Losing Control : His Madness, His Cure Chapter 180

JAX'S POV

I don’t wanna go back there.

I’d honestly rather not.

If I could live the rest of my life with a wall between me and those memories, I’d take it. I’d build it higher, thicker and stronger.....not even light could slip through.

And I’d be fine with that.

But Xander wouldn’t. And as much as it fucking sucks to admit it, this is the only way for us to move past it.

The words leave my mouth before I even realize they’re there. They feel foreign...like someone else is saying them through me. They filter themselves out before they reach my ears. And maybe that’s how I survive going back there.

I focus on him instead. The feel of Xander against me, grounding me in a world that’s still spinning backward. I lose myself in the way his breath catches like he’s afraid to move too fast and shatter me.

My throat tightens. I swallow, but it doesn’t help. “Joe told me to go to the back,” I start, my tone forced and mechanical, because that’s the only way it comes out now. “His voice was sharp, like he didn’t want me there. The guy was twitchy. Eyes darting everywhere. Looked wired, like he couldn’t keep still.”

I pause, inhale. The air tastes like rust and memory. “I asked what was going on. Joe shook his head, told me to leave again. I started to. But then I saw something in the guy’s hand....looked like a gun.”

The world went still in that warped, suffocating way where sound folds in on itself.

Joe’s hands were trembling, shoving bills into a bag like maybe that could buy time. The guy said if I tried anything, Joe would be bleeding on the floor. I remember how the words just hung there until everything inside me froze.

I thought if I stayed still enough, quiet enough, maybe it’d end quick.

“Then Andrew showed up.”

The name, as always, cracks something in me.

“He called my name. I tried to tell him to stay back, but the guy was already on edge....eyes wild, pupils blown wide. He started shouting, waving the gun. Joe tried to calm him down. Then he moved...just a little, and the guy pulled the trigger.”

I still hear it sometimes, Andrew's voice calling my name, cutting through the noise, sharp and scared.

And then that sound.....

It wasn’t loud, not the way movies make it.

It was flat and hollow. Like something inside the world just broke clean in half.

Everything after that turned red.

Joe was on the ground, and I was on my knees beside him, trying to press down, trying to stop what was already gone.

Andrew was screaming, his voice cracking in ways I didn’t know it could. He kept saying Joe’s name like it could anchor him back.

But Joe’s eyes were open, and they weren’t looking at anything anymore. I remember the way my hands shook. The way the blood felt....warm at first, then cold. But it wasn’t like with our foster mom’s boyfriend.

And not because I wasn’t the one who caused it.

There was something about Joe, about the way he looked, that dragged me somewhere else entirely.

Back to that living room when I was four.

The smell of cigarettes and rot thick in the air. The hum of the TV playing static because no one had changed the channel in hours.

And my father..... slumped on the couch, skin grey, flies already circling, his eyes half-open but not seeing. I remember staring at him for so long, waiting for him to blink.

At some point, I stopped waiting and just watched.

And I remember thinking.....kind of impressed, in that stupid, quiet way kids are....how long he’d gone without blinking. Like it was some kind of trick. Like maybe if I stared hard enough, I’d figure out how he did it.

And I stayed there until I started to understand that something was missing.

Something I couldn’t name back then.

Looking at Joe, it came rushing back. That same stillness. The echo of the shot replaying in my skull like the world didn’t know how to stop it.

Xander makes this strangled sound and tries to turn toward me. But I don’t let him. My arms lock around him tighter, holding him there. Because there’s something about seeing that hurt look in his eyes that makes something ugly twist inside me.

It makes me feel like I’m breaking something that was never mine to touch.

Like I’m watching his light go dim, and I’m the reason for it. I realized yesterday that when he’s upset, or when his voice cracks, something crawls up my throat and burns. And I don't know what to do with it because apart from the love I have for him....and the anger I still carry, I don’t know what to do with anything else that feels this strong.

“I could tell Joe was gone. I stopped trying to wake him up. Andrew though....he kept telling him everything was gonna be okay. Kept turning to me and assuring Joe I'd fix it.”

I used to tell him I’d handle everything. That as long as he had me, nothing bad would touch him. I always said it like a vow, like I could bend the world to keep him safe. But it was just another promise I carved out of air and handed to him, hoping he wouldn’t see right through it.

“Everything changed after that, but especially Andrew. That sadness I told you about...it came back, but worse. It was like it swallowed him whole this time. He just stopped existing.”

After the funeral, he wouldn’t eat. Wouldn’t talk. He’d stay in bed all day, crying until he passed out. I tried to reach him...We all did. I’d sit with him for hours, trying to get him to eat.

“One morning though....he seemed like something had shifted in him overnight. He came downstairs, ate a little, even asked if I wanted to cook something later.”

His voice had been soft and quiet, but it wasn’t empty. I thought maybe he was ready to start trying again. Ready to crawl out of the dark. I remember holding onto that like it was proof I hadn’t completely failed him.

I also remember finding him standing outside, looking up. And I thought he was just staring at the sky. Maybe thinking about Joe.

“But then that night—”

I stop. My throat won’t let it out.

“He hugged me before bed... something he never did before. And I knew something was off. I just didn’t understand what. But then I woke up a couple of hours later, and he was gone.” The words barely make a sound.

“I found him on the roof.”

“He turned to me, crying. Said he couldn’t do it anymore. Said he was sorry. And then....he just let himself go, like it was the easiest fucking thing he'd ever done.”

I ran....my legs heavy, my voice splitting the air, calling his name, but it didn’t reach him. And when I looked.... he was still falling, still slipping away from me, suspended in a space that felt both infinite and cruelly close. I was watching it happen as if I weren’t part of it, as if I could float above the world and somehow remain untouched. My body wanted to leap, my hands to catch him.....

I couldn’t grasp it. Couldn’t process that that was him down there, that the sound of him hitting the ground like that would ever exist.

I couldn’t even go down to him. Because there’s only one way things end in my life. Always. There’s that one constant shadow that follows, that inevitability I can’t outrun. And this time was no different.

Xander turns and I let him. His arms tighten around me, trembling, his breath breaking against my shoulder. I hold him back, maybe for him, maybe for me.....I don’t even know anymore.

He pulls back just enough to cup my face between his shaking hands. His eyes dart between mine, searching, like he’s waiting for something that isn’t there. His gaze lingers, desperate....but all he finds is the hollow I can’t fill.