And what the hell was she doing here at all? That was the question I was having the hardest time wrapping my head around.

I reached over to my bedside table, searching for my tried-and-true fix to any problem. I pulled out the drawer and realized that it was empty.

“Shit,” I groaned, pulling myself off the bed, ignoring my protesting muscles as I fell to my knees to search for the bottle that was always there.

“Looking for something?”

I sat up so quickly that I felt light-headed. Aubrey put a bowl of soup down on the same bedside table I had been ransacking before squatting down beside me. I sat back on my haunches and put my hands through my hair.

“No, I was just . . .” I didn’t have an explanation and fuck it, she didn’t need one. This was my home. My room. My business.

Aubrey pulled something out of her pocket and held it up.

“What the hell?” I growled, reaching out with a trembling hand for the bottle she held.

Aubrey got to her feet, still holding my salvation between her fingers without a care for what that small brown bottle meant to me. Right now, it was everything, more than the girl who dangled it in front of me like a fucking carrot.

Was she taunting me? I saw red.

“Give it to me, now!” I demanded, advancing on her. I forgot about how shitty I felt. Adrenaline coursed through my system as I focused on getting the bottle away from her.

Aubrey looked unsure. In fact, she looked scared. I didn’t blame her. I could imagine what I looked like stalking toward her, ready to wrench the bottle from her fingers, viciously if necessary. I didn’t give a shit if I had to snap each one of those pretty little digits, I’d get what my body needed.

“Now, Aubrey,” I whispered, my voice shaking with anger. Aubrey’s lips trembled, and I could see she was trying not to cry. I didn’t care. There was only one thing I cared about right now.

She held the bottle out to me and hurriedly crossed the room to the door. I snatched it up and shook it. It was deafeningly silent. I ripped the top off and turned it upside down.

Empty.

“Where are they?” I roared. My rage was white-hot. Aubrey was shaking. But she didn’t leave the room. She didn’t run from me. She faced me on unsteady feet.

“They’re all gone, Maxx,” she said quietly.

No, I couldn’t have heard her right.

“That’s not possible,” I bit out, throwing the bottle across the room.

Aubrey shook her head, her hair flying around her face. “I swear, they’re gone. There’s nothing left,” she said.

I clenched my fists. I was going to fucking lose it.

And then Aubrey did the strangest thing. She walked back toward me and grabbed my face between her hands.

I tried to wrench myself away from her confining grip. I took hold of her wrists and squeezed them hard enough to crunch bone. Just then, I hated her. I wanted her to hurt the way I hurt.

Yet . . . I wanted her . . .

“Maxx, you don’t need that stuff,” she told me, with such confidence that if I were in my right mind, I would have believed her.

I yanked her hands off my face, still squeezing her wrists. “Don’t tell me what the fuck I need!” I yelled.

Then she kissed me. That crazy, delusional girl kissed me.

As if that would make me forget what it was I wanted.

As if she could ever replace what my body craved.

I pulled my mouth back from hers, infuriated. Enraged. She was breathing heavily, her eyes glassy with tears.

“Please, Maxx. Don’t do it. Be here. With me,” she begged. And then she was kissing me again, and she was telling me “I won’t leave you. I won’t ever leave you.”

And there was something about those words and the feel of her lips on mine that broke through the red haze of my anger, the inconsolable need that plagued me.

She wouldn’t leave me.

How could she know how desperate I was to hear that from her? From anybody?

And then I was kissing her back. Devouring her as though she were the drugs I hungered for. And for that brief moment she was something even better.

“Don’t leave me,” I sobbed against her mouth, my teeth bruising her lips as I punished her with my tongue. I meant it with every fiber of my being. I couldn’t survive without her. What a terrifying thought that was. But it was the honest-to-god truth. In that split second she had become the most vital thing in my world. She was the thing that could keep me sane. Keep me here. Keep me from diving off the cliff after the drugs my body wanted so badly.

She was the string holding me together. She was the only person to stay by my side even when I hadn’t asked her to. I hadn’t demanded a thing of her, yet she had given me everything. How could I not latch on to that like a parasite? How could I not try to suck every last drop out of her to keep myself alive?

How could I not begin to live in a fanciful delusion where she would be all that I needed and everything would be okay?

But she wouldn’t leave me. Those words held a promise I’d cling to.

The kiss began as the pinnacle of every hateful emotion, every negative, self-loathing thought. It wasn’t hearts and flowers and skipping through the sunshine. This was soul-filled angst shit that no one should ever want but delusional people chase after anyway.

But somewhere, somehow, it morphed into something else entirely. Aubrey took control and gentled the kiss. Her lips softened, her tongue an inviting caress. Her fingers curled into my greasy, filthy hair as though she never wanted to touch anything else ever again.

And then I wasn’t assaulting her mouth but worshipping it. Loving it. Tasting and enjoying it.

I knew I needed Aubrey. I needed her in the worst way possible. I was selfish and frantic, and I honestly didn’t care if I took her to hell with me because she would make the trip the sweetest thing I had ever experienced.

She was mine.

And I’d never let her go.

aubrey

two days.

That’s how long I had spent with Maxx at his apartment.

It was two days since I had driven him home after he had been beaten nearly to death at Compulsion.

It was two days since he had lost his mind as he went through the most intense and agonizing withdrawal I could ever imagine.

Two days, and my life had changed completely.

The shower was running. It was thirty minutes since Maxx had gone into the bathroom to clean up after I had forced him to eat some soup and bread. He had looked a sickly green after swallowing my less-than-palatable attempt at cooking, but he had kept it down.

We had done very little talking after I had kissed him. I don’t know why I had done that. It was such a stupid thing to do. My only excuse was that I had been at my wits’ end and terrified of the crazed glint in his eyes, as he demanded that I give him his drugs.

His withdrawal was bad. I knew that without ever having seen one firsthand before. I had read enough case studies to know that he was feeling the worst kind of physical and mental pain imaginable. His cravings had to be unreal.

And there were definitely moments when I didn’t doubt he’d hurt me to get what his body wanted so desperately.

But I stayed. Because I cared too much for the messed-up boy and his fucked-up life to ever walk away.

So while he had been railing against me, hurling threats that I was all too sure he’d keep, I had used the only weapon in my arsenal. My mouth and my hands.

And it had worked.

Well, sort of.

I’m by no means proclaiming a miracle. This wasn’t some sort of cheesy romance where the love of a good woman saved the boy from his demons.

If only it were that easy.

But my actions had shocked him. They had stayed the nastiness spewing from his lips. He hadn’t expected me to do that.