Page 13 of Beyond Reason

I couldn't move.

I had to move.

I couldn’t let him walk away from me again.

And maybe if I could pretend this was all a dream, it would be easier to think it could be real.

Because, somewhere in the back of my mind, a phone call I’d gotten a few months ago was playing.

I know this sounds impossible, but it’s Kade.

Kade Neil.

Who was also dead.

“Impossible,” I breathed, but my legs finally decided they knew how to work. I flung my door open and yelled his name again.

My words echoed in the silence.

Was this just another dream after all?

But no… In the distance, I could see a flash of light from a cellphone as someone rounded the corner.

Even though it couldn’t be Xavier—even though this couldn’t be real—I listened to the instincts surging through my chest that demanded I follow him.

I wasn’t sure if he heard my footsteps as I took off after him, or if this was all just a game to him, but as soon as I rounded the corner, he took off running.

Which… was honestly a very Xavier thing to do. We’d done this song and dance a dozen times before—we fought, and he stormed out. Every time, I’d usually end up following him.

And every time…

As I rounded a corner, I felt his fist connect with my jaw. It was different than before—he wasn’t as strong. The punch was weak enough that it barely split my lip.

And I was bigger. Broader. My hand flashed out and wrapped around his throat, and in a quick burst of strength, I shoved him against the brick wall of the alleyway he’d tried to duck into.

“What the fuck Axel?” he snarled. “First you don’t believe me, and now you’re—”

I didn’t give him a chance to keep complaining. I didn’t give him a chance to lie, or try to convince me of who he was, who we were.

A stranger could have learned every fact about my life from the time I was born until now.

But a stranger wouldn’t feel the way Xavier did when we kissed.

Maybe I was lying to myself. Maybe some part of me knew all along, even though it seemed impossible.

Or maybe I just wanted to feel—even if it was just for a second before I realized I was delusional—like I could press my mouth against his one more time and whisper all the things I’d never had a chance to say… every sorry that was caught on the back of my tongue, bitter and jagged like shards of glass healed over into scars in my throat.

Impossible to swallow.

Impossible to speak.

But the press of his lips against mine was so familiar it drew the poison from the wounds and made them burn.

It didn’t matter that the kiss tasted like blood—if anything, that just made it feel all the more real. So often when we fucked, it was right after a fight. One or the other of us was usually hurt—I knew there was something toxic about it, something that most people would never understand, but it was a part of who we were.

We fought and we fucked and we loved, and all of it was just as fierce and just as passionate.

The man who couldn’t be who he said he was kissed me with that same fiery ferocity now. When his hands fisted into the front of my shirt and he bodily moved me until I slammed against the wall, everything around me seemed to melt away.

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