Losing Control : His Madness, His Cure Chapter 288

I come back to myself slowly.

There’s this soft and familiar pounding in my ear. It takes me a second to register it as Jax’s heartbeat. The room smells like him, warm and dark and a little sinful, and when I really focus, I hear faint music from the TV across the room. He'd officially moved out of his place a few weeks ago...so now all his clothes and the things he decided to keep are here.

I like it....

My eyes crack open to dim light and the soft glow of the screen.

And Jax just looking at me. His head is propped on his arm, his expression unreadable in that way that always makes my chest pull tight. I frown up at him. “You watching me sleep?” My voice is thick and groggy.

“Creepy,” I mutter softly and can’t help the small smile tugging at the corner of my mouth. I push myself upright, dragging a hand down my face, taking in the sheets and the scattered clothes on the floor. My body feels heavy, loose and used in the best way. “What time is it?” I ask.

“Around four,” he says, sitting up too and leaning forward to press a lazy kiss to my shoulder. His lips are warm. Intimate enough to make something inside me fold in on itself.

It means I slept for like an hour. Means I knocked out after we went at it again the second we walked through the door. Or more accurately, after he slammed me into the corner of the elevator the second our eyes met. With that look he gets when he’s past pretending he has any restraint.

I stretch, and my smile becomes stupid instantly when I catch what’s playing.

Troye Sivan...Strawberries & Cigarettes.

Because I showed him that song. And then two days ago I caught him humming it while cooking, completely unaware he was doing it. And I just stood there watching him with this ridiculous warmth blooming in my chest because we have things now.

We have ‘*ours*.’

Our routines....Our songs.....Our shows.

Inside jokes and dumb phrases and tiny moments that only exist between us.

And it feels perfect in a way that scares me sometimes. I turn toward him, about to say he should’ve woken me up since I told him I’m trying to train my body out of the daily napping. But the memory hits. The texts from earlier at the restaurant. I cringe so hard my shoulders lift.

Because after the washroom, I got dressed, and we walked out trying to look normal, fully bracing for the looks and the judgment. Only to find the restaurant empty and everyone gone.

And for a second, I let myself hope maybe they hadn’t heard anything. Maybe they just left. Then I checked my phone. And in bright and traumatized glory were texts from Addy and Layla saying....

*“IN A PLACE OF BUSINESS ?!?!?!”*

And...

*“Ya’ll are sick. And i mean that LITERALLY . I'm bleaching my brain.”*

There were so many more. I’m choosing not to remember them for the sake of my dignity. I groan, dragging both hands over my face. “Oh God, they’re never letting me live this down!”

And beside me, I can feel Jax grinning. I groan, sprawling back dramatically, and ask him for the hundredth time, “How could you do that to me?”

He doesn’t even pretend to feel guilty. He just laughs and lies back down, hooking an arm around me and dragging me with him until I end up half on top of him. Our bodies slot together easily, like that’s the way we’re supposed to be arranged.

“Pretty sure I just made it up to you a while ago,” he smugly murmurs.

I lightly punch his shoulder but he only smirks, tightening that arm around me in that firm way he does without thinking. I settle my cheek against his chest, listening to the steady beat beneath my ear, and for a few minutes neither of us says anything. The room feels soft. The world quiet. Just his warmth around me, the faint music from the TV, and the lingering feeling of being so wanted it’s still sinking into my bones.

After a moment I lift my head slightly. “We’re still going tomorrow, right? To the cemetery.”

He nods once. “Yeah.”

I glance up at him, he's going for the first time. After years of avoiding it, of flinching whenever anyone hinted at it.....he asked me if I’d go with him. And of course I said yes.

“You nervous?” I ask softly.

His gaze darts around the room, then settles on me. “A little,” he says. Then, after a beat, “But not the paralyzing kind of nervous.”

And I can see the truth in that. The healing he won’t verbally admit to but is living every day. I cup his jaw gently with my hand, stroking my thumb across the faint stubble there. “You’ve only read like two paragraphs of that book, by the way” I point out. “You said you’d be done by now.”

He huffs a laugh, not even defensive. “I gave up. I’m just gonna look up the ending instead. Andrew will understand.”

And maybe it’s the softness of the moment, or the way he said Andrew’s name without tension, without that invisible recoil that used to follow.... but I feel the weight of how far he’s come. He talks about Andrew more openly now. Like the memories don’t cut him as much anymore.

“I can’t believe I'm going back to work next week,” I say quietly. “I’m really gonna miss this.”

He raises an eyebrow. “I doubt that. You’ve spent half the time complaining about being stuck at home.”

“I know,” I admit. “But I’ll miss this.” I lean up and kiss him, gentle enough to make my chest ache. A kiss that says ‘I like us like this.’ A kiss that says ‘don’t pretend you won’t miss it too.’

He breathes out subtly, almost a sigh, and gives a small nod.

“Me too,” he admits. Then he shifts, guiding both of us until we’re lying on our sides facing each other. He does this a lot, I realize. Whenever we’re in bed....morning, night, after sex, after any misunderstanding....he always ends up maneuvering me like this, making sure we’re eye to eye. Like he can’t stand not seeing my face when we’re close.

He reaches up, thumb brushing across my brow, then gently pushes my hair back from my forehead.

“Can I ask you something?” he murmurs.

I give a small nod. But instead of asking right away, he slowly pulls the covers off me. His hand drags down the line of my body...shoulder, chest, ribs, waist, hip....barely there but somehow scorching. And it hits me the way it always does, how seen I am with him. He doesn’t only look at me like I’m some pretty thing. He looks at me like he worships me, like whatever he’s seeing is enough to burn him alive.

His hand finally stills at my cheek, thumb brushing my skin as he holds my gaze. His eyes are steady, heavy with something real.

“In Michigan,” he says quietly, “....you told me things could get so much better.”

My throat tightens. I swallow and nod. “Yeah. I did.”

He exhales, the slightest tremor in it, and it lands right against my mouth. “Paint me a picture,” he says softly but with a solid sureness. Like he’s asking for something sacred. I smile without meaning to, the kind that pulls slow at my mouth.

“A picture?”

“Yeah,” he murmurs. “Tell me how good it could be. Tempt me with it.”

For a second I just blink at him. Because it feels strange hearing him say something like that. Strange in the best fucking way. There’s optimism in his voice. And as always, it hits me harder than it should. I let myself think about it, and the images come flooding in fast. I huff out a quiet chuckle.