Page 20 of Beyond Reason

A knife wound.

I’d left that knife wound.

The thought made my chest constrict, made panic seize my lungs so violently spots danced across my vision. I couldn’t breathe—a numbness slowly spread from my lips and tingled out to prickle my scalp.

I’d felt this way before.

I felt this way when I looked at his body, and I never thought it would be this bad again outside of nightmares. But with him standing there, with him so close, with him looking so fragile…

I wouldn’t live through it if I lost him again. Were those marks there to remind me of how I’d failed him? Were they there so I would know exactly why I couldn’t have him again? Why I didn’t deserve to.

The thought made me sway, and that caught Xavier’s attention. He paused with a pan in his hand. My blurring vision couldn’t make out his expression, but the way his posture changed told me the instant he realized something was wrong.

The sound of metal clanging against the stove met my ears as I closed my eyes against the panic roaring through me.

And the feel of warm hands sliding up my chest made me collapse. I stumbled until I was sitting on the back of the couch so I wouldn’t fall. It was painful, but I forced myself to breathe in huge gulps that sounded as desperate as I felt.

“Axel?” he whispered. I couldn’t see him, and even though the voice was different, the tone was the same. The way his fingers danced across my shoulders felt the same, and it made me feel like my ribs were slowly collapsing around my lungs, my heart, compressing it all into nothing.

He was here, and he was whole—how could I have everything I wanted and realize at the same moment that it was the most terrifying thing in the world?

The soft sound of his voice murmuring soothing nonsense slowly broke through the dark torrent trying to suck me down, to drown me. I took another deep breath and forced myself to look at him, even though I could barely make myself focus on his face.

“Axel, are you okay?”

“I’m fine. I—”

“What just happened?”

Fuck, he was always cutting me off, wasn’t he? He always had, though. There’d never been a moment where Xavier let me lie to him and get away with it.

“Nothing. I just stood up too fast.”

It wasn’t even a good lie. I’d had panic attacks before. We both knew what they looked like, though this one hadn’t been as bad as the ones I’d had after he was gone. But I couldn’t tell him the truth this time. I refused—telling him why seeing him shirtless had nearly broken me would mean telling him about the night he died.

No.

“Axel, cut the bullshit.”

There it was. That voice, that tone, and with my eyes closed and the warmth of his hands splayed across my chest, if I’d still been trying to deny the truth standing in front of me, it would have slapped me in the face.

It was Xavier, and as I fluttered my lids open, I promised myself I would do everything that I could to keep him safe. To keep him alive.

Even if that meant keeping him at arm's length. It had to mean keeping him at arm's length, didn’t it? There was no way I would be able to focus on protecting him otherwise.

“I’m old, Xavier, just in case you didn’t get the memo with the gray hair. Sometimes us old people get dizzy for no reason.”

It was a lie and we both knew it. I couldn’t say it aloud, but I could ask with my eyes. Please, don’t push this.

I wasn’t sure if he could read my silent message or thought I was too stubborn to answer. Xavier had never been easy to read, but he was giving me this.

He rolled his eyes and let his hand trail up to gently brush at my beard. When his fingers tugged, I knew he’d found some of the gray hairs that I hadn’t had the last time he saw me. “You aren’t old, Axel. You’re like a fine wine. Better with age, right?”

I was trying to figure out exactly how to tell him that he had to stop touching me when he turned and went back to the kitchen.

“Listen…”

“No. Sit down and eat breakfast, old man.” He threw me a look over his shoulder, and I nearly closed my eyes again. Softer face, a sweet face… and all those curls…

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