Losing Control : His Madness, His Cure Chapter 253

I stayed on the couch, exactly where everything in me had collapsed. Hours after shutting the TV off, I reached for the remote again. I don’t even know why..... punishment or maybe desperation. I loaded the clip, my hands unsteady, my stomach already braced for impact.

The first replay didn’t even make it halfway. I stopped it fast, like touching something burning hot. Their voices hit too deep, too close to places I’d spent years barricading. It hurt in a way that felt dangerous. And I was already hanging together by thin, frayed threads.

But the second time I forced myself through it. I made myself sit there and take every word, every soft shift in their expressions, every truth they never got to say in person. I watched it all the way to the end, even when it felt like something inside me was turning to ash.

And then I did it again.

I skipped forward, right to Andrew's part. Because there was a part of me so starved it barely felt human, something small and desperate and shaking that needed to hear him say those words again. Needed to hear them until they carved a crack in the walls I’d built. Until maybe, somehow, they’d start to feel true.

Afterward, every part of me was screaming for Xander.

It wasn’t subtle, it wasn’t gentle. It was a tearing, clawing need that lived under my ribs and dragged itself up my throat until I could barely breathe. I wanted him....his voice, his hands, the way he looked at me like I wasn’t some broken, cursed thing. I wanted the quiet he brought into the noise in my head, the steadiness he slipped into the cracks without even trying.

I wanted to bury myself in him and forget every fucking thing that hurt.

The need was almost unbearable. It hurt more than the memories, more than the guilt, more than the weight sitting on my chest. Because Xander was light. Stupid, blinding light in a life that had never been anything but dark and miserable. And I didn’t think I could live without that anymore. Without him.

And knowing that, feeling it this violently, made everything worse. It twisted the knife deeper because I didn’t want any of this. Not the distance, not the silence, not the mess I’d made. I didn’t want to be here on this couch alone, shaking apart. I wanted him.

I wanted him more than I wanted to breathe.

I went back to the bedroom and grabbed my phone. My hand shook around it, thumb hovering over his name like it was a live wire. I wanted to call him so badly it made my vision go soft at the edges.

But then I saw the time. Too late to call, I told myself. Too late.... too intrusive.... too much.

Maybe that was the excuse. Maybe I knew damn well the truth was uglier, I had no idea what I’d even say if he answered. What apology could possibly cover the way I’d left him? I walked out of that hospital room. I left him lying there, hurt and scared and still looking at me like I mattered. And now I can hardly step through that hospital doorway without my chest clamping shut and my body thinking it’s safer to run.

I left him....

And somehow, that fact lived under my skin like a bruise that wouldn’t fade. I craved him more than anything, and I still couldn’t make my feet move in the right direction. Just the idea of facing him again made panic twist up my spine....panic and shame and something so heavy it threatened to pull me under.

So I just stayed there in the dark, phone in hand, wanting him so much it hollowed me out....and still not dialing.

Eventually, I unintentionally shut my eyes, and my life started flashing....not like I was dying, but like someone held down rewind and forced me to watch. Every moment I’d tried to bury clawed its way back up, clearer than I ever wanted it to be. I lasted maybe ten seconds before my eyes snapped open.

I’d been running from my past for years. Trying to erase it. Pretend whole pieces of my life never existed. Because facing it, really facing it, felt impossible. How was I supposed to walk through all that wreckage and come out whole? How was I supposed to survive it without becoming nothing but a shell?

I didn’t think I could, I didn’t think anyone could.

But I reached for my phone again anyway. The screen lit up, blinding in the dark, and I opened Xander’s messages, the ones I’d ignored, the ones I couldn’t make myself answer.

And the desperation was right there. In every word. All the times he said he needed me, only a few less than the times he said he loved me. My fingers drifted to the bracelet on my wrist, the one he’d put on me like it meant something.

And it did.

Because the second he’d done so, I’d felt this pull....this stupid, overwhelming urge to give him everything he wanted and more. Like it was a promise I hadn’t realized I’d made. And now it just hurt.

There was one text, buried between the dozens he’d sent yesterday, caught right in the middle of that emotional spiral he must’ve gone through. I could see it in the messages themselves, the way they swung from soft to frantic to furious.

At one point he’d called me a self‑absorbed asshole, and he wasn’t wrong.

But wedged right there, between the worry and the rage, sat two words he’d said to me more times than I ever deserved. Two words he used whenever he wanted to reassure me without pushing too hard.

*I’ll wait.*

I stared at them until my vision blurred. And I dragged a hand down my face like I could wipe away everything I’d done, everything I’d ruined.

I sat up and swung my legs off the bed. My body felt heavy, empty, shaking as I pushed myself to my feet. I went to the wardrobe because if I didn’t move now, I wasn’t sure I ever would. I pulled on jeans, my hands fumbling the denim, and then a hoodie, the fabric cold against my skin.

It was two a.m.

And I couldn't keep lying there pretending I wasn’t breaking apart. This time I was going, I was getting to his room. I was going to look him in the eye and try, just try to be someone he didn’t have to keep waiting for.

I stepped out of the bedroom, and almost immediately, the shadows started whispering again. They always did when I was like this, when I was trying too hard, wanting too much. They told me I was going to lose him just like I’d lost everything else. They told me it was my fault he’d landed in that hospital bed in the first place. That I was cursed.... poison.

That all I ever did was drag people down with me.

They told me I didn’t deserve happiness. Didn’t deserve him. But for the first time in a long damn time, I forced myself to keep walking anyway.