Page 81 of Beyond Reason

That—

He kneeled on the floor in the same spot I’d found him, his palm flat against the dusty white ground.

There was no blood reaching out in a pool to welcome me, to draw me in to his broken and bleeding corpse.

There was no pale angel, finally fallen and haloed in crimson.

There was just Xavier, who slowly brought his gaze up to me when he heard my footsteps approaching. I couldn’t read his face—I didn’t understand his expression. And I didn’t know why his voice sounded so hollow when he spoke.

“It was here, wasn’t it? I can remember getting shot. My lungs filling with blood, my body going cold. They didn’t make it quick, but one of the bullets took me in my back and I couldn’t move.” His eyes were a little too wide, the whites showing a little too much. He looked calm, but I could see his chest rising and falling just a little too quickly. “I killed one of them, but they left me to bleed out alone.”

I wanted to scream—I wanted to shatter. I knew exactly what they’d done to him. I’d seen exactly what they’d done to him, but that didn’t make it any easier to hear about it.

“I don’t… I don’t remember dying, but I remember what it felt like knowing I would.”

I couldn’t force the words out of my chest—words I’d been waiting twenty years to say.

The words that wouldn’t fix a goddamn thing, because he’d been here alone and afraid, and I’d been the one who told him to get the fuck out to begin with.

“Xavi…” That was as far as I got. When I reached my hand out to him, he jerked away like I’d startled him.

It made me sick.

“Don’t… d-don’t…” Were his teeth chattering? His fingers opened and closed, his palm slapping against the ground again hard enough that it must have hurt.

“Xavier, I never wanted…”

What? I never wanted him to get hurt? I never wanted him to leave? I never wanted…

I looked down and realized that there was a smudge of crimson trailing from his other fist. It only took me a second to realize the chain of my necklace dangled from his clenched hand.

“I can’t remember anything past laying here and thinking that the last thing you ever said to me was to get the fuck out.”

Fuck.

I’d realized it was a possibility, but I didn’t want it.

I didn’t want this.

But I was still ready to fight him, I’d do whatever I had to. I had to bring him back. He had to understand.

“We shouldn’t be here.” I finally managed to get out, half strangled and fainter than I meant. I wasn’t sure why I wasn’t apologizing. I wasn’t sure why I didn’t reach out, except I didn’t know if I would survive it if he pulled away again.

“Where else was I going to go?” he asked. He touched the ground again before finally pushing up and standing.

I didn’t think, I just moved. If this was the moment where he told me to fuck off, I didn’t want to hear it. If this was my penance—as though I hadn’t served enough over the last twenty years—I refused.

I wasn’t letting him leave me.

Not again.

Never again.

I threw myself forward and shoved him back hard. His shoulders hit the wall, and I grabbed his wrists as I spoke.

“I’m sorry.”

I wasn’t even sure if he was moving out of instinct or because my apology made him angry. Xavier’s lower body thrashed, twisting to land a kick that sent a spike of pain rocketing up my leg, but it wasn’t enough to make me let him go.

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