Losing Control : His Madness, His Cure Chapter 291

It took a total of eight months before the restaurant's grand opening. Eight months of planning, decisions, and a thousand tiny details I hadn’t expected would weigh me down so heavily. I thought I was prepared for the stress, but I hadn’t counted on just how much of me it would take. Interviewing staff, which I completely sucked at the first few tries, hiring the right people, choosing everything from the plates to the napkin colors, the lighting, the furniture, the music.... it felt endless. Every choice came with a weight I hadn’t anticipated, every mistake a reminder that I was building something that was supposed to be mine but somehow already felt too big for me.

And yet, somehow.... it turned out perfect. Even better than I’d envisioned.

Xander’s family had flown in. All of them. They’d said they wouldn’t dare miss it.

Earlier, I’d asked his mum if she could make a couple of art pieces for the place. I told her the vibe I wanted, and she’d just laughed, saying she’d take full liberty once her inspiration hit. I’d taken that as a polite way of saying “don’t expect anything for months,” and I was right.

Six months later, I got the call, the pieces had shipped. I went to pick up the crate, imagining a couple of canvases. Instead, I was staring at a large wooden box, stamped Fragile, and inside was a whole collection...just like the series she’d been painting during our Michigan visit.

Xander and I spent that Sunday unboxing each piece, carefully lifting them out, revealing landscapes that seemed to breathe, colors that bled into each other.

There was a professional-looking folder explaining each painting, and a handwritten letter from his mum, congratulating me and hoping I loved the collection.

Thanks to Adam and the Crest name, the place had already been buzzing long before we opened. That had been both thrilling and intimidating. There were days I doubted everything....my choices, my ability to make it work, whether I’d fuck it all up. But therapy helped me ground myself, remind myself that I wasn’t starting from nothing. And if therapy ever wasn’t enough, I had Xander, my focus, and the simple truth that this was my dream. All I had to do was give it my all, try my best and hope the rest would fall into place.

In truth, I’d considered naming it after Andrew... or Xander....a million times, turning the idea over in my head, unsure which felt right. But then I remembered what Xander had told me....it was my dream, my place. And after that cemetery visit, after finally feeling like I could breathe for the first time in years, I’d made up my mind.

X-Hale.

I smiled whenever I thought about all the times Xander had claimed the X secretly stood for his name.... and all the times I’d lightly argued it didn’t, even though deep down, it was true.

Being in the kitchen, it felt right. Freeing. Like this mess of heat, scents, knives, and fire was exactly what I was meant to do. I knew I’d gotten lucky to have a friend like Adam who’d made this possible. But I was more than ready to make it worth it. There was a drive in me, an unexplainable need to make it work. To make it the best there was. To make sure that anyone who walked through those doors, for whatever reason, would come back.

Several months in, everything was going well. Shockingly well. I’d thrown myself into it, into every detail of X-Hale, every late night, every small victory, every problem I didn’t even know how to solve at first. And most of the time, that dedication had come at the expense of time with Xander. Time we barely had, anyway, because both our jobs demanded too much.

He was back managing the shop, expanding to carve out space for the new artists Ziggler had trained. I felt it all, the pull of responsibility, the weight of expectation, but Xander was always at the back of my mind. Every moment I wasn’t with him, every breath I took, he was there.

We called, we texted, we clung to whatever fragments of connection we could steal between shifts, between prep and deliveries, between deadlines and appointments. Somehow, we were still in his apartment, moving indefinitely postponed because there was always something else to do, somewhere else to be.

And I didn’t care. Not really. Because at the end of it all, at the edge of every exhausting day, I knew he’d be there. Sleeping next to me. Even when we were too drained to speak or move beyond that. He was the one constant. The one thing that mattered more than anything.

And somewhere in the weeks after the grand opening, I started to picture it. Really picture it. The life I wanted with him. At first, I told myself it was just the high, the adrenaline of everything working, of finally seeing my dream take shape. Maybe that’s why my thoughts got louder, why I wanted more, craved more.

We’d gone to Damien and Erin’s wedding a few months before....out on a ranch back in Michigan, all wide skies and tall grass. At the time, I didn’t think much of it. It was their day, their moment, not something that had anything to do with me.

But it stuck.

Something about the way everything felt settled and sure. It kept replaying in my head, sneaking up on me when I least expected it.

We came back home, time passed, but the thoughts didn’t fade. They settled in, grew roots....

And the nights we actually spent together, the ones where the world fell away and it was just him and me on the couch, those nights were unbearable in the best way. Just the two of us, his head against my shoulder, our hands brushing, our lips finding each other in quiet rhythm.

And every laugh, every sigh, every little glance made it worse, made it better.

Made me want all of it.

Made me want all of him.

There was still one part of him that wasn’t mine. One part I couldn’t claim no matter how many nights we spent tangled together or how many mornings I woke up with his head on my chest. It wasn’t just about possession. It was the way I pictured the rest of our lives now, and how I realized that without that final step, without that promise, it would always feel incomplete.

And somewhere along the way, it hit me.

I wanted to marry him.....

Not because it was expected. Not because it made sense on paper. But because when I looked at Xander, I could see the rest of my life reflected in his eyes. And I couldn’t imagine any version of that life without him in it.

Once I made that decision, there was no talking myself out of it. No turning back. Everything clicked into place, like the last piece of some impossible puzzle I hadn’t even realized I’d been holding. I’d always suspected I’d hesitate when the moment came. Second-guessing myself, overthinking, wondering if I should, if I could.....but this wasn’t like that.

Not even close.

For the first time in my life, I knew exactly what I wanted. Absolutely, unshakably, without a single flicker of doubt.

Xander.

My life.

My husband.

We could figure out the rest....navigate the stress, the pressure, the chaos of time we didn’t have, but we could do that together, while he was completely mine in every sense of the word. And it didn’t feel rushed, it felt right and inevitable. Like breathing. Like finally arriving somewhere I’d always been heading, even when I hadn’t known the path.

He’d had the promise ring on for almost a year at that point. Had worn it every day like it was already something permanent, already something binding. And knowing he’d been waiting for me without ever calling it waiting made the decision settle even deeper.

I wasn’t going to make him wait anymore. Not when the certainty was this solid, this right. I’d given him a promise.....Now I wanted to give him the rest.