Losing Control : His Madness, His Cure Chapter 258

It took nine days before they finally discharged me. Nine long, oddly quiet days where my body kept reminding me I wasn’t made of stone and my mind kept pretending I was. The doctor said he was only being cautious, that he wanted to be absolutely certain everything was healing right. I got sent home with a list of meds long enough to qualify as a novel, and strict instructions about what I could and couldn’t do.

It doesn’t really hit me until I’m seated in my living room now, that I can’t just slip back into my old rhythm. I won’t be at the shop for a while. Zig already took over again, told me not to even think about stepping foot there until I can walk in without looking like someone breathed wrong and I shattered.

We’re at my place, and it feels good. Strange, but good. My mum is the last one still here. Dad and Damien had to leave two days ago for work, and Alyssa went back home...two kids don’t negotiate. They were all relieved when the doctor said I’d be discharged soon, gave their hugs and their warnings and even hugged Jax goodbye.

Now it’s just the three of us. Jax cooked something warm and simple because he’s been anxious about me eating properly. We’re sitting on the couch in the living room, side by side, our thighs touching. Jax has barely left my side. Sometimes he realizes it and moves an inch away, then forgets and gravitates right back.

My mum stretches her legs out on the carpet and exhales, a hand over her heart. “I’d have happily stayed behind and watched over my poor baby for as long as he needed,” she says, shooting me a dramatic, pity-laden look. “Truly. I was prepared to turn this living room into a shrine of blankets and tea. But...”she looks at Jax, “...I know he’s in safe hands.”

Jax clears his throat softly. “He is,” he confirms, and he means it so fully it wraps around the room. He turns his head to look at me. “I’ll take care of him. You have my word.”

It hits something inside me....gentle, certain. I smile, then look back to my mum.

“What time’s your flight again?”

“Seven,” she sighs, waving her hand like the number itself offended her. “And I already told your sister, I plan on drinking enough airplane wine to lose my sense of direction. Sometimes I swear I was meant to live in the olden times, where the fastest way to get anywhere was a horse and a carriage. Nice and slow. None of this metal-bird-in-the-sky madness.”

I huff a laugh. “I’ll see you off at the airport.”

Her head snaps up, and she points a warning finger at me. “Absolutely not. Don’t even let the thought take shape. You’re staying right here, doing exactly what the doctors told you. You’ve already given me a scare that’ll shorten my lifespan by a decade.”

“Mum—”

“No. Listen.” She leans forward, eyes soft but stubborn. “The universe moves too fast, and you...” she gestures to me, “...you need slow right now. You need gentle. And you need to promise me you’ll actually rest.”

Her voice wavers on the word rest, and that alone is enough to make my throat tighten. Jax shifts beside me, his hand brushing the back of mine for just a second.

“I will,” I say. “Promise.”

She lets out a breath, relieved but still watching me like she’s not convinced I won’t try to leap off the couch the second she blinks. She then sets her plate on the table and claps her hands once. “Oh, before I forget! I have a present for you two.”

“A present?” I ask, lifting a brow.

She nods, then waves a dismissive hand as she stands. “Well, technically it’s for Jax. But since the two of you are basically attached at the hip, it might as well be yours, too.”

She heads toward the wall by the door, and my eyes land on the object leaning there, still wrapped. I’d asked her what it was earlier when she brought it in, and she’d told me, “Don’t worry about it, lovebug,” in that airy way of hers that somehow manages to be both reassuring and suspicious at the same time.

It’s obviously a canvas. The soft wrapping does nothing to hide the shape.

She picks it up carefully. “I needed something to do in that hotel room,” she says over her shoulder. “Otherwise I would’ve lost my mind pacing the carpet bald. Your father bought me some art supplies and I’ve been working on this ever since.”

She brings it over and hands it to Jax. He stands to take it....tall, broad, and towering over her.

“You didn’t have to,” he tells her quietly.

“Trust me,” she says with a dramatic sigh, “I did. If I didn’t have something to do, I’d be in a psych ward right now, rocking in the corner and screaming Xander's name.” Her eyes slide to me. A flash of something vulnerable that makes guilt stir low in my stomach. I think about what the accident must’ve put them through. What I put them through, even though it wasn’t my fault.

She urges Jax with a flutter of her hands. “Go on, open it.”

He sets it on the couch cushion where he’d been sitting and peels the wrapping back with a kind of hesitant gentleness. My mum doesn’t just give her art away, not even to us. And the last time I asked her if I could have one, she looked me dead in the eye and said, “Xander, you don’t have the emotional vocabulary to love that painting the way it deserves. It needs a viewer who can sit in silence with it, you're not there yet.”

So the fact that she’s handing one over to Jax means something. When the canvas is finally uncovered, Jax goes still.

It’s us.

At the hospital.

She painted two scenes layered into the same frame, Jax standing in the darkened corner. Haunted and shadowed. Head bowed, shoulders tense, like she knew exactly what lived under his skin.

And above that, almost like he was looking up at it, is the brighter scene....me sitting on the recovery bed, grinning at him, and him leaning over, trying...and failing...at the stupid game I’d been obsessed with. I’d been teasing him relentlessly about how bad he was at it.

She caught that moment. The way he’d been looking at me like he wasn’t used to laughing and didn’t quite know what to do with it.

It’s beautiful.

I look at Jax. His jaw works, eyes fixed on it. My mum watches the both of us with her hands clasped against her chest. Jax finally turns to her.

“I don’t think I’ve ever received anything this special,” he says quietly. “Thank you.”

Mum lifts a hand, dismissing the gratitude with a soft flick of her fingers.

“There’s no need to thank me,” she says. “Whenever life corners you, and it will, look at it and remember that nothing stays dark forever. Things bend. They shift. They find their shape again.”

She steps closer, tilting her head the way she does when she’s measuring someone’s soul, and places her palm on his cheek. That look in her eyes, the deep, contemplative one, is the same one that used to make me squirm as a kid because I always felt like she could read my thoughts before I had them.

“Life has a way of working itself out,” she murmurs. “Not always neatly. But faithfully.”

She glances between the two of us, something soft passing through her expression.

“You two need to look out for each other,” she says. “Love is the easy part. It’s the learning, the choosing to understand each other, that keeps it standing.”

Then she turns to me, arching a brow.

“And I really like this one, Xander. So you’d better make sure it lasts.”

I chuckle and nod, realizing how deeply she actually means it. She looks back at Jax. “And you,” she adds, voice gentling, “...take care of yourself too. Not just him.”

He takes a beat, steadying himself under her gaze, and nods. “I will.”

She pulls him into another hug, and at this point she’s hugged him so many times it feels normal. Right. Like she claimed him long before either of us noticed.