Page 64 of Beyond Reason

“Sure, come on in,” he grunted as I pushed the door open and slammed it behind me. “Try to be quiet, though. You’ll disturb the neighbors.”

He still sounded so angry, but I could feel my own fire matching that emotion. I whirled on him and shoved against his chest.

Once.

Hard enough to knock his back against the door. Hard enough that I heard the breath leave his body from the impact. It didn’t make his expression change though—his eyes were still narrowed, and his arms crossed over his chest; they were even more muscular than they had been. He’d obviously kept up with his workout routine while I’d barely been able to eat, to sleep, to think.

“What the fuck have you been doing?” My question came out in a hiss, and he tilted his chin up to glare at me.

“Isn’t this what you wanted me to do, Axel? Come and play house, pretend to be some fucking lab nerd? Weren’t you asking me to be anyone but the only person I know how to be?”

Oh, there it was. His own anger welling up beneath the surface, threatening to spill into his words. It washed along his face like waves kissing the shore and slowly tearing away everything built in the sand—all the facade, all the pretty decor. It all washed away under the weight of the water.

“No, I didn’t—” I cut myself off, because I could see why he would say I had, but we both knew better than that. I’d already lost him once, I wasn’t going to tell him to be someone he wasn’t. “I just asked you to be safe, and you ran off in the middle of the night.”

“I’m obviously fine, Axel.” He half shouted my name, and when he pushed away from the wall like he meant to walk past me, I grabbed his wrist.

Xavier moved in a blur—apparently the time we’d spent apart had also honed his reflexes, because he had my arm twisted behind my back and my body shoved against the door before I had a chance to react. He jerked up until it was just this side of painful, and my forehead pressed against the wall while I tried to swallow down the thundering beat of my heart.

Why did we always end up fighting?

And why was my body already streaking bolts of electricity because it knew what happened next?

“You were gone, Xavier. I couldn’t find you. I—” I swallowed my words down, felt them get lodged somewhere in my sternum and threaten to strangle me.

“You what?”

I bit my tongue so hard I was surprised I didn’t taste blood. My silence didn’t stop him from stepping into me, from pressing his body in a long line along my back until the heat of him melted through and reminded me exactly how tense I’d been these last few days.

“You what?” he repeated and brought his free hand around to stroke my chest. He slid it upward and wrapped slender fingers around my throat.

He didn’t squeeze—he didn’t have to. Just that light pressure made me want to collapse there on the floor.

“I love you, Xavier. If you plan on dying on me again, you need to take me with you. I don’t think I’d survive it twice.” My words were a tremble, a broken attempt at bravado that ended on a small moan when his fingers spasmed against my neck. Just a second, but it was enough to make my whole body feel like it was ready to combust.

“Is that why you came here? To tell me you love me?” He still sounded angry, but I could hear something behind it—something desperate and just as needy as I was.

“I came here to beg, if that’s what you want. Is that what you need from me, Xavier? Do I have to beg to make you promise not to run off? Not to leave me? I can’t do it… I can’t lose you.” My hand at my side twitched, fingers clenching and unclenching. “Please… I’ll beg. I’ll get on my knees. I’ll do whatever you want me to if you’ll promise you won’t go where I can’t find you, where I can’t follow. You can’t leave me alone again.”

It was so much more than him needing some time to cool off after a fight, and we both knew it. This was so much more than all of that, than everything.

This was every moment we’d ever spent apart, somehow colliding in the broken space beneath my ribs, gathering where he’d fractured me from the inside out with his death. This was me begging him to never leave me that shattered again.

It was me giving in completely, giving myself over completely. Giving anything as long as he’d promise that he was here, that he was mine.

That I was his.

“Axel…” He murmured it so softly, and for a moment I was worried I’d pushed too hard, that I’d said too much. I knew he only had a certain capacity to really feel, to really express himself. We’d always kept it so simple between us… but this was big and complicated and so much more than I could hold inside me now.

I opened my mouth to apologize, but he leaned in and pressed his forehead between my shoulders, letting his hand drop from my throat to press against my heart.

“I’m not going anywhere, I promise.” He paused, brushing his lips against my trembling back. I was shaking, and I hadn’t realized it until he dropped my wrist and wrapped both of his arms around me, engulfing me in a hug from behind that made the rest of the tension I’d been holding in my body melt away. Heat suddenly prickled behind my closed lids.

I was tired.

So tired.

And I needed him more than I had words to say, more than I had the strength to ask for.

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