Losing Control : His Madness, His Cure Chapter 135

Sunday morning.

I’m still holding him the same way I did all night, arms wrapped tight around his body, my face buried in his hair. He never once turned toward me. Didn’t say much either. And I had things, so many things, to say. I wanted to bleed them out into the silence, crack myself open just enough to give him something. The problem’s always the same though: I never know how to start.

His alarm goes off sharp in the still room. He’s reaching before the second ring, cutting it off like he’d been waiting for the excuse. His body shifts, already angling to sit up, to leave. My arms tighten around him.

“I gotta head to the gym,” he mutters, voice still heavy with sleep.

I breathe him in, that mix of soap and warm skin that never fails to gut me. My lips find the back of his neck before I can stop them. “Do you really?” My voice sounds rough, pleading.

He actually chuckles, soft and low, and finally touches me in the way I’d been waiting for all night, his hand finds mine. But only to pry it off. He shakes his head. “I’ve already missed two days. Not looking to make it a habit.”

I let him go, because what else can I do? He swings his legs off the bed and stands, stretching in that lazy way that shows off every line of him. I sit up too, because there’s no way I can stay in this bed with him out of it.

“You’re a fucking gym rat,” I say, rubbing a hand over my face. “ He shrugs, casual, but the words he drops hit harder than they should. “Guess we’ve all got our vices.”

I feel that one in my ribs. He means The Pit. He means me bleeding out in ways I can’t seem to stop. And he’s not pretending he’s okay with it, that's not how he's built.

He drifts to the window, peeks out, then disappears into the bathroom. I follow, because distance feels unbearable.

He glances at me as I step inside. And fuck...he looks good. Too good. Hair sticking up in messy tufts, eyes still heavy from sleep, skin flushed warm from bed. No one should look like that this early. Especially not him. Especially not when I’m already starving for him.

He stands at the toilet to pee and I lean against the sink, not even pretending not to watch. He doesn’t flinch at my eyes on him, just flushes, moves to wash his hands, then picks up his toothbrush. I can’t look away. The cut of his jaw, the way his forearm flexes as he squeezes the toothpaste, the curve of his mouth as he drags the brush through. Every mundane detail nails me to the spot.

He glances sideways at me, then steps closer, wordless, like it’s nothing. He grabs the paste again, and smears it onto my brush, hands it over like it’s the most normal thing in the world.

“It’s raining,” I tell him, my voice sounds too low, too careful.

“Just a drizzle,” he responds.

I take my brush when he hands it over, but don’t move. Just stand there staring at him in the mirror, toothbrush in hand like an idiot. And I hate this. The silence, the distance I’ve built. It’s not even that he’s ignoring me....he’s here, right next to me, but the quiet feels like a wall I can’t scale.

“I’m sorry,” I finally say, and my voice feels like gravel in my throat. “For yesterday. For ruining it. I know how much you were looking forward to it.”

For a second, he stills, brush hovering, eyes flicking up at mine in the glass. Then he just keeps brushing, like he didn’t hear me. Like maybe the words weren’t enough to break through.

I start brushing too, but my focus is still him....always him. The line of his throat as he tilts his head back. The way his shoulders shift when he spits into the sink. He rinses, splashes water over his face, then finally turns toward me.

“The day was fine,” he says. “You didn’t ruin it.” His eyes hold mine, and the honesty in them almost kills me. Then softer.... “I just wish it had ended better.”

It’s not an accusation, not a dismissal. Just the truth.

He's at the door already, like he’s seconds away from disappearing into the gray morning. And my chest clenches, hard, because I know if I let him walk out just like that, the space between us is going to stretch too far.

“I want to make things right,” I say, my voice breaking low against the tile and the rain tapping the window. “But I don’t know how.”

He stops, his back still to me. One hand comes up, dragging through his hair in that restless way he does when he’s trying to hold himself together. Slowly, he turns, and I see the weight in his face, like he’s carrying both of us and is starting to get too tired to keep the balance.

I rinse the taste of mint out of my mouth, set the brush back in the holder with a soft click that feels too loud, then face him fully.

Every muscle in me screams to close the distance. To walk over, frame his face and kiss him until all of this burns away. Until the only thing left is him. But I don’t move. Something in the set of his jaw, the edge in his silence, tells me if I reach now, he won’t lean back into me. He’ll stand there stiff and unreadable, and that would gut me worse than anything.

So I just stand rooted where I am, dripping regret onto the bathroom floor, my chest hollowing out while he looks at me like he wants to say something but doesn’t trust how it’ll come out.

He breathes slow, and for a moment I think he won’t answer. Then his voice comes, low, like it’s being dragged out of him.

“I don’t wanna be selfish, Jax. I know you’re trying.” He pauses, then shifts just enough that I can feel his words more than hear them. “If I thought wiping the slate clean, pretending none of it mattered was what you needed… I’d push for that in a heartbeat. But it isn’t. And so I can’t. Because until you deal with whatever it is you keep chained up inside, you’re never gonna move forward. And until that happens...if it ever happens, I’ll have no choice but to wait.”

His words cut, but they also land in this way that feels unfairly steady. He’s not blaming me, not really. Just stating the ground beneath us like it’s fact.

“I can wait,” he adds, softer. “What I can’t handle is watching you self-destruct in the meantime. That....” he looks me in the eye, “...that’s the part I can’t do.”