But she looked fucking gorgeous. She always looked that way.

And she needed to leave.

“You need to get out of here,” I said, forcing my weak body to sit up. Aubrey looked as though she wanted to push me back down, but she didn’t move. She leveled me with an even look.

“I’m not going anywhere,” she said shortly.

For the first time, I looked around my room and was startled by the state of it. “What the hell happened in here?” I was asking that a lot.

Aubrey snorted. “You were what happened. You don’t remember, do you?” she asked softly, her face wearing an expression that I hated. Pity. And sympathy and every other fucking emotion that was totally and completely useless to me.

I didn’t need her pity, or her lectures.

“Seriously, Aubrey, get the fuck out. I don’t want you here,” I gritted out, swinging my legs around to rest on the floor. The cold air hit my bare legs, and I realized I was wearing only a pair of boxers.

Fuck me, did Aubrey undress me? Normally the thought of Aubrey taking my clothes off would be a full-on cock-hardening fantasy. Not now.

Right now, I was mortified.

“Get me my goddamned pants!” I barked, swaying with the effort to hold myself upright. And yes, I felt like shit for yelling at Aubrey like that. I didn’t miss the way she flinched. It was like a knife to the heart. This girl did something to me that made me feel things I wished I didn’t.

Guilt, shame, the desperate fucking need to be with her all the time.

But I realized there was good stuff too. She made me feel like a little kid on Christmas morning every time I knew I was going to see her. She filled me with anticipation and something else entirely—a desire to be something better.

And that made me both want to run as fast as I could in the other direction and to hold on to her with everything I had.

Aubrey slowly walked across my destroyed bedroom, leaned down, and picked up my jeans. Deliberately she closed the space between us. My chest felt tight. I was twitchy and weak. Watching her out of one eye was throwing me off-balance. I wanted to back away. I wanted to crouch in the corner and cower in shame. I hated her seeing me at my worst. I never wanted to be anything but my best around her.

But here we were. And there was no escaping the reality of what I knew she saw.

She gripped my pants in her hand and held them out for me to take, her eyes never leaving my face. Normally I would have met her bold stare head-on. I would have taken her challenge and enjoyed it.

This time I looked away, my gaze dropping to the floor to escape her.

I grabbed my jeans and put them on as quickly as my quivering body would allow.

“You’ll probably need some help,” Aubrey said matter-of-factly, holding up a button-down shirt. Why in the hell would I need help getting dressed?

I yanked the shirt out of her hand, not bothering to respond. But when I lifted my arm to push it through the sleeve, I was bowled over by a sharp pain in my ribs. It wasn’t that sort-of-hurts kind of pain. This was a cry-like-a-little-pussy-and-curl-into-a-ball agony.

My hand went up to the right side of my ribs, and the barest touch made me wince and gag. I looked down to see my rib cage covered in a pattern of yellow and green bruising.

“I think you’ve got some cracked ribs. Now that you’re awake, you should probably go to the hospital. Get yourself checked out,” Aubrey said. I glanced at her and noticed she hadn’t moved any closer to me. She hadn’t left, but she was giving me space.

I was both thankful and masochistically hating it.

I gingerly ran my fingers down the length of my battered flesh, and vague memories of Gash and Vin tickled my subconscious. I had the feeling I had gotten myself into some serious trouble.

As much as I wanted Aubrey to leave to spare myself the awkward embarrassment of admitting I needed her to help me, I was stuck. Right now I couldn’t do this on my own.

I needed her.

My god, I really fucking needed her.

The weight of that thought hit me with a bone-crushing force.

“Can you help me?” I asked begrudgingly. I wouldn’t meet her eyes when I conceded defeat. It was too much.

Aubrey didn’t say a word, but I felt her, I smelled her, I could practically taste her on my tongue as she stood in front of me, her fingers carefully buttoning up my shirt. Her hair brushed my face as she bent her head down. I couldn’t help but lean in, my nose brushing the crown of her head as I breathed her in.

She made sure not to touch my bare skin as she hastily did up the buttons. When she was finished, she gripped me by the arms and pushed me back down on the bed.

“Let me get you something to eat,” she said firmly, propping me up against my pillows. I couldn’t remember the last time I had been taken care of. Definitely not since my parents had died.

I had still been young when my mother passed away and my dad stopped caring about himself, let alone his two small sons, after she was gone. And then he had died too, and with him the last person responsible for taking care of me at all.

I had forgotten how it felt to be tended to. To be treated gently.

It had been a long time since anyone had done anything for me. I didn’t know what to do with the unexpected feelings Aubrey’s innocent offer to make me food created inside me. She made me feel cared for. Wanted. The blossoming of emotion in my chest suffocated me with a violent awareness. This woman could change everything.

“I’m not hungry,” I lied, trying to swallow the thick lump in my throat.

Aubrey ignored me and left me alone with my out-of-control emotions and aching body, lost in a minefield of feeling that was ready to detonate in the worst way possible.

I had too many questions and zero answers. If the state of my room was any indication, things had gotten ugly. I only hoped it had happened before Aubrey had arrived on the scene.

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.”