Losing Control : His Madness, His Cure Chapter 49

JAX'S POV

Death and I….. we go way back.

Long before I knew what it was supposed to mean.

Long before I learned that most people fear it.

To me, it’s never been the monster in the dark....it’s been the dark itself. A constant. An old neighbor who never moved away. The kind that doesn’t knock when it comes in, just walks right through the door because it’s been there before.

Some people see it as an ending. I’ve seen too many times that it’s not. It’s a smell that seeps into the walls. It’s the way silence changes shape in a room. It’s the memory of skin cooling under your hand, and knowing no one is coming to make it warm again.

The bike growls under me, wind tearing at my jacket as the road blurs past. I’m not headed anywhere, just letting the city pass in streaks of gray and rust. There’s no destination, just the throb of the engine and the way it fills my skull, keeps the other noise out.

But it never stays out.

My parents....they weren’t really parents. Just two addicts who happened to create a kid somewhere between a binge and a nod. I was background noise in that house, something alive they never really noticed, like the fridge humming in the corner or the roaches in the cupboards.

They didn’t feed me so much as leave things around I could eat if I was quick enough. A crust of bread. Half a candy bar. Whatever they didn’t finish or forget they had. Most of the time, they didn’t even look at me. When they did, it wasn’t in the way parents are supposed to look at you. It was like they were trying to remember where they’d seen me before. To figure out who or what I was.

I was four the first time death introduced itself. My father, slumped on the couch in the living room, jaw slack, eyes gone.

Overdose.

My mother on the floor a few feet away, laughing at something only she could see, the needle still in her arm. The TV flashing colors across both of them.

It’s strange, the things you remember. Not the whole picture....just flashes. His foot hanging off the couch at a weird angle. The steady, unmoving shape of him. The smell. That’s the one that sticks. Sweet, and sour, and heavy.

A smell you don’t mistake for anything else once you’ve known it.

We stayed with him for three days. I didn’t know what else to do. My mother didn’t either, but for different reasons. She was too far gone, nodding off and waking up and nodding off again, her eyes never really seeing me.

No one came. Not until the landlord did, screaming about the rent, and found us there.

I grip the throttle harder, the engine snarling in my hands. It’s not the image of him that haunts me the most. It’s the fact that death sat in that room with us like it had every right to be there.

It’s the reason I don’t flinch from it now. You can’t, when it’s been in the house that long.

The lights ahead turn red, so I slow, boots touching down on the pavement. The city hums around me....horns, voices, the smell of exhaust. I feel the weight of the past still hooked into my spine, like no matter how far I ride, it’s right there on the back of the bike with me.

I remember the chaos when they came to take my parents away. The front door banging open. Heavy boots on the floor. My dad zipped into a black bag like he was just another piece of garbage being hauled out. My mom screaming one minute, glassy-eyed and smiling the next.

There was a crowd outside....neighbors, strangers, covering their noses, murmuring to each other. That smell again, clinging to everything. And the looks. Those stupid, pitying looks, like I was some stray they couldn’t quite bring themselves to take home.

A woman in a navy jacket kneeling in front of me. Her smile the kind you practice in a mirror, not the kind you actually feel. “It’s okay,” she said. “Everything’s going to be okay now.”

Okay.

I didn’t know what the word meant then, but I liked how it sounded. Soft, round. Like something that could catch you if you fell. Hope, in a shape small enough to hold in your hands.

If that had been my last encounter with death, maybe I’d still like the word.

But 'okay' doesn’t exist in my world. It’s a story people tell to make themselves feel better while the rot keeps spreading under the floorboards.

And now there’s Xander....saying things that scrape against the inside of my chest. He doesn’t get it. He can’t.

The engine snarls when I twist the throttle, and the city starts falling away again. I cut through traffic like it’s nothing, weaving between cars, chasing the blur. Wind whips against my face, sharp and cold, but not sharp enough to cut through the heat building in my chest.

I push harder. Faster. The emptiness climbs, and so does that familiar hum in my skull....the one that says keep moving, don’t stop, because stopping means thinking, and thinking means feeling.

Yet Xander’s face keeps flickering in my mind anyway. The way he looks at me, like there’s something worth digging for. Like he’s willing to put his hands in the dirt to find it.

He doesn’t know that everything I touch ends up in the ground.

So I ride harder. Past lights, past the noise, past the thin threads of connection that try to tie me down. If I go fast enough, maybe they’ll snap.

Maybe he’ll stay where it’s safe....behind.

I’m not riding to anywhere. I’m riding away from the only place that scares me right now.... right next to him.

The light’s just flipping red when I cut through the intersection. Tires screech somewhere to my left....close. Too close.

A horn blasts in my ear and a flash of silver fills my vision. For a split second, the car is all I see, metal and momentum aimed straight for me.

My body reacts before my head does. I yank hard, lean into the turn, feel the back tire skid out under me. The bike screams, the world tilts, and then I’m clear.

Alive.

The car’s tail lights flare as it slows, the driver cursing me out, but I don’t stop. I keep moving, hands gripping the bars so tight my knuckles ache. My heart’s a hammer in my ribs, beating too fast, too loud.

It’s not the first time. I’ve been here before, so close I could’ve brushed death’s shoulder. Back then, it barely registered. No part of me cared if I didn’t make it to the other side of the street.

Now?....I hate that the image of his face slams into my head in that split second. I tell myself I’m not shaking, but my grip says otherwise.

I ride faster, just to prove I can. Just to outrun the part of me that gave a damn.