Losing Control : His Madness, His Cure Chapter 239

JAX'S POV

I’ve always told myself I don’t fear death.

That I’m too familiar with it to let it own me in that way. When something visits you that often, you stop flinching at the sound of its knock. You start to think you’ve made peace with it.

But I haven’t. I’ve just been pretending.

Because death isn’t peace, it’s absence. It’s the way silence feels when it’s too thick to breathe through. It’s finality disguised as surrender. It’s the idea of someone you love being gone and knowing no amount of reaching will ever bridge that distance again. And that terrifies me. The mystery of it. The cruel unpredictability. The fact that one moment you can be warm and whole, and the next....just fucking gone.

There’s a stretch of hours from that day that my mind refuses to give back to me. Almost like it’s protecting me. I remember holding him that morning, his skin still damp from the gym, the faint scent of his body wash clinging to him. I remember his arms sliding around my neck, the soft press of his mouth against mine.

I remember him saying he loved me before he left for work, just like he always did. And I answered without thinking, like it was breathing.

He left, and I told myself I’d see him later.

I got on my bike a couple of hours later, rode to the therapy session he’d asked me to go to.

After that....nothing.

Just blank white noise where memory should be.

Apparently, it was Adam who called. His voice tight and breaking, said there’d been an accident. Said I needed to get to the hospital. I don’t even remember answering. Don’t remember leaving the empty apartment or taking my helmet off or parking outside the hospital. The next thing I can recall is being there....fluorescent lights stabbing through my skull, the sterile air tasting like bleach and sorrow.

The real estate agent had been showing me the apartment while we waited for Xander. Said when I got the call, I just fell. Dropped to my knees like the air had been punched out of me. Couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t even form words. Panic clawed up my throat until everything blurred out.

By the time I came back to myself, I was standing in front of the hospital’s automatic doors. My hands were shaking so badly I could barely push them open. The smell hit me first, antiseptic and fear. Every sound felt wrong and distant. Like I was underwater, hearing people talk through layers of glass.

I don’t know how I got to the nurse’s desk, or how I managed to ask for him. But I remember her eyes softening when she looked up at me. I remember the way her voice gentled, like she was trying not to break the news all over again.

And I remember, crystal clear, the way it felt when she told me he was in surgery.

Surgery....

The word didn’t even sound real at first. I remember staring at her lips moving, but all I could see was him. Xander.... my Xander, lying on some cold metal table, skin pale, chest still, machines breathing for him while strangers cut into him. My brain painted the picture so vividly it made me sick.

And that’s when it hit me.

It was happening all over again.

My mind had tried to warn me. Had whispered *‘don't want too much....don't reach too far...don't fall this hard.’*

But I didn’t listen.

I let him in....the rush, the calm, the way he made the noise in my head quiet down for once. I took all of it. And now he was in there. Because I was selfish enough to believe I could have something good and keep it.

They wouldn’t let me see him. Some bullshit about protocol. About how the doctors needed space. I lost it. Started yelling, shoving, demanding to be let in. The walls closed in on me, and I swear I could hear my pulse pounding in my skull. It took Adam pinning me to the wall, his hands digging into my shoulders, his voice cutting through the chaos, to make me stop fighting.

“Jax, enough!” he’d said, low but firm. “You’re not helping him like this.”

And now here I am.

Sitting on the cold floor of this goddamn hallway, my back pressed to the wall, my hands shaking. When I turn my head to the side, I can see everyone from the shop, huddled together near the vending machine. They all look like ghosts.

I don’t know what’s going on anymore.

Don’t know who I am in this moment, or what I’m supposed to feel.

My hands find my hair, and I dig in, pulling hard enough to feel something other than this numbness. My throat burns, my chest aches, and when I look toward those double doors, the ones keeping him from me, it’s like my lungs forget how to work.

Because death and I..... we go way back.

Old companions, in a way. And now it’s knocking again. I can feel it, cold and patient, waiting on the other side of that wall. And this time, if it succeeds, if it takes him, I know for a fact I won’t be able to bear it.

There won’t be any fight left in me.

And maybe I’ll open the door myself. Maybe I’ll offer it what it’s been circling for years. Because if death wants him that bad, it can freely have me too.

I hear Layla crying, soft and broken. When I turn my head, Adam’s got his arm around her, murmuring something low. She leans into him, face buried in his chest, shoulders shaking. It shouldn’t get to me, but it does. It claws at something inside me, because it feels like watching grief build before it’s even earned the right to exist.

Then I hear Zig say he’ll go give Xander’s parents a call, and my whole body goes still.

I told them I’d take care of him. That he’d be safe with me. The walls start closing in again...these sterile, white walls that smell like antiseptic and death. It’s too familiar. Too much like all the other times I’ve stood in places like this, praying for something I didn’t believe in.

I can’t breathe.

I push up to my feet, steadying myself against the wall. I need to get out. Because what if this is me, what if I’m the reason he won’t get better?

What if my shadow’s already wrapped around him, dragging him under the same way it’s dragged everything else I’ve ever cared about?

He deserves light, so maybe if I step away, if I just give him space....he’ll find it.

I need to leave before my darkness swallows him whole.