Lead Me Not (18 page)

I chuckled, though it was a weak impersonation of my normal laugh. “Hang tight, I’ll be there in a few minutes,” I promised and then hung up.

When I got back to my apartment, Brooks was sitting on the floor outside my door, texting someone. Looking at him, I couldn’t understand why he didn’t date. He was a good-looking guy who could be doing a lot more with his Saturday night than hanging out with a girl who would never put out for him again.

I wondered, not for the first time, why he limited his social life to hanging out with me. I really hoped the reason wasn’t something akin to residual feelings that could never be reciprocated.

“You’re finally here! My ass was going numb,” Brooks grumbled, getting to his feet as I unlocked the door. I turned on the light and about flipped my shit.

“Whoa. What happened in here? This isn’t OCD-compatible,”
Brooks said, picking up a plundered pretzel bag from the floor. There were empty beer bottles on the coffee table and dishes on the floor by the couch. Trash and discarded food littered the kitchen counters.

“I was gone for three hours! Are you kidding me?” I yelled, slamming the door behind me. I couldn’t deal with this crap anymore! This was Devon doing what Devon did best—being a dick.

“I’ll clean up. You go get dressed,” Brooks offered. I started to argue.

“We’ll be here all night if I leave you to do it,” he explained, and I knew he was right. I swallowed my need to fix and tidy and went and got changed. I looked in the mirror and cringed. My face was red and splotchy, my lips puffy. I couldn’t believe Brooks hadn’t interrogated me over my very obvious state of disarray.

After I had changed into a short black dress and my knee-high black boots, I pulled my hair into a high ponytail and darkened my eyes so that they stood out. Not bad for fifteen minutes of prep time.

Brooks had straightened up the best his guy chromosome set was capable of. Seeing the way he had replaced the couch cushions made my eyes twitch, but I appreciated the effort.

He looked up when I came in and appeared relieved to be able to cease his cleaning duties. “Awesome, let’s go!” he said, ushering me out the door.

“Do you know where we’re going?” I asked, wondering if we’d have to trek through the city to find a mysterious painting to determine our location for the night.

“Yeah, I spoke to some of the guys in my building, and they gave me the address,” Brooks said distractedly, hooking his phone up and putting the location into the GPS. I was a little disappointed. I may have been late to the street art appreciation party, but I was now an X fangirl all the way.

We drove through the city until we reached the interstate. “Where the heck are we going?” I asked.

“Apparently the club is in an old textile factory twenty minutes away,” he explained, merging onto the darkened highway.

I spoke very little on the drive. My head was too full of other things—those other things being Maxx freaking Demelo. Why had he left so abruptly?

That question burned a hole in my brain and was driving me crazy with a niggling insecurity. My self-esteem had taken a beating, and I didn’t like it one bit.

Almost thirty minutes later we were pulling into a large parking lot teeming with cars. The usual crowd of raver kids and emo rejects were milling about, making their way to a dark building in the distance.

And just like every time I approached Compulsion, I felt an instant rush of excitement and anticipation. I was becoming more than a little addicted. It was exhilarating and sort of scary. But it wasn’t the type of scary that made me want to run in the opposite direction. Not anymore. It was a scary that I wanted to explore and embrace.

Brooks pulled me toward the huge line, and we took our places. Part of the fun was the people-watching. Compulsion brought out all kinds—from the preppy boys trying their hand at dressing like badasses to the truly freaky. Take the woman wearing pasties and black leather panties—this dominatrix queen held a metal chain attached to a man dressed as a gimp, complete with ball gag.

Brooks discreetly pointed out the group of women, possibly in their thirties, who looked as though they had taken a night off from the coven, with their long, flowing dresses, flower garlands, brightly painted, talon-like fingernails, and necklaces made from what appeared to be human teeth.

We passed the bouncer’s keen inspection, and then we were
inside. I felt as though the heat and the music were smothering me. It was exactly what I needed.

This time when I ordered my drink, I didn’t take my eyes off the beverage. I had learned my lesson. Brooks had gone to dance; I had politely declined, wanting to soak it all in. I also wanted to see if my mystery man would make an appearance.

Finally tired of playing wallflower, I moved into the crowd and started dancing. I had never been a great dancer, but I liked it anyway. Lucky for me, the dancing at Compulsion didn’t require a lot of skill. People were bobbing on their feet, glow sticks between their teeth.

I sort of rocked my head from side to side, swinging my hair into my face. My arms rose above my head, and I started to move in time with the thumping bass.

Dancing at Compulsion was a communal experience. Complete strangers pressed against me, and we moved together like one primal beast of sweat and heat. My OCD had taken a backseat to the energy. It was unreal.

A girl with bright purple hair grabbed my hand and looped my arm around her waist. We rocked our hips together, dancing, two people who enjoyed the music, nothing more, nothing less. There was something incredibly freeing about being physically close to so many people who were all here for the same reason.

To escape.

I felt a set of hands on my hips, and without bothering to look behind me, I pulled purple-hair girl into me, and I was dancing in a crazy, debauched sandwich.

It was completely out of character for me, but for once I just went with it. That was the real beauty of Compulsion. It made what was out of the ordinary seem possible.

I loved it. I never wanted to leave.

One song bled into the next without pause. As my dancing
partners changed, I barely registered their faces. I didn’t talk to any of them. Words weren’t necessary. We weren’t here to make friends.

We were there to just
be.

It could have been minutes later. It could have been hours. But I finally realized how tired and sweaty I was. My legs felt wobbly from all the bouncing and jumping. My hair was plastered to the side of my face, and I was way too warm.

I pulled away from my newest dance partner, a guy with more tattoos than uninked skin. He didn’t protest, just turned and started dancing with someone else.

I pushed through the throng and leaned against the back wall, trying to control my breathing. I couldn’t see Brooks. I only hoped he was still around somewhere. I couldn’t imagine him leaving me behind, but when I pulled my phone out of my pocket I was shocked to see that it was already one-thirty in the morning.

This place seemed to suck you into a void, and before you knew it, you’d lost all sense of time.

A girl wearing barely any clothing came up next to me. “You lookin’ for anything?” she asked, yelling into my ear.

“What?” I asked, not understanding what she was asking.

The girl rolled her eyes and pressed a small bag in my hand. I held it up in front of my face and saw that it held a tiny pill. The girl pushed my hand down. “Don’t be so obvious about it,” she said in irritation.

I tried to hand it back to her with a shake of my head. “I’m not interested in this stuff.”

The girl shoved my hand back. “It’s a free sample. You want more, you’ll have to find it yourself. Don’t be a narc; just enjoy the ride,” she said, her head bobbing in time to the beat. With a final pointed glance in my direction, she disappeared into the crowd.

I didn’t want the drugs. But I didn’t know what to do with
them, either.

I shook the small plastic bag, wondering what exactly the girl had given me. I was intrigued, despite my better judgment.

I shook the pill onto my palm and stared at it as though it would give me the answer. But I knew one thing: This stuff was bad. I knew this was the kind of crap that had killed my sister.

Yet I was curious.

What was it about being in this place that made me want to indulge in the scary and unknown? It was nuts. It was completely illogical.

And I was smarter than that.

I had to be.

I hastily put the pill back in the baggie and dropped it on the floor, smashing it under my boot.

I felt jittery. The brush with a temptation I didn’t entirely understand rattled me, but I felt proud of myself for not giving in.

And then I saw
him
.

The guy with the baseball cap. The one who had stopped me from becoming a rapist’s plaything. The man who had prevented me from being trampled to death my first night at the club.

The guy whose face was still a mystery.

He was talking to a man not twelve feet from me. They were partially hidden in a dark corner. Their discussion appeared heated, but it was definitely my faceless guy. I recognized the broad width of his shoulders and the telltale cap pulled low over his eyes.

I started to walk toward him. It was as though I was being pulled toward him.

I watched as he took some money, tucking the wad in his back pocket. I noticed my mystery man put something in the other guy’s outstretched palm. The subtle exchange was carried out in less than thirty seconds, but it was obvious what was happening.

My mystery guy was a drug dealer.

Remembering the baggie I had discarded on the floor, I had to wonder if he was the one circulating that shit in the crowd. Considering the steady flow of “customers,” it was an easy association to make.

Nice guy, my ass. It was obvious he was like every other predator looking for an easy mark. I was devastated by the new assumption that perhaps our encounters had been nothing more than a chance for him to acquire a new customer. And here I was thinking I was special.

After another guy secured a pocketful of something that clearly made him very happy, a girl took his place and pressed into mystery dude, her breasts brushing his arm. She opened her mouth, and he dropped something onto her tongue. She rolled her head back, her barely concealed breasts popping out of her shirt.

The girl wrapped her arms around mystery guy’s neck and rubbed against him provocatively. I couldn’t see his eyes, but his mouth was grinning. He put something in his mouth and continued to allow the girl to move against him.

The girl reached up and pulled his cap off, and for the first time I could see his hair. It was blond and curled around his ears in a very familiar way.

I pushed through the crowd, getting closer. And then I stopped, frozen in place.

The guy turned, his hands resting on the girl’s hips while she writhed against him. His cap had been discarded on the floor, and I could see his face in the red light that hung above him.

It was Maxx.

Suddenly something dark and ugly unfurled in my belly—something that was possessive and territorial and that pierced with the sting of betrayal.

Only a few hours ago he had been pressed intimately against me. A few hours ago, I thought that we had connected, that I had meant something to him
.

But watching him here, in the flickering shadows, wearing the face I recognized but didn’t yet understand, I felt like a complete and total idiot. How did I not recognize Maxx in the broad set of the mystery guy’s shoulders? How had I missed the soft curls that I had felt with my fingers just a few hours ago?

I watched as he popped another pill in his mouth and then pulled away from the girl, who reached after him. He gave her a less than gentle shove, and she stumbled back, almost losing her balance. He bent down to pick up his cap and set it back on his head. He pulled it low over his eyes, hiding his face again.

But there was no more hiding who he was. He wasn’t a mystery. He wasn’t a hidden savior.

He was something else entirely.

I desperately tried to ignore the twinge inside me that screamed,
W
ait, there has to be more to him than this.

I backed away, using the mass of bodies as a shield between me and the boy I had briefly allowed inside my carefully constructed walls.

Maxx started to move through the crowd, shouldering people out of his way. I don’t know what possessed me, but I began to follow him. I stayed far enough back that he couldn’t know he was being shadowed.

My stomach was a twisted knot.

Maxx was stopped frequently, and he would lead people to the outskirts of the dance floor, where he would conduct his “busi
ness.” It was easy to see that he delighted in his role in this world. He teased the girls who begged for what he had tucked in his pockets. He aggressively stared down the guys who were equally desperate to procure his goods.

And through it all, he walked the room like he owned the place. He was high, not only on the pills he kept tucking under his tongue, but also on his own power.

This place, which had seemed like an escape, now seemed more like a prison. I felt trapped by the secrets it had revealed—Maxx’s secrets.

I had known Maxx was bad news the day he walked into the support group. I knew he had baggage. I knew he had demons. I just thought he was actively fighting them, that he was
trying
.

But as I stalked him through the club, it was clear he wasn’t fighting anything. This was a man who gloried in the person he was
.

He was a messy, self-destructive, narcissistic person.

My heart ached. My brain felt overloaded, and yet I couldn’t make myself turn away from the person he really was.

I had always prided myself on reading people and situations accurately, and my initial impression of Maxx had been a huge neon sign screaming
Uh-oh!
So why hadn’t I listened? Why had I ignored that instinct and allowed myself to be swept up in the intoxicating illusion he had created?