Chapter 54 Xander
XANDER
{Days later}
The house breathed quietly around me.
My fingers twitched toward the whiskey. How many bottles had I decimated over the last year?
Twenty? Thirty? Fuck, probably a lot more than that.
Not just whiskey either. Whatever I could get my hands on—bourbon, cognac, vodka that burned like gasoline going down.
It was a miracle my liver hadn’t bit the dust.
Liquor had been a temporary peace for me.
It didn’t ask me questions. Didn’t want anything from me.
It had stopped the noise in my head, stopped the constant struggle.
Sober Xander wasn’t pleasant to be around, so I kept to myself as much as possible when I couldn’t drink.
Drunk Xander was too buzzed to bitch. He was tolerable. Most of the time…
Course the reprieve never lasted. The doubt and anger always came back, usually worse than ever. I reached for the bottle again, muscle memory wanting to take over. I stopped, my hand hovering in midair, and withdrew it slowly. Did I really need a drink?
No. I didn’t think I did.
I had something else giving me a peace that wasn’t so short lived.
Lucy. Gorgeous, tough-as-nails, Lucy. She was sunshine, breaking through dark, heavy clouds.
I stepped back from the kitchen counter, surprised by the ease with which I could now walk away. I turned to leave… then turned back around immediately. I faced the whiskey again not because I was wavering, but because I needed to do something I should have done a long damn time ago.
Reaching up, I opened the cabinet above the whiskey.
One by one, I pulled down every bottle there.
Fifteen in total. I needed to get the two in my bathroom as well.
Padding out to the garage, I bypassed the shelves and tubs, finding a half-crushed shipping box by the recycling can.
I took that inside and filled it so heavy with liquor the bottom bent outward against the weight, papery tape hanging on for dear life.
As I started walking it out to the trash, I paused.
This wasn’t good enough. I’d still know the bottles were out there intact, waiting.
Returning to the sink, I uncapped and dumped every ounce.
When I was done, I carried the box—markedly lighter now—and dumped the proof of my self-destructive, self-medicating past into the bin to be hauled away come Tuesday.
Running a hand through my hair, I wandered back inside.
My brothers were at the Cirque. I was on Lucy duty today.
Not that it was a duty. Being with her was a goddamn privilege.
I just wasn’t sure what to do with myself.
Drinking had consumed so much of my life.
I had nothing to fill the void. No, not void.
The time I’d reclaimed. The time I’d taken back.
I walked toward the living room, my socked feet silent against the hardwood floors.
I made it as far as the edge of the area rug, then I stopped moving.
I didn’t know why. My body felt heavy suddenly, gravity increasing ten-fold.
I carried the nonstop responsibility of keeping my pack in line, DemonX free of bad publicity and under contract, not letting the damn house fall apart.
No one had asked me to shoulder the burden; it came to me naturally—DemonX had been my idea after all.
I hadn’t minded for a long time, but the older I got, the harder it became to stay on the straight and narrow.
There were times sanity was slipping through my fingers.
Logically, I knew it was my Alpha nature decaying for want of a mate. It didn’t matter how fucking tough a man was, no one can fight a biological clock from ticking.
The liquor helped me last. Helped me keep going.
What I’d always needed was finally here though, to take its rightful place.
As if drawn by my thoughts of her, Lucy walked into the room. She was looking down, reading a magazine as she moved. She was heading straight toward me, totally unawares. I didn’t move. I waited, letting her advance.
When her course shifted just enough to miss where I stood, I shuffled over, putting myself in her direct path again. I waited, heart thudding, until Lucy walked directly into my body.
“Oh!” she gasped, jolting back in surprise.
She wasn’t falling, but I still put my arms around her, pulling her ‘steady’.
“I wasn’t falling,” she eyed me suspiciously.
“Really? I thought you were,” I shrugged, knitting my hands together at her back and not letting her leave.
Her gaze narrowed, those emerald eyes keen. “If you want to hold me, you can just ask.”
“I want to hold you,” I breathed out shamelessly.
She blinked, then slowly nodded. “Okay.”
Lucy pushed into my body, wrapping her own arms around me, one hand still gripping her magazine.
My chest tightened as the length of her pressed against me.
I felt every curve, all the softness I was craving.
Waves of need flooded from my core, threatening to wake up a part of me that I didn’t think Lucy was ready to accept.
So, I gave her a squeeze and reluctantly pulled away.
“You okay?” she asked, expression searching.
“Better than I’ve been in a long time,” I answered truthfully.
She smiled at that, then took my hand, tugging me over to the sofa.
I let her push me down against a cushion.
It still amazed me that this tiny creature, no bigger than a damn minute, had wrapped me and my Alpha brothers around her delicate fingers.
Lucy leaned, poking at my left arm. I lifted it and she sat down on the cushion beside me, snuggling into my side.
The feel of her against me made tendrils of electricity shoot through every part of my damn body, from the soles of my feet to the top of my head.
This woman made me come alive in ways I didn’t think possible.
I hovered my arm in the air, unsure where to put it.
Eventually, I draped it over the back of the sofa.
"What are you reading?" I asked, leaning closer to peek at the glossy pages.
Lucy angled the magazine toward me.
"An old Slick Trick Sports issue. You guys were the feature story.” She turned to a page and tapped a photograph that spread across two pages.
“It’s you,” she said confidently, then held the magazine close to her face, reading the small caption below the action shot.
“Xander of DemonX mastered the Kiss of Death backflip at the tender age of seventeen. Since crashing onto the professional stunt scene, DemonX has gone full throttle, showing no signs of slowing down.”
“Seventeen was a long time ago.” I stared at the image of myself captured mid-trick.
My body was arched above a motorcycle, back towards the handlebars.
I could close my eyes and remember that moment, suspended between gravity's release and its inevitable reclaim.
The photographer had framed the shot, so the stadium lights created a halo effect around me.
It was one of my favorite career photos.
Lucy turned the magazine around, studying the picture again. "Is it amazing?" she asked, her voice soft with wonder. "Does it feel like flying?"
I leaned back against the cushions, considering. No one had asked me that in years. Back in the day, I’d have immediately said, “yes.” Right now, I wasn’t sure flying was the right description anymore.
"It used to," I admitted, surprised by my own honesty.
The memory of that first perfect jump, the exhilaration of defying everything that had ever held me down, rode into my brain unbidden.
That was it for me. The highest of highs.
To land that jump, after a million crashes.
There was no feeling in the world like it.
Lucy's eyes found mine again, curious and penetrating. "And now?" she pressed.
"Now..." I searched for the right words. "It feels like the only time I'm really alive."
Understanding flickered across her face, and she nodded slowly. "I get that."
She turned the magazine around again, her finger tracing the outline of my suspended body. The gesture felt strangely intimate, as though she were touching me instead of my image.
"Is this what you always wanted to do? Be a stunt rider, I mean?” She lowered the magazine, draping it across her lap.
I allowed myself to relax, sinking deeper into the cushion behind me. Lucy moved with me, staying as close as possible.
"When I was a kid, all I wanted to do was grow up and get out of the system." The admission came easier than expected. "Foster care doesn’t exactly foster big dreams.” I meant it as a joke, but the look Lucy gave me sobered me before I could even smile.
I cleared my throat. “When I met the guys, I wanted to protect them. They were just like me. Same age, same anger at the world, similar shitty backgrounds. For whatever reason, I was the big brother from the start.” Now, I did smile.
“Fallon would give me hell for saying that. Our birthdays are only a few days apart.”
“I don’t even know your age,” Lucy said in an odd tone. “Why didn’t I realize that before now?”
“Maybe because we acted like dicks to you from the start. Highly doubt you wanted to know much of anything about us.” A pang of guilt stung my chest. I was going to be seventy fucking years old, still lamenting how we’d treated Lucy at the start.
“You’d be surprised,” she sighed out. “Even wearing ratty clothes cleaning your toilets, I wanted to know everything.”
I stiffened against her, hating the idea that she’d still been hopeful even scrubbing up our piss and shit.
“We’re all thirty-three,” I pushed out quickly, trying to prevent myself from sinking into self-hate. “The minute me and the guys were emancipated, we started scheming. What were five adrenaline junkies supposed to do with their lives? We weren’t exactly cut out for desk jobs.”
Lucy listened, her head tilted slightly, giving me her complete attention. I'd forgotten what that felt like—to be truly seen up close and personal, not observed from a distance by people who’d forget me the minute someone did a bigger, scarier stunt.
"I think we all ended up performing because it felt like escaping our bullshit childhoods. The adrenaline rush, the crowd's roar, the money. Especially the money. Performing gave us the control we'd never had before. It also let us do what we loved. Riding, playing with fire, throwing blades."
"Must have been terrifying at first," Lucy murmured, her fingers going back to the photograph.
I covered her hand with my much larger one.
In response, she rotated her hand, so her palm faced up.
I curled my fingers, lacing them with hers.
Just holding her hand was wonderful. I could sit here for an eternity touching Lucy in this small way.
“It was never terrifying,” I murmured. “I don’t think I even knew what terror felt like, not until I saw that tent crash down on you.”
A blush crept across her cheeks, and I fought the urge to kiss every inch of pale skin now gone pink.
"Is this what you want to do forever?" she asked after a moment, her gaze steady on mine.
"I don't know.” The answer spilled out of me automatically. It made me feel unmoored but not anxious. “For the first time in my life, I’ve got a reason to be careful.”
Lucy sat up, and the absence of her weight against my body felt like losing a limb.
She turned, bringing her legs up on the sofa and crossing them.
Her eyes searched mine for a moment, then her expression softened, like she’d found whatever she was looking for.
“I don’t want you to change who you are for me. I’d never ask that.”
“If I change, Lucy, it’s not just for you. It’s for myself. It’s for the pack. It’s so we can have a future. Now that I’ve found you, I don’t want to keep chasing death.”
She smiled, her eyes sparkling. “Death’s been chasing me my whole life. The idea of chasing it is kind of exciting.”
I’m going to have to send Eros an apology letter, I thought to myself, recognizing the look on her face.
I knew it all too well. I saw it in the mirror before every performance.
They weren’t blowing smoke when they claimed their scent matching was second to none.
Lucy is DemonX material through and through.