“I don’t know. I thought it might have something to do with your sister,” he suggested, his face showing nothing but kind concern.

How dare he throw that back in my face! I had confided in him in a moment of weakness. I should have known I’d come to regret it. My skin flushed, and I felt myself getting angry. Maxx elicited such passionate feelings in me. Whether they were anger or lust, I felt them strongly and overwhelmingly.

He was dangerous for my constitution.

“It’s not appropriate for us to be talking about this,” I said coldly, wishing I had left when I had wanted to.

“I’m not trying to be inappropriate. I told you I thought that talking about your sister was an incredibly brave thing to do. I respect that. I respect you,” Maxx said earnestly.

“I just think that, given what happened to her, it would make you determined to help other people like her. It makes sense. That’s all I was trying to say. I’m sorry if my bringing it up upsets you. That was insensitive of me,” he said, full of apology.

Okay, so maybe I was overreacting a bit. But talking about Jayme with anyone put me on edge. And the way he had casually slipped it into our conversation left me feeling jangled.

Talking with Maxx was an oddly intimate experience. We might as well be sitting here naked.

Now I was thinking about him naked.

Crap!

“It’s fine,” I said, surprising myself with the truth of it. I couldn’t hold his observation against him because it had been the truth.

“And, yeah, I guess Jayme is why I’m doing this,” I admitted, wishing I could staple my mouth shut. Where was my brain’s shut-down function when I needed it? Why was I throwing up information about myself to Maxx of all people?

I’m sure it had nothing to do with those incredible eyes that seemed to beg me to give up my secrets.

“It’s great that you have something you want to do with your life that means something. There’s very little in my own life that I feel that sort of passion about,” Maxx said.

“It sounds like you have something, though, and that’s the place to start,” I offered.

Maxx’s eyes darkened. They literally smoldered. I had always thought that was trite nonsense best reserved for sappy romance novels. But no, Maxx was doing the whole smoldering thing really well.

“You’re right. It’s the perfect place to start,” he murmured, and my heart fluttered madly in my chest. There was that frustrating innuendo again. It left me unsettled and off-balance.

I got to my feet suddenly, knocking my chair to the floor. The clang echoed in the quiet library.

“I really have to go,” I said hurriedly, gathering my things.

Maxx frowned. “Did I say something wrong?” he asked, looking hurt.

“No, not at all. I just have things I need to do.” I was making excuses—bad ones. But after my meeting with Dr. Lowell and narrowly avoiding a reprimand, sharing confidences with a group member seemed a surefire way to land myself in a lot of trouble.

“I’ll see you next week,” I said, hugging my book bag to my chest and trying not to run away.

“Bye, Aubrey,” Maxx said, my name soft on his tongue.

aubrey

maxx had invaded my thoughts, whether I wanted him there or not. I kept replaying our conversations over and over again in my head. I berated myself for the ease with which I had spoken to him. I internally raged against my willingness to share pieces of myself that I had purposefully kept hidden. Most of all, I was puzzled by my uncharacteristic reaction toward someone I didn’t know, didn’t trust¸ didn’t want privy to the secrets inside me.

So why hadn’t I been stronger? Why had I exposed a vulnerability that I had thought I’d lost?

One thing was for sure: I had to learn from my mistakes and remember exactly who Maxx was, and who I was supposed to be.

Regardless of his beautiful blue eyes and sexy smile.

And I would definitely ignore the illogical desire to see him again.

Even if I was mesmerized by the man who had snuck his younger brother into the commons so he could eat. Even if I was strangely fixated on the person who had plucked a flower out of the cold January ground and given it to me with a smile on his face. And I was entirely too preoccupied with the boy who had shared how scared he was that he would lose himself to the addiction that controlled him.

The obnoxious need to fix him was there. I could feel it. It sat just beneath my staunch resolve, waiting for me to acknowledge that I wanted to be the one to bundle him up and take care of him.

Maxx was right. I had a major savior complex.

It was Saturday evening, and I had agreed to go back to Compulsion with Brooks. I hadn’t seen him much in the days following the disastrous support group. He had brought me soup and a movie, just as promised, but for the first time I had felt a strange undercurrent between us.

He had been off. There was no other word for it. When I had asked him what was wrong, he had said, “Nothing.” Which was code for Something’s bugging me, but I’m going to be annoyingly evasive about it just to drive you nuts.

I hadn’t pressed him. I wasn’t in the mood to play let’s figure out what’s crawled up Brooks Hamlin’s ass. If he wanted to talk about it, he would.

I knew that he was busy preparing for midterms and was stressed waiting to hear from the grad schools he’d applied to. He had told me enough times that his course load was tough. I had to believe that was the cause for his strange mood.

So why was I being paranoid that it had to do with something else entirely?

This concern, on top of my inexplicable feelings toward Maxx, had me feeling close to a postal meltdown. So I was beyond relieved when Brooks called and made the suggestion that we go back to Compulsion. He had been normal enough, and I had been able to persuade myself that I had been imagining everything.

Renee and I were still engaged in a tentative peace. We had even watched some cheesy sci-fi movie the other night before bed. We had made a silent agreement to avoid the subject of Devon. Doing so alleviated a lot of the tension that had established itself between us over the past six months.

It was only six-thirty. Brooks wouldn’t be coming to get me until ten. I had hours to kill. Renee was out on the couch, studying for her midterms. I had straightened and re-straightened my room a good half-dozen times. I had picked out my outfit for the night, and my reading for my courses was up-to-date. I found myself bored, and that was unusual. I didn’t get bored. I usually kept myself so busy, boredom wasn’t an option. Not knowing what else to do, I joined Renee in the living room.

A muted image of the Shopping Network flickered in the background, and Led Zeppelin played on the stereo. I flopped down on the couch and picked up the remote.

Renee glanced up, giving me a distracted smile before returning to her studying. It was nice seeing her focused on something that wasn’t he who shall not be named.

And then, as if the very thought of him summoned his presence, the doorbell chimed. “You expecting company?” I asked Renee, who shook her head. I got to my feet and started to cross the room to answer the door when it swung open.

Devon sauntered into the room, his hands holding plastic grocery bags filled with beer; two of his skeevy buddies trailed behind him. Devon didn’t bother to acknowledge me as he walked into my apartment and dumped the bags on my coffee table. His friends ground mud into the carpet as they walked into the room.

Devon snatched Renee’s textbook out of her hands and tossed it behind the couch. “It’s way past study time, baby,” he announced, flopping down on the couch beside her and propping his feet on the table, not even bothering to take off his shoes.