Was this guy for real?

I looked at the other group members and quickly realized they had all swallowed his Kool-Aid. Kristie seemed to think seriously about his statement as she leaned forward to rest her elbows on her knees.

“That seems like a pretty tall order, don’t you think?” she asked him, and I could tell she was as fascinated by Maxx as the rest of us. Everyone, even Evan and April, was fixated on the blond-haired, blue-eyed boy who wore his vulnerability like a badge of honor. It was so at odds with the cocksure, mocking guy who had walked in only fifteen minutes earlier. It was as though he were playing dress-up, trying to decide which character to be.

Maxx crossed his legs at the ankle and rested his hands in his lap. “I don’t think so,” he said. His eyes drifted my way again, and I felt like a mouse in a snare. I really wished he would stop looking at me.

“I’ve found my way into hell, and wanting salvation is the only thing that keeps me going.” His words were quiet and controlled, and I couldn’t tell if he was feeding us all a line or if he meant it.

“I’m ready to be saved. I need it, Kristie. So I will do whatever I have to do to get it.” He sounded almost angry. Everyone was quiet for a few minutes as if his words had struck a chord deep inside them.

Finally, Kristie blinked as she smiled at the group, shaking off the spell Maxx had created. “Well . . . ,” she began, and cleared her throat. “Let’s hope you find it,” Kristie said, a little too brightly. I watched Maxx and knew without a doubt that he was something dangerous.

He was something primal and unfettered—a force that could take everything and everyone down with him, burning it all in a violent flame. And then afterward he would dance on the ashes.

He was terrifying.

Chapter four

maxx

the group was a joke. But if I didn’t want to end up in the slammer, I’d have to suck it up and spend the next twelve weeks of my life talking about my f**king feelings. I had been to enough therapy in my twenty-one years to know the score. I knew how to play the part to get me through it.

Share a sob story. Act like you believed the line of bullshit they threw at you. Then get your ass so far on the other side that you never had to think about it again.

But I had been stupid, a little too cocky, and I had gotten myself busted, though I had been lucky and had just sold most of what I had on me that night, leaving only a couple of pills. Possession, not intent to distribute, meant the difference between community service and mandatory counseling as opposed to sitting in a jail cell worrying about getting ass-raped after I dropped the soap in the showers.

So I would become the Maxx who felt guilt and shame, a guy who regretted his decisions, even as I planned how I would do it all over again.

Because choice had been taken from me a long time ago, and there was no place for guilt in the world I lived in.

I had walked into the room on Tuesday evening, expecting it to be the f**king mockery that it was.

What I hadn’t been expecting was to see a girl with long blond hair and eyes that had the power to cut through me like a knife. She had knocked me sideways, leaving me scrambling to find my footing.

I was drawn to her. I couldn’t help it. Some things were impossible to ignore—and the way my dick twitched in my pants as I stared at her long legs was one of them.

I laid it on thick. I knew how to say and do what was necessary to get what I wanted.

Except I got the distinct impression she wasn’t buying what I was selling. And I wasn’t sure what the hell I was supposed to do with that. It messed with my head, and it pissed me off.

But it also made me determined.

And whether she realized it or not, her dismissal was all the motivation I needed.

So I watched her watching me, and I figured that maybe this support group thing wouldn’t be half bad.

Chapter five

aubrey

“are you going to answer that?” Brooks asked from my couch, where he was doing a damned good impersonation of a deadbeat beer guzzler.

My phone vibrated on an endless loop as it danced across my coffee table. We were three hours into our weekly cram session. I was trying to study for my Developmental Psychology quiz, while Brooks made a good show of writing his paper for Behavioral Genetics.

Brooks and I were both pretty intense when it came to our course work, though perhaps at times I put a little more emphasis on the work part than Brooks did.

I had barely registered the fact that my phone had been going off for the past ten minutes. Brooks leaned across the coffee table and snapped his fingers an inch from my nose.

I scowled and batted his hand away. “Stop it!” I grumbled, flipping the page in my textbook, already immersed in language acquisition in children. Riveting stuff.

“Pick it up or turn it off, Aubrey, before I chuck it out the window,” Brooks threatened. I gave him an amused smirk, knowing the sound of his bark all too well. Brooks looked fried. His hair stood on end, and his eyes gave him more than a little bit of a harried look.

“Okay, okay. Settle down, boy,” I teased, grabbing my phone just before it fell onto the floor.

“Hello?” I said, without bothering to check the caller ID. Stupid Aubrey! I should have known by now to always check the caller ID.

“Bre. Finally! I’ve been trying to call you for over an hour!” my mother chastised into the phone. I instantly cringed. Not only at the sound of my mother’s disapproving voice but at her insistence in using that nickname.

It was a nickname that should have been buried with the person who had given it to me. But my mom continued to use it, and I knew that had everything to do with the pain it inflicted every time it was uttered.