Losing Control : His Madness, His Cure Chapter 248

JAX’S POV

The phone is already slick in my hand from sweat and blood. Xander’s voice is sharp, hurting, way too alive in my ear. I wish he didn’t sound like that. I wish he sounded annoyed. Or pissed. Or anything that didn’t feel like it was cutting into me.

“I’m doing this for you,” I say, hating how weak the words sound.

There’s a beat of silence, the kind that presses on my eardrum like a thumb. When he finally speaks, his voice is too soft, and that’s how I know I’ve landed exactly where it hurts. That tone always finds the part of me I don’t protect well enough.

“Don’t feed me that bullshit!”

I flinch like someone just got me with a clean body shot. I stare at the floor, at the way my blood is drying on the concrete in these dark rust patterns, like someone spilled ink and didn’t bother cleaning it up. The Pit never pretends to be anything other than what it is. A place people crawl into when they’re already lost.

I brace my forearm on my knee, trying to keep my ribs from shifting. Every breath burns. My side is taped, but the tape’s useless now.....stained through, peeling at the edges, tacky with sweat. The gash under it throbs with its own heartbeat.

My head says I deserve worse.

“Jax, did you even try?”

Xander’s voice drops in that way that tells me he’s past scared and drifting toward hurt.

“Did you even try another way before you dragged yourself back there? Because you did, didn't you? You went back to that hellhole?”

That one hurts more than the split skin on my knuckles. My jaw tightens, I tilt my head back and rest it on the wall. It’s cold. Good....I need cold. I need anything that makes me feel less like I’m floating out of my body.

“There was no other way,” I say, and my voice sounds like it’s been scraped raw on the way out. “I was losing it.”

“That’s what I'm here for!” He snaps the words like they’re the answer to everything.

“You could've said something. Or tried a therapy session instead. Anything.”

If only it were that damn simple. If only I hadn’t spent my entire life learning that talking gets you nowhere. That nobody listens. That pain solves itself only when you bleed some of it out.

“It’s not that easy,” I tell him, because it’s the truth. “You can’t understand what this is like for me.”

God, I wish he could....I wish he never had to.

“I’ve tried,” I whisper, throat tight. “I’ve tried to come back. I swear to God I have. But the second I get close, I can’t fucking breathe.”

The words hang there, thin and shaky, and I close my eyes. Because it’s true. Two days ago, I got barely two steps into the hospital before the world tilted sideways. My chest cinched so tight I thought a rib had snapped. My vision tunneled, my hands went completely numb. People were talking, moving, staring.....I couldn’t hear any of it. Just my heartbeat slamming against my skull, louder than anything The Pit has ever done to me.

I’ve taken hits that should’ve knocked me unconscious, and none of them touched me like that moment did. None of them made me feel like I was dying just by standing still.

I had to get out. I bolted because staying there, walking toward his room, felt like suffocating on dry land.

And I want to go back. But wanting and being able to are nowhere near the same thing right now.

The room tilts a little. Maybe from the blood loss, maybe from the memories. I blink through the blur in my right eye, the one someone caught earlier with a brutal punch. It’s swelling fast, filling hot and heavy like my skull’s too small for it.

“And even now...”

My voice fails before I can catch it.

“I can’t close my eyes without seeing you on that bed. Without replaying every way I could’ve lost you.”

He says my name, gentle and pleading, but it nearly snaps me in half.

“No,” I choke, because if he keeps saying it, I won’t be able to hold on. “I know you’ll tell me it wasn’t my fault. But how am I supposed to believe that? Everything in me says I destroyed you. That I hurt you.”

Silence falls between us, but not the peaceful kind. The kind that stretches thin, brittle, ready to break with the slightest touch.

“Just come back,” he whispers, and it guts me. “You said we stick together, remember? You said you can’t do this without me. Well, I can’t do it without you either.”

My breath catches, I want to go back, I want to run to him.I want to lie down beside him and let him breathe for me because I don’t know how to anymore.

“I love you, Xander. But–” I finally manage, barely more than breath. Then his voice cuts through mine like a blade.

“No. If you really loved me, you’d come back. You’d be here.”

His tone has the kind of shift you only hear when someone’s been pushed past whatever line they were barely holding. And it destroys me because I know that voice.

I’ve earned that voice.

It’s the sound he makes when I’ve hurt him in a way he can’t hide from, when the pain gets too close to anger and too close to fear, and he’s trying to keep both from bleeding through the cracks

“Please, don’t say that,” I breathe. “I’m.....”

My chest tightens, vision sparking. “I’m barely holding myself together as it is.”

I hear the tremor in his voice before the words even land.

“The only reason you feel like that, like you’re breaking apart...” he starts, every syllable a weight pressing into my chest, “...and the only reason you can’t even be with me when I need you, is because you refuse to let go of the past. You refuse to face it. We both know that’s the truth. So no, you’re not doing this for me, Jax. You’re being a selfish coward, running away because you’d rather shove everything down and force it to stay there instead of letting it out!”

His words hit like fire. I feel them in the pit of my stomach where shame coils like a serpent. I can’t even imagine seeing the weight in his eyes...but I feel it, rattling me from the inside out.

I want to argue. I want to tell him it’s easy for him to say. I try, but my voice comes out cracked, barely recognizable even to me.

Then the line goes dead....

And suddenly I’m swallowed by silence. I realize how completely haunted I feel. I let my head fall forward, and for the first time in days, I let myself shiver....not from pain or fear....but from the raw, burning weight of truth.

Because he’s right. I am a coward

And it hurts more than anything I’ve ever known. My shoulders shake. My right hand trembles uncontrollably from everything I’m fighting not to feel. I press my palms over my injured eye until lights explode behind them, until the pain distracts me from the ache spreading like poison through my chest.

I love him, so much it’s killing me. But I’m still terrified of going back.