18. Chapter 18

Chapter 18

Axel

I t had been a week , and I hadn't found him. There were only so many places he could go, but I didn't know where to look. I wasn't sure where to start. I wasn't even sure if he'd stay put if I did figure out where he was.

He had to know what this was doing to me—he had to know how it was killing me inside… and I couldn't even feel bad about the last conversation we'd had. I meant everything I'd said. Our lives would be better, safer, so much more simple if he didn't go back to the work he'd been in before.

The work that had gotten him killed.

Even if I had avenged him, that didn't mean that it couldn't happen again, that it wouldn't happen again at some point.

Half of the people who I'd cleaned scenes for stopped calling me eventually. When you worked every day with the threat of death knocking at your door, someday the Reaper was going to come to collect. You could avoid it, but you couldn't escape it forever.

Even the best of us slipped up sometimes.

Knowing that I was right didn't make me any less miserable that I'd opened my mouth to begin with, especially when we were so far from the house. He could have gone in any direction, and I had no way of tracking him down, no way of figuring out what had happened to him.

I needed help.

Especially since some small part of me was worried that the people who'd been after us had found him, that they were going to hurt him.

That they were going to take him away from me again.

And if that was the case, there was really only one answer to who I could call for help with that… and I had no idea if the number I had would even work.

It didn't stop me from calling it when I'd been looking for a week and I still hadn't found him, though the obscure leave a message after the tone didn't tell me if the number was right.

I tried to keep my words as careful as I could. "I know you called me before for help, and I didn't believe you then. I believe you now. I've seen proof. If you want to take care of them, I'm here to help. I'll be at my house."

I hung up and frowned at my cell phone.

That might have been a mistake.

"It was probably a mistake." I answered my own worry aloud and started pacing again. I felt restless. He'd run before—God knew we'd fought and he'd left before—but things were different now.

I was different.

Everything was different, because before, I'd been so convinced that Xavier was invincible. I was so sure nothing could hurt him, that no one would take him away from me. I was sure he'd always come back.

I'd never imagined he'd come back that final time as nothing more than ash in a box.

"Fuck…" I couldn't stop my feet from carrying me to the fireplace, to that little shrine I'd made for him so many years ago. What would I do if I found him and he was dead again?

Would I just have two little boxes to stare at?

"Fuck!" I shouted it this time, and felt the pain radiating up my arm a second before I realized I'd punched the damn stone. I stared at it.

Red on white.

Blood on bone.

I couldn't do this. I couldn't just wait around until I maybe got news, or he maybe came home. He couldn't have gone that far.

He didn't even have a wallet with his own ID, he just had…

You want Marshall? Fine.

He'd told me where he was going, and I'd been too panicked to listen.

I was back at my phone before I had a chance to think. I was apparently going to call in every favor I could. I certainly hadn't even thought about calling in my favor with Jensen, but he was the best of the best when it came to tech and hacking—if I needed someone to invade the privacy of a technically dead man, he was the one to do it.

He picked up on the third ring, and the annoyed, groggy sound of his voice coming in a low southern drawl told me I was being an asshole. "This better be good, Fetterman."

It was late.

Late enough that it was dark outside, and probably later still where he was.

Fuck. Well.

"I'll completely wipe your debt and the double your son owes me for that sloppy scene I cleaned if you'll get me some information."

There was a pause—did he know what a jackass his kid was, leaving blood all over that white rug? And did he remember that he owed me for completely scrubbing a building for him. We hadn't traded in cash, we'd traded in favors.

In the grand scheme of things, it probably seemed like he was getting the deal of a lifetime. He had no way of knowing that I would have traded anything, given anything, to find Xavier.

The silence broke when he cleared his throat, and I heard the sound of rustling sheets. "Give me the name."

Relief swept through my body.

"Marshall Lister."

I didn't know why I hadn't thought of looking for Marshall's condo earlier. Maybe it was simply the fact that we'd fought over me even suggesting he take over his life. I hadn't thought he'd actually go back to the place that he seemed so adverse to just accept as his own.

But according to Jensen, someone had accessed Marshall's credit cards.

Which meant that someone was probably at the condo, and all I could do was hope that he was still there, still in one piece when I punched in the access code Jensen had provided and made my way to the top floor.

I was afraid no one would answer.

I was afraid the place would be ransacked.

I was terrified to even raise my fist to knock, but after a few raps against the wood, the door jerked open.

Xavier stood there in nothing but a low slung pair of sweats with his hair rumpled like he'd been sleeping.

With his shirt off, I could see every scar on his chest—every burn mark, every birthmark . One, two, three, four bullet holes. One knife wound… all a strawberry pink like they weren't terrifying reminders of what had happened to him before.

The first time I'd seen them, I could barely look at them. Now that he was standing in front of me again, I could barely look away.

"What the fuck, Xavier?" I finally managed to hiss the words out, and he tried to shut the door in my face as soon as I spoke.

Was it because I hadn't come with flowers and an apology?

I wasn't going to apologize.

He'd left.

He'd left .

"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.

He drew me against him and slowly took us both to the floor. It didn't matter that I was bigger than him—it didn't matter that I was worried I'd crush him. Xavier pulled me until I was half on top of him and took my face in his hands.

"I promise." It came out in a whisper, and he brushed his lips against mine. "Fuck, Axel. I'm sorry. I won't leave again."

I pulled him closer, wrapping my arms around him so tight I was worried he might break.

"I love you," I said. "Fuck, I love you. I can't do this without you."

"You don't have to. I'm right here, Axel. I'm not going anywhere. Nowhere so far you can't find me, right?" He lifted his head, and I was lost in the swirl of green in his eyes, in how much they burned. "I love you, too." It seemed too hard for him to say it when he was alive before, but it came unbidden and unfettered now, raw and real and everything I needed to hear.

His lips pressed against mine, trapping the words on our tongues so he could feed them to me in slow, sweet strokes that calmed the thundering beat of my heart and made me believe it. When the kiss finally broke, I leaned back to look at him, and I was almost afraid to ask my question.

"Can we go home now?"

Home. That house had only become home again when he'd come back. He smiled at me and nodded.

"Yeah, Sunshine. We can go home."