10. Chapter 10

Chapter 10

Axel

I t took me too long to get dressed, and entirely too long to figure out which way he'd run. I didn't know what the burning sensation of dread in my stomach was, but I was going to chase that instinct down like my world was on fire until I found Xavier again.

It was the sound of his voice that made me turn down the alleyway, but it was the sound of something smacking against flesh that made me take off at a run. This time, I was dressed.

This time, I was prepared.

The man holding Xavier wasn't though, or maybe he was so focused on the limp body in his arms that he didn't realize someone was coming up behind him. Which meant he was either extremely task oriented, or very, very fucking stupid.

I was voting on the latter, because it took him a full two seconds to realize someone had stuck a knife into his side before he finally started to scream.

Since I didn't want to draw attention, I wrapped one hand around his throat and cut off his airway. The hands holding Xavier went slack, and his limp body fell.

Limp body.

Limp and unmoving, and my entire world seemed to narrow down to a slash of red when I threw the man off of him and followed him down to the ground.

"What did you fucking do ?" I snarled, and I could hear the shake in my voice. The low growl that felt like it was tearing out of my chest like some wild, violent thing. It was nearly impossible to let up on his throat so he could answer me.

This wasn't the life I normally lived, but I could remember feeling like this before.

I could remember feeling like this after spending months tracking down exactly what had happened to Xavier, exactly who had killed him. I'd seen red then, too.

I'd seen red, and I'd spent a week taking out my frustrations to make sure I knew the name of every person involved.

And even then, it hadn't been enough.

Killing hadn't felt good.

It hadn't fixed anything.

I'd been just as broken.

"My job. Just my fucking job ." He was trying to sound tough, but I could see the terror in his eyes. People didn't usually look at me like that.

Then again, I didn't usually have a knife stuck in their guts. I gave it a little twist as I adjusted myself so one knee fully pressed against the asshole's hand. It was the one that had held his gun.

The one that he'd obviously hit Xavier with.

"Who sent you?"

Even as I asked, his eyes twisted back to Xavier, and he tried to grab the weapon on the ground beside him.

Logically, I knew I should have restrained him. Should have taken him back to the house and slowly extracted information from him.

I twisted the knife again and he screamed, but his eyes stayed stuck to Xavier's frame. "He whined like a little bitch, you know?" His mouth twitched, lips pressing together before he took a shaky breath. "Ax. Is that you? He was saying your name."

He'd said my name. I'd wondered a thousand times if he'd said it when he'd died before, and now…

Now…

I came to myself straddling him, and it took me a second to realize why my hands were slick and warm.

Blood.

There was so much blood, all over my hands, my arms… all over his face and the ruin that was his neck.

I wasn't sure when I'd started stabbing him, but I apparently hadn't had any qualms about not stopping.

Shit.

That wasn't what I'd meant to do.

Even as I thought it, I lifted the knife again.

"Axel, for fuck's sake. I think he's dead." Xavier's voice was a little rough, but it stopped me mid-motion. My head whirled in his direction in time to see him wiping a streak of blood from his cheek with a small grunt. His eyes flicked between the dead body I was straddling and my face. "You know, I'm not sure which one of you looks more pale."

I didn't feel myself dropping the knife, but I did feel it when he leaned his body heavily against me.

A little too heavy. I could feel every ounce of pain rocking through him, every place he'd been hurt.

I hadn't been fast enough.

"I'm sorry, Xavier. I'm so sorry, I—"

"The only thing you need to apologize for is killing that asshole," he muttered, and I felt him raise his head enough to glance over my shoulder. "Yeah, definitely dead."

I was lucky we were in an alleyway, or someone might have caught us by now. I still had enough connections that I could maybe get myself out of trouble if we'd been seen, but I preferred it didn't happen.

I needed to put Xavier down and clean up the scene. I needed to at least hide the body.

I needed…

I needed to keep my arms around him to make sure that he was still solid, still real.

Still here.

"He's lucky that's all I did."

"He might have had a few answers about who he was working for. It's fine…" Xavier coughed, and I pulled back instantly to look him over. There was blood on his lips, but I was pretty sure it was from where he'd been hit, not internal damage. I knew it wasn't good that he'd been hit hard enough to go limp, especially not since he'd had a head injury before, but his pupils looked even… and he didn't seem woozy.

"We need to get out of here."

He frowned at me and jerked his attention back to the body again. "At least dump him somewhere… and your jacket. You're covered in blood, Axel. We'll get arrested before you even make it half way down the street."

He was probably right. Fuck, he was probably right… but I couldn't make my fingers let him go.

"I can clean it up later."

"Axel, come on . Put him in the dumpster, and at least take your jacket off. I promise…" He leaned in and pressed his forehead to my shoulder. "I won't run off again. I'll even let you tend to my wounds when we get back to your house, okay?"

It took more effort than I wanted to admit to let him go… and even then, I did a piss poor job of hiding what I'd done. I picked up the man's body and let out a small wince at the wet sound of his head falling back, barely hanging on by a few strips of skin and muscle. It only took a little effort to hoist him into what seemed to be a mostly unused dumpster.

That was more convenient than I deserved.

I took a second to wipe myself up as much as I could with the inside lining of my jacket, then folded it and threw it over my shoulder. When I turned to Xavier, he let out a laugh that sounded painful.

"What?"

"We're going to be lucky if no one sees us on the way home. Fuck… is there a long way to get back to your house?"

I just shook my head and pulled him up from the ground. There was a back way. I could cut through the alleys and along the treeline. It wasn't perfect, and there was still a chance someone would see us, but it was better than walking down the street with both of us looking like we'd just escaped a killer's den.

He was nearly limp in my arms when I half carried, half dragged him back to the house, and I could barely breathe around the sight of it. At least this time he was warm—at least this time, I could still feel him breathing against me so I knew he wasn't dead, so I knew he wasn't…

He wasn't bleeding too much. He wasn't even really that injured. The worst of it was the cut on his cheekbone and the streak of blood on the side of his head. It didn't matter.

None of it mattered.

I just wanted to get him home. I wanted to check him over for injuries to make sure that he was okay. Fuck whatever resolve I'd tried to have. Fuck whatever part of me had been trying to talk myself out of touching him.

All I wanted to do was touch him.

"I'm all right, Sunshine," he murmured thickly, but the sound of pain in his voice just made me more determined to get him home before something else happened.

"Shut up, Xavi," I snapped back, and punctuated the point by picking him up for the last little bit of the trip. He was so much lighter than he should have been—I'd only carried him once before, but that weight in my arms was so heavy I woke up sometimes still feeling it.

This was different.

This was different because he was still warm, and his arms were wrapped around me. I didn't realize my vision was blurring with tears until one of those arms shifted to wipe the wetness from my face.

"Axel? What… I'm fine. Really. I—"

"The last time I held you like this, you were dead, Xavier."

My voice sounded tight and painful, but I couldn't hide it anymore. I couldn't be strong, and I couldn't push him away. My hands trembled where I held him. "You were cold, and you were dead, and they wanted me to leave you there at the scene and I couldn't. So… I…" I gasped, the breath I barely managed to draw in like shards of metal in my lungs. "I carried you out of there. I carried you, and I…" I shook my head. "Just… fuck. Shut up and let me get you home, okay?"

For what might have been the first time in his life, he listened to my request. He nodded, his soft response of okay nothing more than a whisper.

Then he tucked his face against the crook of my neck and pressed his lips to my thundering pulse.

My mind was racing. I needed to go back to where the dead man was and take care of the scene. It was what I'd been trained for, what I was good at…

I'd never just left a body behind to be discovered. I'd never left evidence that could incriminate someone, especially not myself.

But all I could think about was getting Xavier somewhere safe and making sure that he was just as okay as he said he was.

All I could think about was pressing my head to his chest so I could listen to his heartbeat. Would it sound the same? Thundering, strong and beating and so full of life?

I'd tried to hear it the last time I carried him, too. I'd pressed my ear to his chest and begged, I'd cried.

There'd just been silence.

It took everything I had to walk at a slow pace, to make sure I didn't draw more attention to us than I probably already had. If no one looked too closely, I could get away with saying we'd been in a fight, or a wreck. Something.

If people looked at us, they'd realize the blood slowly oozing down my shoulder from Xavier's injuries couldn't be easily explained away, and I was soaked in red and silently giving thanks that the shirt I'd worn was black.

By some miracle, I made it back to my house without anyone stopping us, and I barely took two steps through the door before I dropped to my knees, careful to keep Xavier safe in my arms as I went.

"Axel, what—"

How many of our kisses had tasted like blood? This was just one more to add to a never-ending list of moments I would never forget.

That I never wanted to lose again.

I couldn't pretend not to want him anymore.

I was gentle when I cupped his jawline, a featherlight brush of fingertips that he leaned into. For someone who'd just been knocked unconscious, he was more responsive to my touch than he had any right to be. He slid forward and half crawled onto my lap, and the feeling of his fingers tangling in my hair to pull me closer was Heaven. He yanked hard enough to force my head back so he could slot his mouth against mine, and when Xavier shifted up on his knees and pressed himself flush against me, our heights felt like they used to. When I closed my eyes, nothing was different.

This was just another time when he'd come home, another moment when I was going to have to patch him up because he was soaked in blood, and I'd have fun teasing him about getting it on the couch.

Except I could still feel the cuts on his skin beneath my fingertips, and I was still shivering from the feeling of carrying his limp body against mine. It forced a sound from somewhere deep in my chest, a mixture of a whimper and a moan. Xavier licked into my mouth like he could drink the noise from me before it kissed the air.

"I'm fine, I promise. It takes more than one lackey to get me down, you know?" He leaned back a few inches, the only space I would give him, and stroked his fingers slowly through my hair. "Are you alright? You just killed a man."

I frowned. "I've killed people before, Xavier."

"Yeah, maybe. But you don't like doing it. You were never like the rest of us. You…" His lips pressed together for just a second, and his hand lowered, fingers carefully trailing the length of my neck before toying with the chain there. His brows knit together when he touched it, and I held my breath—would he remember the necklace? Would he remember me giving it to him? But just as quickly as the expression came, it faded, and he dropped his palm to rest over the violent thump of my heart. "You're good, Axel. You've always been good . I mean, fuck, out of the two of us, I always knew I was the one that would end up hurting you the most if it came down to it."

I couldn't stop the pain that lanced across my features, and Xavier was too observant, even when he was hurt, not to catch it. When he quirked a brow, I answered almost helplessly.

"You're right. I wasn't the one who died."

He paused for just a second—I could see the wheels turning in his head, because he knew I was right. Maybe he was more dangerous, but it hadn't done a damn thing to help in the end.

"Yeah, that's true. But…" He brushed his lips against mine. "I came back, right?"

"Xavier…" I understood what he was doing. Trying to make light of the situation, trying to make me feel better. How did I explain it to him? How could I even begin to make him understand what it had done to me. "I had to clean your scene. I carried you home. I never…" I paused and took a shuddery breath. "I never got to tell you goodbye."

His eyes flicked to the side, but I caught the flash of pain there, the moment of either memory or understanding. He spoke softly when he answered. "Maybe that's because I was coming back."

"I didn't know that." My arms around him tightened. "I didn't know you were coming back. You were just there, and then you were gone." I didn't realize I was holding him too tight until he let out a wince and I instantly loosened my grip. "Sorry."

"It's fine. Are you sure you're fine?" he asked again.

"I told you, I am. Xavier…" Xavier… I had no idea how I'd doubted he was exactly who he'd said he was the moment he walked into my house like he owned the place. "I don't like killing, but I'll always kill for you."

It wasn't an apology. Fuck, I couldn't even properly apologize when he didn't know what I was apologizing for.

Maybe if I started now, maybe if I did my best to show him that I was sorry, that I would have never let him get hurt, that I would have never let him walk out the door that night if I'd known what was going to happen… maybe if I did my best, he'd see the truth by the time he remembered.

Maybe he'd forgive me.