Page 36 of Beyond Reason

I hadn’t been fast enough.

“I’m sorry, Xavier. I’m so sorry, I—”

“The only thing you need to apologize for is killing that asshole,” he muttered, and I felt him raise his head enough to glance over my shoulder. “Yeah, definitely dead.”

I was lucky we were in an alleyway, or someone might have caught us by now. I still had enough connections that I could maybe get myself out of trouble if we’d been seen, but I preferred it didn’t happen.

I needed to put Xavier down and clean up the scene. I needed to at least hide the body.

I needed…

I needed to keep my arms around him to make sure that he was still solid, still real.

Still here.

“He’s lucky that’s all I did.”

“He might have had a few answers about who he was working for. It’s fine…” Xavier coughed, and I pulled back instantly to look him over. There was blood on his lips, but I was pretty sure it was from where he’d been hit, not internal damage. I knew it wasn’t good that he’d been hit hard enough to go limp, especially not since he’d had a head injury before, but his pupils looked even… and he didn’t seem woozy.

“We need to get out of here.”

He frowned at me and jerked his attention back to the body again. “At least dump him somewhere… and your jacket. You’re covered in blood, Axel. We’ll get arrested before you even make it half way down the street.”

He was probably right. Fuck, he was probably right… but I couldn’t make my fingers let him go.

“I can clean it up later.”

“Axel, come on. Put him in the dumpster, and at least take your jacket off. I promise…” He leaned in and pressed his forehead to my shoulder. “I won’t run off again. I’ll even let you tend to my wounds when we get back to your house, okay?”

It took more effort than I wanted to admit to let him go… and even then, I did a piss poor job of hiding what I’d done. I picked up the man’s body and let out a small wince at the wet sound of his head falling back, barely hanging on by a few strips of skin and muscle. It only took a little effort to hoist him into what seemed to be a mostly unused dumpster.

That was more convenient than I deserved.

I took a second to wipe myself up as much as I could with the inside lining of my jacket, then folded it and threw it over my shoulder. When I turned to Xavier, he let out a laugh that sounded painful.

“What?”

“We’re going to be lucky if no one sees us on the way home. Fuck… is there a long way to get back to your house?”

I just shook my head and pulled him up from the ground. There was a back way. I could cut through the alleys and along the treeline. It wasn’t perfect, and there was still a chance someone would see us, but it was better than walking down the street with both of us looking like we’d just escaped a killer’s den.

He was nearly limp in my arms when I half carried, half dragged him back to the house, and I could barely breathe around the sight of it. At least this time he was warm—at least this time, I could still feel him breathing against me so I knew he wasn’t dead, so I knew he wasn’t…

He wasn’t bleeding too much. He wasn’t even really that injured. The worst of it was the cut on his cheekbone and the streak of blood on the side of his head. It didn’t matter.

None of it mattered.

I just wanted to get him home. I wanted to check him over for injuries to make sure that he was okay. Fuck whatever resolve I’d tried to have. Fuck whatever part of me had been trying to talk myself out of touching him.

All I wanted to do was touch him.

“I’m all right, Sunshine,” he murmured thickly, but the sound of pain in his voice just made me more determined to get him home before something else happened.

“Shut up, Xavi,” I snapped back, and punctuated the point by picking him up for the last little bit of the trip. He was so much lighter than he should have been—I’d only carried him once before, but that weight in my arms was so heavy I woke up sometimes still feeling it.

This was different.

This was different because he was still warm, and his arms were wrapped around me. I didn’t realize my vision was blurring with tears until one of those arms shifted to wipe the wetness from my face.

---