Chapter 10 #2
I hold it. Ten seconds. Twenty. Thirty. Every second is a year of torture, an eternity of agony.
My legs are starting to give—I can feel it in the way the braces are digging in differently, the way my balance is shifting.
The phantom sensation of my knees buckling makes my stomach lurch with nausea.
I see George shift his weight, his eyes narrowing, calculating with cold precision the exact moment my strength will fail. Waiting like a vulture for me to fall. Not yet, you bastard. Not yet.
"One week," I say, my voice dropping to a dangerous rasp that I've perfected over years of commanding men.
"One week to get our protection rackets back in order. One week to show the Vipers that we don't just survive—we conquer. We take back what's ours and we make them bleed for ever thinking they could take it." I pause, let that sink in. "Dismissed."
I don't wait for them to move. Don't wait for questions or challenges or anything else that would require me to stand here another second. I turn, the pivot nearly sending me straight to the floor, my legs giving way—
But Asher and Zay are there instantly, sliding under my arms, masking the fact that I am no longer standing on my own power, that I haven't been for the last thirty seconds.
They hustle me through the back doors and into the private office, moving fast, my feet barely touching the ground as they half-carry me.
The door slams shut behind us. The second the latch clicks, the world disappears into white-hot pain.
"Get it off," I gasp, my knees hitting the floor with an impact I don't feel but see happening to my body like I'm watching from outside myself. "The brace. Get it off me now!"
Zay is swearing—a steady stream of creative profanity that would be funny if I could focus on anything other than the agony.
His hands blur as he rips at the Velcro, the sound harsh and sharp.
Asher is holding me upright, keeping me from face-planting into the carpet, his face grim and set in hard lines.
The moment the plastic cage is removed, the pressure releases and somehow that makes it worse.
I collapse into the leather armchair, my head falling back against the cushion, my breath coming in desperate, sobbing heaves that I can't control.
The pain is a living thing now, a beast with claws and teeth clawing its way out of my spine, trying to split me open from the inside.
"Xavier! Oh God, Xavier!"
The door slams open and Valentina bursts into the room like a hurricane.
Her face is a mask of fury and fear and something else I can't quite identify through the haze of pain.
She slams the door behind her hard enough to rattle the frame and stalks toward me, her eyes flashing with an intensity that cuts through the fog.
"You're a sociopath!" she screams, her voice cracking on the words. "You could have killed yourself out there! Did you see your face? Did you feel what was happening? You were gray! You were dying standing up and you just kept going!"
"I did... what I had to," I wheeze, my eyes squeezed shut. I can't look at her. If I look at her, if I see the fear and anger and disappointment in her eyes, I'll break completely.
"What you had to? You're a liar! You told them you were fine!
You're not fine! You can't even feel your goddamn legs, Xavier!
" She's standing over me now, her shadow falling across my face.
I can feel the heat of her anger radiating off her in waves.
"You acted like a god out there when you can barely function as a man.
Why? For them? For Johnson? For George? They aren't worth your life! "
"It's not about Johnson," I snap, forcing my eyes open to glare at her.
The fire in them matches hers. "It's about the club.
It's about not being a victim. It's about standing up even when you can't." I pause, let the next words land with purpose.
"Something you should know a lot about, shouldn't you, Val?
With all those secrets you're holding? All those things you won't tell me? "
She flinches like I slapped her. The color drains from her face, leaving her pale and stricken. "That's not fair."
"Fair?" I try to lean forward, my hands gripping the armrests hard enough to make my knuckles crack.
"You want to talk about fair? I'm sitting in this chair because I protected this club.
I'm standing in front of vultures because I won't let us die without a fight.
And you... you look at me like I'm a broken toy.
Like I'm something to be pitied and protected and hidden away. "
"That's not—"
"I don't want your pity, Valentina." Each word is deliberate, cutting. "I don't want you looking at me like I'm already dead. Like I'm already gone."
"It's not pity! It's love, you arrogant bastard!
" She's crying now, tears streaming down her face, but her jaw is still set in that stubborn line I know so well.
"I've spent every second since you woke up terrified that you'd do something exactly like this.
Terrified that I'd lose you again because you're too stubborn to realize you're human.
That you have limits. That you can break. "
"I don't have the luxury of being human!
" I roar back, the pain in my back punctuating every word with exclamation points of agony.
"I have to be the Raider. I have to be the President.
If I'm just Xavier—just a man in a chair who can't walk, can't fight, can't protect anyone—we lose everything.
The club falls apart. The Vipers take what's ours.
Johnson and George stage their coup. Everything I've built dies. "
"Then let it go! Let it all burn!" Her voice breaks on the words. "I don't care about the club! I don't care about the territory or the respect or any of it! I care about you! About you not killing yourself trying to prove something to people who don't deserve your sacrifice!"
She reaches out, her hands grabbing the front of my leather jacket, shaking me with surprising strength. "Look at me! Xavier, look at me!"
I look. I see the desperation written in every line of her face.
The raw, unadulterated fear that's been eating her alive.
And beneath it all, the truth she's been trying to hide—the same truth that's been eating me alive from the inside.
We're both ghosts, haunted by things we can't name, can't face, can't speak out loud.
Clinging to each other in the dark and hoping it's enough.
"I can't... let it burn," I whisper, the fight leaving me as exhaustion and pain drag me down. "I can't. This is all I have. All I am."
"You're so stupid," she sobs, her forehead dropping against mine. Her tears fall on my face—hot and real and grounding. Her scent—smoke and vanilla and something uniquely her—fills my lungs, more intoxicating than any painkiller, more addictive than any drug. "So incredibly, impossibly stupid."
"Probably," I agree, my voice barely audible.
I reach up with trembling hands and frame her face.
Her skin is hot beneath my palms, damp with tears and flushed with emotion.
My thumbs brush her cheekbones, wiping away tears that just keep coming.
For a second, the pain in my spine recedes, pushed back by the sheer electricity of her presence, by the fact that she's here and real and holding me together when I can't hold myself.
"Val," I murmur, her name a prayer.
She doesn't wait for me to finish the thought.
She crashes her lips against mine in a desperate, bruising collision that tastes like salt and fire and desperation.
It isn't a gentle kiss. It isn't soft or tender or careful.
It's a battle, a war, a claiming. Her hands tangle in my hair, pulling me closer as if she can merge her strength into my broken body through sheer force of will.
I groan into her mouth, my hands sliding down to her waist, pulling her into my lap despite the protest of every nerve in my body.
I don't care about the chair. Don't care about the pain.
Don't care about Zay and Asher who are probably still in the room watching this.
There is only this—the heat of her, the way she says my name against my lips like a benediction, the way she makes me feel like a king even when I'm shattered into pieces.
We're both gasping when we finally break apart, our breaths hitching in the quiet office.
Outside, I can still hear the muffled sounds of the club—voices, movement, life continuing.
But here, in the wreckage of my strength and pride, we're holding on to something real.
Something that might actually matter more than any of this.
"Don't you ever," she whispers, her lips grazing mine with each word, "do that again. Don't you ever risk yourself like that for them."
"No promises," I breathe, and I pull her back down, drowning the pain in the only way I know how—in her mouth, her touch, her presence that makes me feel whole even when I'm broken.
She kisses me harder, deeper, like she's trying to punish me and save me at the same time. And maybe she is. Maybe we're both trying to save each other from ourselves.
Maybe that's all we've ever been doing.
"I love you," I hear myself say against her mouth, the words escaping before I can stop them. "I love you and I'm sorry and I can't lose you."
She pulls back just enough to look at me, her eyes wide and shining with tears. "You're not going to lose me, you idiot. I'm right here. I'm not going anywhere."
"Promise me."
"I promise," she whispers, but there's something in her eyes—guilt, fear, secrets—that makes the promise feel hollow.
But I take it anyway. Because it's all I have. Because we're both liars holding onto each other in the dark. And maybe that's the only truth that matters.