Losing Control : His Madness, His Cure Chapter 277

Sometimes you just get these few seconds of clarity, sharp, intrusive and unwelcome, where you start asking yourself if you’re actually taking it slow...or if you’re stalling.

If you’re moving one step at a time or if you’re staying exactly where you are because it’s familiar and safe and doesn’t demand anything brave from you.

If there really is a “right” time for anything,

or if the only person who decides timing is you.

The past eight years of my life have been one long drag. A loop. A dull hum of getting up, getting through, getting by. Nothing shifted until I forced myself into discomfort, until I learned that the only way out of something is straight through the center of it.

Kieran and Nate eventually left.

Said they’d hang out in the city for a while.

The door closed behind them, and the apartment finally felt like ours again. I sat on the couch for a minute, elbows on my knees, breathing through the leftover weight of everything Dorian had just said.

The key felt like eight years’ worth of ghosts.

When I finally stood, my legs felt weird...light and heavy at the same time, and I made my way back to the bedroom.

Xander was lying down. Sleeping. Laptop still open beside him, screen dimmed to that soft bluish glow that made everything look like a dream. He hadn’t meant to fall asleep. He’d taken his meds earlier, and they must’ve dragged him under.

I hovered in the doorway for a beat, watching him, and something inside me eased at the sight. It always did.

I looked down at the key again, then back at him. Two hours. That's usually how long he was out when the meds hit. Two hours where he wouldn’t wake up and ask me what was wrong just by looking at my face. Two hours to push past the hesitation I’d been nursing for years. To stop talking about healing and actually do the kind of shit that hurt first.

I switched off his laptop and slid it aside.

Brushed a bit of hair from his forehead without touching skin. Just close enough to feel the warmth.

But could I really do this alone?.....

I had tried going to the cemetery yesterday after the session. Mrs. Roberts had said to start slow, start small. I didn’t listen. I just stood outside the gates, staring at the rows of stone, at the pathway leading in

and still, I couldn’t make myself move....

And when Kieran and Nate were here, I thought about asking them to come with me. Just thought about it, but I didn’t. Not because I don’t like them, I do. But they were tied to a past I was trying to stop dragging behind me. They belonged to another version of me. One I was trying to outgrow.

If Xander had been able, if he weren’t recovering, I would’ve asked him. No hesitation. He was the one person I’d have wanted standing next to me while I sorted through everything I’d been dodging.

But I couldn’t put this on him, so I thought about the next closest person. And only one name came to mind.

I took out my phone as I crossed to the desk. The journal Xander had given me sat there. I found Adam’s number, my thumb hovered. My pulse was loud in my ears for no good reason.

I hit call.

He answered immediately, almost too fast, and said, “Hello? What’s up?”

I swallowed, then asked if he was busy. There was a pause. Three seconds, maybe four. Heavy enough that I could picture him somewhere with people around him, something in front of him, maybe plans he was supposed to be part of.

Then he said, “No. I’m not. Do you need something?”

And I could hear that he was busy, but he was already pushing it all aside for me without knowing why. He’d said he’d be there.

I grabbed a pen with fingers that didn’t feel like mine and opened the notebook to the page after Xander’s perfect little message. My chest pinched when I saw his handwriting, soft and slanted, like the way he looked at me when he thought I wasn’t paying attention.

I started writing before I could think better of it.

*“Went to take care of something. I'll be back soon, promise .”*

I stared at the words and they looked small. So I pressed harder, the ink biting into the page as if that’d make it truer.

*“I love you.”*

I left the notebook beside him, right where he’d see it if he woke up before I was back. I hoped he didn’t, I didn’t want that panic in his eyes again, the kind I’d put there too many times. Never again, not if I could help it.

The ride was muscle memory. Before I’d fully registered I was moving, I was already there. And Adam’s car was parked out front, like he’d broken every speed law just to show up before me.

He was outside, sleeves rolled to his elbows, shirt too white for a place like this. He watched me approach, gaze steady, unflinching. When I stopped beside him, he gestured toward the building.

“Can I ask what we’re doing here?”

My throat tightened.

“Facing a fear.”

I stood there longer than I should’ve, but I had two hours to get back, to not screw this up. I couldn’t stall. I had to do this for us. Adam fell into step beside me when I finally moved. He didn’t talk. He didn’t try to fill the silence or prod at it. He was good at that, being there without turning it into some kind of spotlight.

The ground floor hit me like a wave. Completely different, but my bones recognized it immediately. “There used to be a restaurant down here,” I said, not looking at him, not looking at anything. “I worked there for a while.”

Adam didn’t comment. Just stood beside me. I glanced down at the key in my hand. 3-12B. We walked to the elevator. The ride up was too smooth, too fast. When the doors slid open on the third floor, the quiet wrapped itself around me. It wasn’t normal quiet.... it was waiting quiet. A held breath.

Like this place had been sitting in the dark all this time, knowing I’d eventually come back.

My palms sweated. I wiped them on my jeans, pretending I wasn’t shaking. I walked straight down the hall, scanning the numbers like they were daring me to flinch. I spotted the door a few feet away and something inside me tried to stop, to dig in its heels, to choke me out before I reached it.

I wanted to stop.....I didn’t.

My feet carried me anyway. Toward the thing I’d outrun a thousand times, and never escaped. I reached the door and 12B stared like it had been expecting me. My hand lifted on its own, slid the key into the lock and then just stopped.

I froze, I didn’t know for how long. Long enough for the silence to grow teeth.

“Everything okay?” Adam asked quietly.

I turned my head. He was watching me with that unreadable mix of curiosity and concern he did so well. Never invasive, never pushing, but present enough to make it impossible to run.

His gaze dropped to my hand on the key.

He tilted his head. Then, gently....

“You want me to do it?”

For a second, just one, I almost snapped out a ‘no.’ Instinct. Muscle memory. My entire life, wired into one reflex. Because all my life since I could remember, it had been just me. And when I had accepted help, it wasn’t because I wanted it.

It was because I had been shoved into a corner so tight the only way out was to let someone else pull me. The kind of yes that wasn’t a choice. The kind you said with broken teeth.

I had gotten used to that kind of aloneness.

So used to carrying everything myself that the weight started feeling like identity. Like if I put it down, I’d disappear with it.

Loneliness became a second skin, a familiar shelter made of knives. But I couldn’t keep living in that kind of isolation, not even out of habit.