Page 26 of Hero Worship

"You're bleeding," Xavier said.

I looked down to find I'd caught my hand in the suitcase zipper, blood welling up from torn skin. I hadn't even felt it. I couldn't feel anything except the echoing emptiness where Ash's touch had been.

"Jesus Christ." Xavier crossed the room in two quick strides, grabbing my wrist. "That's deep, Dee. Come on." He dragged me to the bathroom, muttering under his breath about my self-destructive tendencies.

I let him clean and bandage my hand, watching with detached fascination as the white gauze slowly stained red. Xavier's hands were gentle, but his jaw was tight with worry. He'd always been like this, taking care of me when I couldn't care for myself.

"You're not okay," he said finally, taping down the last edge of the bandage. "And don't tell me it's just the drugs."

I couldn't meet his eyes. "Can we just go?"

He sighed, heavy and resigned. "Yeah. We can go."

The drive to the airport passed in a blur of streetlights and silence. I couldn't stop moving. My legs wouldn’t stop bouncing, fingers wouldn’t stop tapping, anything to keep from drowning in the memories of Ash's hands on me, his voice in my ear, the way he'd made me feel like I belonged to him before letting me go. The bandage on my hand was already starting to come loose from my constant fidgeting, but I couldn't make myself stay still.

Security was a nightmare of paranoia and forced steadiness. The TSA agent's voice echoed like it was coming from underwater as she examined my documentation. I focused on the mechanical aspects of passing through security. Shoes off. Laptop out. Smile fixed in place. The ketamine made everything feel distant, dreamlike. I caught my reflection in a window and barely recognized myself. The person staring back looked too neatly categorized, too easily defined. Nothing like the chaos screaming inside my head. Even through the ketamine haze, I felt that familiar disconnect between what others saw and who I knew myself to be. I wondered if this was what Xion felt during his schizophrenic episodes, this disconnect between inner reality and outer presentation.

I nearly walked away three times, but the thought of disappointing Ash again kept me moving forward. Even if he didn't want me, even if I wasn't enough, I could at least do this one thing right.

The terminal was too bright, too loud, too everything. I collapsed into a chair near the window, pulling my knees to my chest like I could hold myself together through sheer force of will. My phone had seventeen missed calls. Xavier, Algerone, unknown numbers that might have been Ash. I deleted them all without looking.

"You look like shit."

The voice cut through my haze like a knife, making me jerk upright. Ash stood there, looking exactly like he had in his office: dangerous and beautiful and everything I couldn't have.

His presence hit me like a physical force, all contained power and barely leashed violence. This was the Ash I'd first met in that training room, the one who could read every tell, every weakness. The one who saw the person underneath all the bravado and the provocative clothing. Not the boxes others triedto put me in, but all of who I was. That recognition terrified me more than his anger ever could.

Part of me wanted to run before he could see how broken I really was. The rest of me wanted to collapse into his strength, let him put me back together however he saw fit. It was too much, too fast, too real.

His eyes narrowed as they swept over me, catching every detail I was trying to hide. "What did you take?"

No preamble, no greeting. Just that dangerous quiet that meant I was in trouble. I tried to look away, but his hand shot out, gripping my chin with bruising force.

"Answer me, Xander. What. Did. You. Take?"

"Does it matter?" His grip only tightened when I tried to pull away. "You made it pretty clear last night that what I do with my body isn't your concern."

His jaw clenched, something dark flashing in his eyes. "Last night was—" He cut himself off, thumb pressing harder against my jaw. "This isn't about that. This is about you being too high to function."

I laughed, the sound sharp and broken. "Maybe that's the point. Maybe I don't want to function. Maybe I just want to stop feeling like this for five fucking minutes."

"Like what?" His voice dropped lower, careful of the early morning travelers around us.

The concern in his voice made something crack in my chest. "Don't. Don't act like you care when you pushed me away."

His eyes darted around the terminal—checking for witnesses, I realized bitterly—before he leaned in closer, keeping distance between our bodies even as his presence overwhelmed me. "You think I wanted to push you away?" His voice was barely above a whisper, strained with something I couldn't read. "You think I haven't spent every minute since you left my office tryingto..." He cut himself off, jaw clenching as a family with children walked past.

The hesitation in his posture and the way he pulled back slightly when someone looked our direction hurt worse than outright rejection. "Right," I laughed, bitter and broken. "Wouldn't want anyone to get the wrong idea about us. God forbid anyone think you might actually—"

"Bathroom. Now." Ash's voice was lethal quiet as he grabbed my arm, grip tight enough to bruise. His control had snapped, and suddenly I didn't see any hesitation in his posture. There was just barely leashed violence.

I stumbled as he steered me through the terminal, my drug-addled brain struggling to keep up with the sudden shift. We passed a startled-looking businessman, and I caught a glimpse of Ash's reflection in a window. His expression was thunderous, possessive in a way that made my knees weak.

The moment we cleared the bathroom door, he slammed me against the wall, crowding close. "You want to finish that sentence?" he growled, all pretense of propriety gone. "Want to keep pushing me until I show you exactly what I might actually do to you?"

His hand on my throat felt like an anchor and a noose all at once, something to keep me grounded even as it threatened to strangle. I recognized the hunger in his eyes. I'd glimpsed during training. He was fighting himself as much as he was fighting me, wrestling with desires that threatened everything he thought he knew about himself. The realization made me want to push harder, to force him to face what we both knew was inevitable.

Each brush of his fingers against my pulse sent electricity through my drug-addled nervous system. I could read the conflict in the way his jaw clenched when someone walked past outside, how his pupils dilated every time I shifted against him.

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