Chapter 53 His Concerns

• As Xavier looked at the sticky proof of his cum his breath caught, giving him a brief moment of weakness. With a resigned exhale, he slid a cloth across the mess in a way that seemed mechanical. There was no tenderness in the act before it. As he walked back to where he was bathing Cathleen, the silence in their shared bathroom was thick with unspoken words. Her presence was a silent challenge to his detached existence.
• "Time to dress up, cat," he said, his voice flat, as if he were dictating a schedule to an indifferent boardroom rather than addressing his wife.
• The bathroom tiles were cold and impersonal under Xavier's bare feet as he gathered a towel, its plushness a mockery of comfort in the sterile space. He approached Cathleen with the calculated steps of a man who had mastered control, though the world often mistook it for indifference. She was bound—not by love or desire, but by the cruel twist of fate that left her wheelchair-confined. He scooped her up effortlessly, his arms steel bands masked in tailored sleeves, the raw power beneath never fully at rest.