Losing Control : His Madness, His Cure Chapter 182

XANDER'S POV

He moves around the kitchen in that calm, confident way that never fails to pull my eyes to him. There’s an ease to his motions, controlled and precise, like his body remembers exactly what to do even when his mind’s miles away. The muscles in his back flex as he reaches for something on the shelf, the soft light catching along his arms, the curve of his shoulders.

He’s making an early breakfast, though it’s more than that....there’s too much food for just the two of us. Pancakes, eggs, fruit, a pie in the oven.....His focus is razor-sharp, eyes narrowed slightly, that signature look of quiet intensity he gets when he’s working with his hands.

And maybe it’s just me, but there’s something about watching him like this that feels almost sacred after everything he told me.

Flour dusts the counter, sugar clings to his wrist, and the air smells faintly of vanilla and coffee and something warm, like the world’s pretending not to notice how broken he still is.

I stay close. My shoulder almost brushes his arm, and I don’t step back. I can’t. The space between us feels dangerous, like if I give him too much of it, he might start to disappear again, sink into whatever dark place he crawled out of to stand here beside me now.

He doesn’t talk, just focuses on the bowl in front of him, beating the cream until it thickens. The muscles in his forearm shift with each movement, and for some reason, the sight of it hurts. He's had everything ripped from him, piece by piece, until there was almost nothing left to ruin.

I don’t know what I expected when he started to tell me what happened. But not that. Not that kind of pain. Not the kind that leaves you hollowed out, like grief has turned your bones to dust and your heart to a bruise that never stops throbbing.

It’s too much, I hate the world for it. I hate whoever the hell’s out there pulling the strings, spinning the fucking universe. How dare they make one person walk through that kind of hell and still expect him to keep breathing.

My heart feels like it’s splintering in real time, every inhale another fracture. And all I want...God, all I want is to pull him in. To wrap him up in my arms and keep him there. To shield him from every goddamn thing that ever thought it had the right to hurt him. I want to tell him he’s done enough suffering for one lifetime. That it’s over. That it’s safe now. That I’ll make sure it stays that way.

He looks up then, catches me staring. For a second, I think he’s going to say something, maybe call me out for looking at him like that....but he just smiles, small and tired. He dips a finger into the cream he’s just made and lifts it to my lips.

“Here,” he murmurs.

The sound of his voice nearly undoes me. I lean forward, taste the sweetness off his skin. Vanilla and sugar. A little salt. It’s good, I know it’s good, but the flavor barely registers. I tell him it’s nice anyway, because that’s what he needs to hear.

He sets the bowl aside, and goes back to moving around the kitchen like this is normal. Like any of this is normal. Like mixing sugar and cream can undo years of ghosts.

Only my mind isn’t here. Not really.

It’s already somewhere else, wondering what happens now and what I’ll do to make sure the world never touches him like that again.

I told him once that I wished I was enough.

That maybe if I loved him hard enough, deep enough, real enough...I could fix whatever had been broken in him. But I knew even then that’s not how it works.

Love isn’t a cure. It’s not armor. It’s a fragile thing bleeding at the seams, trying to hold together what the world keeps breaking. It’s a trembling reach into the dark, hoping what you touch reaches back.

And God, he’s proof of that.

He’s standing there now, eyes lowered, quiet in a way that makes silence sound loud. And I can tell he doesn’t want to talk about it. Doesn’t want to pick at the wound that never really closed. He’d rather seal it off, build another wall around it, pretend it’s part of the foundation. Move forward.

Always fucking forward.

But I can’t let him do that. Not this time....

That’s what’s clawing at me now, somewhere under my ribs. The knowing that we need to talk about it, that he needs to say out loud that he’s not okay, that what he’s carrying is still bleeding inside him. He needs to stop pretending it’s not.

He thinks shutting that door means healing. It doesn’t. It just means silence. And silence has a way of turning you inside out when no one’s looking.

I hated the fighting before. Hated the way it tore at both of us.

But this, watching him unravel quietly,

watching him build calm out of the pieces of his own ruin....this is worse. I’ll have to find a way to make him stop running from himself. To make him stop using his fists and his anger as a way to breathe. To teach him how to let something other than rage touch him.

What Nate told me hit while we were on the balcony. And it wasn't just the lack of tears, but the emptiness behind Jax’s eyes when he told me everything. Like he’d already buried himself alongside everyone he’s lost.

That’s not okay.

And if I have to walk through hell with him to make him see that, I will. It scares the shit out of me, because I know him. I know he’ll fight me on it. He’ll get angry. He’ll shut down. He’ll think I’m trying to fix what’s unfixable. But I’m not trying to fix him.

I’m trying to keep him.

And if that means walking straight into the storm he’s been hiding from, then that’s exactly what I’ll do.

But not now, not today. He’s still too raw, too close to the edge, and the last thing I want is to push him over it. He needs to breathe, to come back to himself. And I need to give him that space, to let him find solid ground before I ask him to stand on it.

So I’ll wait....I’ll be patient. Strategic.

Because this isn’t something I can rush.

He’s been living with ghosts for too long,

I can’t tear them out of him all at once. I’ve got to make sure he feels safe first, make sure he knows I’ve got him. That I won’t let him fall. I need him to trust that when he reaches out I’ll be right there. That he doesn’t have to fight the dark alone anymore.

Because I love him.

So damn much it feels like my heart’s been split open just to make room for it. Like loving him is the only thing keeping me upright. And I’m not giving up on him. I don’t care how long it takes, how hard he pushes, how closed off he gets.

We’ll take it slow. We’ll tear down the walls piece by piece until there’s light again. Because he’s got me now. And I’ll be damned before I let anything else.... grief, guilt, or the ghosts of what came before me ever touch him again.