Page 100 of Breathe Like Hell

He always asked me that. Why are you doing this?

Dakota did, too.

Why, why, why? Why did I do any of the things I did? Why did I hurt people? Why did I hurt myself? Why was I making everything more difficult than it needed to be?

I don’t fucking know.

There’s something wrong in my head and I don’t want to admit that, even to myself. Something happened that I’ll never want to talk about.

And then, with him…

I gently pulled Dakota out from under the stream, then uncapped her body wash and lathered it in my hands. She was unresponsive as I ran my soapy palms all over her skin, wet and soft, pink from the heat. I didn’t linger anywhere except her shoulders, which I massaged for a few minutes while Dakota shut her eyes. She was so tense all the time. Her body was never relaxed, except when she was sleeping.

I’d gotten less sleep over the past few months than usual, simply because I preferred to lay there and stare at her sweet face, unmarred by anxiety. The steady rise and fall of her chest.

I turned her back to face me, letting hot water rinse over the back of her hair.

She looked up at me again, all her hurt on display in those big eyes, her pain so close to the surface now that it made my own eyes sting. There were falling stars in her eyes, glistening on the way down. So beautiful, but so, so sad.

I love you.

I pressed my lips to her hairline, squeezing my eyes shut, gripping her head with both hands. I love you more than anything on Earth.

I wished I found her before Mason did.

I wished she belonged to me and only me, wished I’d never let my own problems infect us, infect her.

I wished I could love her cleanly.

But I couldn’t. I loved Dakota like a double-edged blade. Carving her into pieces, scratching ownership into her skin, and cutting my own palm by doing it.

She thought she needed me, thought she needed this pain, but she didn’t realize my need to bleed was greater. I craved my own blood dripping over steel more. I was the one starving without her.

I couldn’t let go of her.

She wasn’t pure—far from it—but she felt that way in my hands.

I stared down at her and felt everything.

My anger corrupted me and I fucking hated the fact that this was because of Mason. I’d worked to build my life, build my sense of self after him, gain back the control I’d lost to him, and none of it even mattered. A few months with him back in my life and I was no longer the man I’d tried to become. I was bitter and jealous and hateful and obsessive.

I didn’t want to let Dakota be with him, and I didn’t want to let him be with her.

But in the same breath, I wanted to control both of them—and control them together.

It was messing me up inside.

Everything was messing me up inside. Every old wound was being ripped open; every desperate piece of armor I’d constructed around my heart and my soul was being weakened.

I’d spent years building myself into someone who couldn’t be hurt, but none of it mattered now. Either one of them could topple the entire structure I’d so carefully constructed with nothing more than a few words, a pitying look.

I’d buried my vulnerabilities under so many rules and routines and carefully maintained distance that I’d almost began to believe they were healed. Almost.

Now I knew they were not.

I’m slipping, losing my footing, losing my grasp on this whole thing.

I shoved those thoughts away.