Lead Me Not (45 page)

“Please, Renee. Just give me another chance,” Devon begged, and Renee’s eyes were filling with tears. Shit, she was going to cave.

She couldn’t cave! If she gave in, then what was to stop me from doing the same? We needed to be strong. We had to do it together.

So I did the only thing I could, I screamed at the top of my lungs.

Devon turned on me, rage making him ugly.

“Shut up, you stupid bitch!” Devon roared, knocking me backward. His blow hit my shoulder, and I fell to the floor.

And finally Renee woke up. With trembling hands she pulled out her cell phone and held it up.

“Get out, Devon.
Never
come back here! We are done! We have been over for a long time! I never,
ever
want to see your sick, sorry face again! If you don’t leave in the next thirty seconds, I’m calling the police. I’ll get a restraining order. Your ass will be in so much trouble! And then what would Mommy and Daddy say about that?” she asked, her lips twisting in a smirk I had never seen her wear. Her shoulders were back and her chin lifted. I knew Devon terrified her, but she was standing strong. I had never been more proud of her.

Devon frowned, as though not sure he had heard her correctly. “Baby, you can’t mean that. We belong together. I love you,” he tried again.

Renee started to dial numbers and then was speaking into the phone.

“Yes, I’m being stalked, and he’s here now. His name is Devon Keeton and he’s my ex-boyfriend. I’m scared for my safety,” Renee said into the phone.

Devon was furious. He looked ready to spit nails. With Renee still talking to the dispatch officer, he sprinted out the door.

I hastily closed the door behind him and locked it.

“He just left,” Renee was saying into the phone. She sagged down the wall to sit on the floor.

“I don’t think he’ll come back. You don’t need to send anyone. Okay. I will. Thank you.”

She hung up the phone, and her head dropped in her hands. I
put my arm around her shoulders.

“I’ve got to go down to the courthouse and file a preliminary restraining order. But maybe he won’t do anything. Maybe he’ll leave me alone now,” Renee said, looking worn down but faintly hopeful.

“I’m not sure. But I think you should get one. For your own peace of mind,” I told her.

Renee nodded, and we were quiet for a while. Then she looked at me, her face weary.

“Why do we do this to ourselves, Aubrey? Why do we give our hearts to men who crush them? I thought Devon was my prince. God, I thought he loved me. I’m such an idiot.” She was sobbing, and I was crying with her. For her. For myself. For every shitty relationship that ended in tears.

“Love shouldn’t feel like this,” Renee said, sniffling through her tears. And she was right. This burning, aching pain deep in my chest shouldn’t be what love feels like. It wasn’t healthy. It wasn’t right. And unfortunately, it just wouldn’t go away.

I was a woman trapped.

“Come on, I’ll go with you to the courthouse. Then I’ll treat you to that chocolate cake you love from Caketopia,” I offered gently.

Renee rubbed the tears from her cheeks and gave me a brave smile.

At least someone was learning from her mistakes before it was too late.

After waiting with Renee to meet with the magistrate, I had stepped outside and, in a moment of weakness, tried to call Maxx again.

So much for my stern resolve.

But I couldn’t help it. My keen sense of dread the longer he stayed off the radar wouldn’t subside.

Of course he didn’t answer.

I had tucked my phone into my pocket, and when Renee was done I had pretended that nothing was wrong. Afterward I had taken Renee to her favorite bakery next to the campus and started plying her with baked goods.

Renee hadn’t cried. She hadn’t wavered in her decision to get the restraining order.

She was downright amazing.

“Aren’t you going to eat those?” Renee asked after polishing off her hot chocolate. I slid the plate toward her.

“Have at ’em,” I said with the best smile I could muster.

My phone started ringing in my pocket, and just like every other time, my heart gave a thrill of hope that it would be Maxx on the other end.

And just like every other time in the past week, I was disappointed that it wasn’t.

I was, however, surprised to see it was Kristie Hinkle, my support group co-facilitator.

“Who is it?” Renee asked, seeing the look on my face.

“My co-facilitator for group,” I replied as the phone continued to ring.

“Well, shouldn’t you answer it?” Renee urged.

I laughed a bit nervously and connected the call.

“Hello?”

“Hi, Aubrey. I’ll make this quick. I need to meet with you. Today, if possible,” she said, her tone brusque. We had already met for support group this week, so I couldn’t think of any reason she had to meet with me so soon afterward.

“Uh, sure.” I stumbled over my words.

“Good. I’m at my office downtown. Do you know where that
is?” she asked. Her voice was cold, and I felt the tingling of alarm along the back of my neck.

“Yes. I think I do,” I responded.

“Can you be here within the hour? I have a meeting later in the afternoon, but I need to talk with you first,” she said.

“I can be there.”

“See you then,” Kristie said and then hung up.

I stared down at my phone for a moment.

“Is everything all right?” Renee asked, wiping her fingers on a napkin.

I gave her another smile, this one fake as hell. “Kristie wants to talk with me at her office in town. Are you okay to head back to the apartment by yourself?” I asked, hating to leave her so soon after the confrontation with Devon.

Renee waved me away. “I’ll be fine. I’m going to go to the library for a while. Keep my mind busy.”

I put my hand over hers. “I can call Kristie back and reschedule if you don’t want to be alone,” I offered, hoping she’d take me up on it. Instinctively, I knew that I wasn’t going to like whatever Kristie wanted to discuss with me.

Renee tried to discreetly wipe away the tears that escaped from her eyes, but I had seen them. She was struggling, and I felt like the shittiest friend on the planet for leaving her right now.

“I’ll meet up with you at the apartment later.” Renee cleared her throat, bowing her head so I wouldn’t see her now red-rimmed eyes.

“It’s okay to cry over him. You loved him. It’s only natural,” I said gently.

Renee lifted her tear-filled eyes and gave me a watery smile.

“He doesn’t deserve my tears, but God help me, I can’t help but cry for him anyway.” Renee sniffled, and I got up to give her a hug.

“I’ll hurry back,” I promised.

Kristie’s office was warm and cozy. She worked at the local community services board, which helped people with addictions and mental health issues living in the city. I had been waiting for only a few minutes when she opened her office door and ushered me inside.

Her walls were painted a golden yellow, her one window covered in a gauzy white curtain. She had several crystals and stained-glass pieces hanging on the glass, bouncing rainbows around the room.

The bookshelf was filled with books and framed photographs. Instead of clinical chairs, Kristie had a plush, red couch shoved against the far wall, complete with throw pillows.

Under any other circumstances, Kristie’s office would have felt relaxing. But I could tell instantly from the way Kristie was looking at me that something was wrong.

“Have a seat, Aubrey,” Kristie said, indicating the couch. I sat down, and instead of returning to her desk, Kristie sat down beside me.

I knew Kristie wasn’t my biggest fan. Despite her positive reports to Dr. Lowell, I knew that after my verbal outburst earlier in the semester she was just biding her time until the group was finished so she could be rid of me. I had picked up on her wariness and underlying annoyance even as she attempted to feign professional support.

So I was surprised to see sympathy on her face. She was looking at me as though she felt sorry for me. Oh shit, what the hell was going on?

Kristie turned and pulled a framed picture off her desk. It was of her and a group of women. It was easy to tell from their dress that the picture was a decade or two old. Kristie was much younger in the photograph and had actually been very pretty.

“This was taken at my first job out of college. I worked as the services coordinator for a domestic-violence shelter back in Ohio. I loved that job. The women and children I worked with were unbelievable.” Kristie put the picture back on her desk and then turned to me.

“I really struggled back then with my role there. I worked in an environment that served as the home for these people. They relied on me to provide for their basic needs: safety, food, shelter. It was easy to confuse work with friendship at times.”

I didn’t quite understand Kristie’s need to take me on a walk down her memory lane. But her next words made it all too clear why I was there.

“Boundaries get blurred. Relationships form that shouldn’t. It’s easy to get confused. We come into this field because we care. We want to help. Sometimes we take that to a place we shouldn’t.”

This was about Maxx.

She knew.

I swallowed around the lump in my throat. I was having a hard time breathing. I felt like my world was starting to implode around me.

Kristie turned back to the picture. “I started to think of those women as my friends. But they weren’t. They were clients. They were there because they had experienced an incredible trauma. They didn’t understand boundaries. It was my job, as their counselor, to model them. And I had a hard time with that. How do you assert authority over women who view you as their friend?”

Kristie looked at me, her eyes blazing. “I had to ask one of the
women to leave the shelter for not complying with the rules. She got understandably angry. But the worst part was when she looked at me and said
I thought you were my friend.
And that’s when I knew I had screwed up. That I had allowed my personal feelings to get in the way of doing my job.”

She scrutinized me closely. “Do you understand what I’m saying?” she asked me.

I swallowed again, my mouth dry.

“I’m . . . I’m not sure,” I said awkwardly.

Kristie let out a huge sigh and got to her feet and went to sit behind her desk. It was obvious she was putting distance between us before she delivered the blow.

“I’ve been approached about something very upsetting. I was told that you were engaging in an inappropriate relationship with someone in the support group.”

And the axe had fallen.

Kristie continued. “I have to take all allegations like this very seriously. So I did some digging, and it has become clear to me that you and Maxx Demelo are in fact seeing each other.” She stopped, looking at me, as though waiting for my denial.

What was there to say? I had been busted. Just as I had feared I would one day be, though the “one day” came much sooner than I had anticipated.

“Well, Aubrey, what do you have to say about this?” Now she sounded like a grade-school teacher and I had been caught chewing gum in class. I hated feeling small, and Kristie Hinkle was making me feel very, very small.

I knew I had messed up. I had been taking a huge risk when I had gotten involved with Maxx. I had put everything on the line to be with him, and for what?

Look where our relationship was now. It was nonexistent because he had chosen drugs over me.

But I couldn’t forget how much I loved him. How in those moments when we were together, with nothing between us but breath and skin, it was perfect. Seeing him with his brother, discovering who he was before drugs had come into his life, sledding with him in a place that was special to him, watching him cook me a badly burned dinner, these moments had shown me a passionate and complicated man. A man who was worth the effort.

I wouldn’t apologize for following my heart for the first time in my life. For letting go of my obsessive need for control and to just
feel.

For all the heartache, for everything Maxx had put me through, I could
never
regret opening myself to him. I had been closed off for so long that I was slowly dying inside—until Maxx forced me to be someone that I had forgotten I could be.