Losing Control : His Madness, His Cure Chapter 133

Nate doesn’t stop where he should, he never does.

“I was caught off guard, you know,” he says, voice almost tentative but not enough to keep from grating on me. “When you introduced Xander as your...well, boyfriend. Never in a million years would I have pictured—” He waves a hand at me like I’m a fucking exhibit, a mess too obvious to name. “Not with you being ....you.”

He falters, smile tugging at his mouth like he can soften it with some sad curve of his lips. Doesn’t finish the thought. Doesn’t need to.

I swallow hard, taste blood all over again. This isn’t what I need. Not now. The past dug up, turned over like rotten soil, when I’ve just come from burying it with fists and bruises in that ring.

But Nate... Nate talks. That’s his talent, his curse. He fills the silence like it owes him something.

“I think he’s good for you,” he goes on. “I could tell you really like him.” His eyes flick around the bare room, restless, like even the walls make him uncomfortable. Then he says, almost casually, “I remember you used to say you wanted to open up your own—”

“Nate.” My voice cuts sharp. His name is a warning. My head shakes once, slow. “Stop.”

He looks at me like I’ve sprouted horns, then narrows his eyes.

“I just don’t get it.”

I turn now, shoulders stiff, blood crusted down the side of my face. “What don’t you get?”

He sighs like the weight of years is in his lungs. “Dorian, K, and me....we were doomed from the start. None of us were ever built for structures, or rules, or routines. We literally don’t have it in us to stick to anything that’s good for us. To stay rooted. We tried. Fuck, we even tried taking school seriously...” He huffs a laugh that’s more dirt than air. “K even got shipped off to Catholic school once but he replaced the communion wine with vodka on his second day. Dorian broke into a pet store to 'liberate' a python and left it in the school library....I tried selling the principal's damn car on Craigslist. Countless schools, same fucking results. Expelled, suspended, always shoved out. Dad hated it, but it didn’t matter. We dropped out anyway.”

My jaw works, I don’t want this. Don’t want his confession, his history bleeding into mine.

“And then the restaurant,” he goes on. “Thought maybe we’d get it right there. But it wasn’t really our thing.”

I grit my teeth. “Where’s this going?”

He breathes in deep, steadies himself like he’s about to stand on some stage. “It’s going here.” He pushes up off the bench, finds his footing in the cracked tiles, and looks me dead in the eye. “You’re better than us. Better than all this.” His voice sharpens, takes on a weight that almost doesn’t sound like him. “Dad used to say so. All the time. You were eager to learn. You weren’t selfish like the rest of us. The way you watched over Andy...”

“Don't.” My voice comes out low, carved hollow. But he shakes his head. “No. You need to hear it. You gotta move on, Jax. You’re already halfway there....with Xander. I saw it. He’s good for you. But you have to let everything else go. That’s the only way forward. It’s what Dad would want. It’s what Andy would want.”

The names land like blows, heavier than fists. Too much of them pressed into the cracks of me already.

He walks to the door but stops with his hand on the handle. He looks back, one last glance that digs in whether I want it to or not. “We worry about you, you know. Even when you do your best to shut us out. We still worry.”

Then he leaves.

The door shuts soft. Too soft for the way my chest feels...rattling, echoing and empty. I drag myself back to the bench and sit, elbows on my knees, head hanging low. The ache of my body is nothing compared to the rot clawing at the inside of me.

This is a different weight. A slow, corrosive hollow that creeps its fingers through my gut. It’s the kind of pain that doesn’t show up in a mirror, that won’t stitch shut with stitches or ice. It’s the shame of wanting something clean and soft when everything I know is jagged.

And it’s worse, somehow, that his words almost sounded like hope. Like he actually believed I was different, salvageable, capable of clawing my way out of this pit I keep burying myself in. But hope is the cruelest thing. It cuts deeper than fists, because it makes you imagine a version of yourself you’ll never live up to.

It feels like a trick. You reach for it, lungs burning, knowing you’ll never get there.

Nate doesn’t get that. None of them do. They don’t see that I’m not built for better. That everything I touch ends up burned or broken. They want to believe in me because it makes the world less ugly if one of us climbs out. But I know better, I’ve always known.

And yet... fuck. The idea that maybe Xander is proof I could be more than this. That maybe someone like him could pull me out of the wreckage.

If Nate’s wrong, if I’m wrong—then I’ll drag Xander down with me.

I fish my keys out of the jacket pocket with fingers that still sting. For a long beat I just hold them, letting the little weight of them swing between my thumb and forefinger while the room presses around me like a held breath.

There are a dozen ways to run it out. I could slap the bike on and ride until the world blurs — until the engine eats all the petrol.There’s comfort in that kind of annihilation. It’s safe because it’s numbing.

Or I could stay. Sit in this little back room that smells like sweat and bleach and old beer, let the darkness fold around me until it looks like my reflection. It’s honest here, everything stark and empty.

It matches how I feel.

My thumb rubs the ring of the key idly. Every impulse inside me argues a different direction.

Then Xander’s voice threads through the noise in my head, soft and stubborn and impossibly steady: *I'll wait*.

It was a promise, the kind that anchors. I remember the quiet way he said it, the small catch in his breath. I remember the faith in it, and how easily I could crush that faith beneath my boots if I let myself.

I can imagine him sitting on the couch right now, the light from the window painting his jawline, checking the doorway every few minutes. That image presses like a fist to the place in my ribs that’s still raw and fresh.

God, I crave him.

The want is a thing that smells like hunger. It makes my hands shake. It makes me dizzy thinking about how worried he probably looked when he called me. It makes me furious with myself for being the kind of mess that needs to be fixed by sweat and stupid fights, and still wants tenderness more than anything.

Running would feel noble until it’s not, until it’s just another long way to an end that leaves him waiting in the dark. The idea of him alone with my name on his lips, is unbearable, the kind of ache that pulls me like gravity.

So I move. I sling my jacket on even though the sleeves catch at the bruises. And I choose not to lose him to the darkness I live inside.