I got in my car and started driving.

Given where my head was at, was it any surprise that I found myself outside Aubrey’s apartment building at three o’clock in the morning?

Her street was empty. The air was cold and quiet. My breath puffed out from my mouth like fog.

The drugs should have made me mellow and relaxed. But things with Aubrey were making me anxious and restless.

I needed to get it out somehow.

I positioned the pots of paint on the sidewalk and grabbed my biggest brush. I popped open the top of the blue paint with a flat-head screwdriver and dipped my brush. Paint coated my freezing fingers as I swept the bristles in long, even strokes along the pavement.

I was frenzied while I worked. Focused. Manic.

I don’t know how long I was out there. I didn’t care that I could be discovered.

I just needed to paint.

I needed her to know what I was feeling.

How much I loved her.

How much she was breaking me.

When I was through, I dropped the brush and stood back, looking down.

Why couldn’t I for once paint something that wasn’t f**ked-up?

I sagged to my knees in front of the portrait of my despair.

I had painted the broken shards of my face. My mouth was open and screaming. It was obvious it was me in the shattered glass.

And then there was Aubrey, with her long blond hair, sweeping me into a heap of dust, gathering my pieces as she prepared to dump them in the trash.

This was Maxx.

And this was X.

This was both of us, bled out on the sidewalk for Aubrey to see.

Maybe she would finally know how much I wanted to give her all of me. Even as I fought it, the desire was still there. I didn’t want her to throw me away. I needed her to not give up on me.

And maybe one day I’d be able to give her everything she wanted.

I had fallen asleep quickly after I had gotten home from my late-night painting excursion. I woke up a few hours later sick and achy, but with a clearer head than I had had for some time.

Aubrey had been right. I was f**king up everything. The club, Gash, the drugs, they were taking over. There was little room left for anything else. Let alone Aubrey.

But I couldn’t let her go. The pills. The high. They felt too good. I had become too attached. How could I say good-bye to the one thing that kept me sane?

But I hated my need for it. I hated that when things got rough, that’s what I turned to. I looked into Aubrey’s eyes, and I saw myself as she did, a sad, pathetic excuse for a person.

But I couldn’t give her up. My habit was my truest love. The one I couldn’t live without.

Could I give up Aubrey?

No.

My obsessive painting last night should prove that.

I was in a bind. I couldn’t do without either of the things vying for my love, my attention, my soul.

Yet my relationship with Aubrey wasn’t the only thing falling apart.

I was spiraling. Worse than ever. I was losing the control I thought I was holding on to so tightly. My probation officer was breathing down my neck. It was costing me an arm and a leg to keep stocked with the herbal supplements I needed to fool the piss tests I was required to take every week.

That afternoon I was called into my academic adviser’s office. Dr. Ramsey was a stuffy dude who had the bulbous red nose of an alcoholic. I had a good idea of exactly what he kept stashed in that locked drawer in his desk.

He sat me down and looked at me over the rim of his glasses. “You’re failing everything, Maxx,” he said in his nasally drone.

I knew I hadn’t been doing that great, but I hadn’t thought I was actually failing.

“Well, shit,” I said, tapping my foot on the floor, already feeling antsy and agitated. I needed to get home. The pills I had taken before I had come to campus were already wearing off. I tried not to think about how it was starting to take more and more drugs to keep me on an even keel.

“That’s one way of putting it,” Dr. Ramsey said mildly, his brows furrowed in disapproval.

I knew he hated me. Just like I hated him. It was a match made in hell.

I took in the diplomas and certificates hanging on the wall. It was obvious Dr. Ramsey liked to show off, probably because he didn’t have anything else going for him but his modicum of success. Guys like him bugged the crap out of me.

Dr. Ramsey crossed his hands on top of his desk and pursed his lips. “Maxx, are you aware that you will need to get an A on every single exam in order to pass with a D?” he asked in that condescending way of his that deserved a punch to the throat.

“Well, I am now,” I told him dryly.

“And is that okay with you? To end up on academic probation with no chance of graduating? You’ll be lucky to still have a place at Longwood after this semester,” Dr. Ramsey remarked, curling his lip in disdain.

I was up to my eyeballs in disappointment. I sure as shit didn’t need it from snot for brains with too many diplomas and no dick in his pants. I got to my feet, shoving my hands into my pockets.

“I hear ya, loud and clear, Dr. Ramsey. Thanks for the pep talk,” I sneered, slamming out of his office without waiting for a comeback.

I left Dr. Ramsey’s office fuming. Sure, I hadn’t been as focused on school this past semester as I should have been. The club was taking up a lot of my time.

My failing grades had absolutely nothing to do with the tiny white pills that I was already obsessing about, the drugs that I couldn’t wait to get home to.

I was in complete denial that I was about to lose everything.