Losing Control : His Madness, His Cure Chapter 296

Audrey chatters the entire way up the stairs, words tumbling out of her like someone hit “play” on fast-forward.

From...“Daddy, yesterday we painted purple, and Miss Kira read a story, and Milo cried ’cause he wanted snacks,” To...“Daddy? Is Aunty Layla gonna wear a pretty dress?”

“Yes, baby,” I say, shifting her higher on my hip. “The prettiest.”

She gasps like this is breaking news. “I wanna get married too!”

I scoff, shuddering. “Not for another thirty years, sweetheart.”

She frowns dramatically, and I can already picture it....the future where Jax scares off every guy she brings home with nothing more than a raised brow and that quiet, lethal protectiveness of his.

She’s biologically mine, we used a surrogate and she got my family’s traits almost unfairly. Same brown eyes and dark hair, same stubborn little mouth. And sometimes, when she tilts her head just right, she looks exactly like Alyssa did at that age. But Jax may as well have been carved into her DNA with how fiercely he loves her.

We reach the nursery, and I set her down. “Behave, Audrey. I mean it. Or you’re getting a time-out.”

She huffs like I’ve deeply wronged her, but she stays put. I walk to the crib and scoop up AJ. He instantly stops crying the second he sees me, little fists unclenching.

“There you are, buddy,” I murmur, bouncing him gently. He snuggles into my shoulder, warm and solid and needing a change. I lay him on the table, pop open a fresh diaper, and Audrey climbs up on her toes beside me.

“I wanna hold him,” she announces.

“Give me one second,” I say, sealing the tabs and lifting him again. Then I nod toward the cushioned chair in the corner. “Sit there.”

She scrambles onto it instantly, legs swinging. I kneel beside her and very carefully place AJ in her arms, keeping one hand under him just in case. She beams, full-body joy, obsessed with her little brother the same way Jax and I are. It's a life I still blink at sometimes because I didn’t think we’d ever get here.

It had been Jax’s idea for a second kid after Audrey. And even now, I still can’t believe how far he’s come.....how open, how certain, how soft he is with them. With me.

Andrew Joseph Devereaux.

Jax chose the name. He still visits Andrew and Joe at the cemetery and leaves flowers. And when he held AJ for the first time, I saw everything in his eyes. Grief, hope, love.

Healing.

And he was the one who insisted our kids carry my last name.

“It comes from love,” he’d said quietly. “Yours isn’t tied to darkness like mine is.”

I look at our kids, Audrey humming some chaotic off-key song, AJ blinking up at her like she’s the sun, and my throat tightens.

This is everything he said he couldn’t have.

Everything he thought he didn’t deserve.

And somehow it’s ours.

Zig’s place isn’t what it used to be. Four years ago we expanded, moved the whole studio into a bigger space with enough room for actual airflow, and seven artists now working under me. Seven. Five from Zig's foundation.

From a half-chaotic project he started with his friends, it grew into its own nonprofit funded programs, donors, waiting lists months long. At first it was weird, having more people in the shop. I’d been used to it being just me, Addy, and Layla.... our little triangle. I’d worried we’d drift apart, that the new noise and busy-ness would change the way we were with each other.

But no.

If anything, we’re even closer. Still take our coffee and lunch breaks together, still bicker like siblings, still show up at each other’s houses uninvited. I pull myself back to the present when Audrey announces that she's hungry for the twentieth time.

“Yeah, yeah, breakfast,” I say, lifting AJ from her lap. I take her hand....she’s calmer now, still chatty, still buzzing, but manageable. “Let’s go.”

“When Gabe and Hettie coming?” she asks around the toy elephant she’s chewing on.

I grin. “They’ll be here before the wedding.”

Mum and Alyssa are bringing Gabriel and Heather—Hettie, as Audrey calls her since the name came out all mangled the first time and stuck, but I know they're mostly coming to see the kids. Erin’s eight months pregnant back in Michigan, and Damien keeps texting me complaining about her cravings like he’s the one experiencing them.

We walk down the hall, and I stop in front of the picture wall. It’s become this living, growing thing, frames spreading out like branches.

There’s one of Audrey at two, hands covered in paint, grinning at the camera with an older Heather next to her at the piano in Michigan. A photo from last year’s beach trip, AJ asleep on my chest under a giant umbrella while Jax and Audrey built “the world’s biggest sandcastle” that lasted approximately thirty seconds.

A birthday party shot, Addy holding Audrey, frosting in both their hair. Another with Layla on the floor, AJ on her lap, threatening to steal him because he’s apparently the only child who doesn’t scream at her for no reason.

There are even a couple with Nate. He visits the most out of the brothers, and Audrey adores him, calls him Uncle Nate with absolute devotion. We always have to supervise their time together, though.

Last time, he tied a jump rope between two dining chairs, called it a zipline, and let her slide down it using a scarf as handlebars. It worked for exactly one second before catastrophic failure.

Then my eyes land on the three frames in the center. The heart of the wall. The ones I gave Jax for his birthday because I wanted him to see what we’d built.

The first is us outside X-Hale on the grand opening, Jax looking straight at me like he couldn’t believe any of it was real. The second is our wedding....small and intimate. My family, a few friends, the Risk Brothers showing up in denim and leather jackets.

And the third.... the four of us. It used to be just the three...me, Jax, and Audrey, but after AJ, Jax swapped it out.

“Daddy,” Audrey says, tugging my hand impatiently, “breakfassst.”

“Alright, alright,” I laugh, squeezing her tiny fingers. AJ babbles against my shoulder.

I take one last look at the photos....the past, the chaos, the love, all frozen in neat little frames, and then lead my kids toward the kitchen.

Toward breakfast. Toward the day Layla finally becomes Adam’s wife. Toward everything.