolina in over two years. It had stopped being home for me after Jayme died.

“That’s ridiculous. What if something had happened? No one would have been able to reach you!” my mother reprimanded, digging that knife just a little deeper. She sounded concerned, but appearances were deceiving.

“Sorry, Mom,” I repeated. But an apology would never undo the damage of the last three years.

My mother gave a huff, obviously feeling righteous in her indignation. My mother wore martyrdom well. She was the self-sacrificing matriarch of an ungrateful family.

The whole thing made me sick.

“You need to come home,” my mother said without further preamble.

My chest squeezed, and I clenched the phone so tightly in my hand that I started to cut off circulation to my fingers.

I stayed quiet, not trusting myself to speak. I breathed in deeply through my nose. I didn’t dare look at Brooks, who I knew was watching me curiously. He had no idea of the emotional land mine I had walked into just by answering the phone. He wasn’t privy to the side of my life that I worked hard to hide from.

“Bre! Did you hear me? This is important. I wouldn’t bother calling otherwise,” she said harshly, cutting me open with the truth of her words.

“Why?” I finally asked, clearing my throat around the huge lump that had formed there.

My mother’s annoyed snort was loud in my ear. “Are you serious? Do I really need to remind you of what next weekend is?” she declared hatefully.

The lump dissolved around the flood of my anger. Fuck, no, I hadn’t forgotten! Forgetting would never be an option for me. She wasn’t the only person who had lost Jayme. But my parents acted as though they alone grieved the loss of the fifteen-year-old girl who had disappeared from our lives too soon.

“No, Mom. I didn’t forget,” I replied through gritted teeth. I wanted to yell and rage at her cold disregard for my feelings. But Aubrey Duncan was a master at containing emotion. I had to be. It was the only way I got by.

“The local teen center is doing a memorial in Jayme Marie’s memory, and they want us there. Your father is planning to say something. The newspaper will be there, as well as a local TV crew. The entire family should be present for it.” My mom’s words were final, not allowing any argument.

I was expected to obey, no questions asked.

But I wouldn’t.

I couldn’t.

As much as a part of me wanted to repair the gaping hole in my family, I couldn’t return to Marshall Creek. I couldn’t go back to the two-story brick house where I had grown up. I couldn’t walk past the closed door that would never open again.

No way.

“I can’t make it,” I said quietly, already bracing myself for the fallout.

“You can’t make it?” my mother asked angrily.

I shook my head, even though my mother couldn’t see me.

“You’re telling me that you won’t come home for a memorial in memory of your baby sister? You can’t take a couple of days out of your life to honor your sister? You of all people should understand how important this is! You owe this to her!” My mother’s voice cracked as it rose to a shrill screech.

I closed my eyes and tried not to let the hatred overtake me. Hatred for my mother, who would never allow me to forget how I had failed Jayme. Hatred for the drugs that had taken my sister before her time. Hatred for the fucking asshole who had given them to her.

And most of all, hatred for myself.

That hatred was a ferocious thing that smoldered in my belly. It was always there. It never went away. And my mother knew just how to stoke it into a full-blown forest fire.

“I have to go, Mom,” I said, not bothering to try to explain myself to her, to tell her that returning to Marshall Creek was like ripping a bandage off a wound that was only now starting to heal. There was no point. My mother wouldn’t have listened.