Page 101 of Breathe Like Hell

Dakota looked like she wanted to get out of the shower so I shut it off and grabbed her towel, then bundled it around her body and squeezed her tight. She just stood there. Mason’s claws were so deep inside of her she’d become nothing without the pain he was causing her.

The lump in my throat was back.

She shuffled across the heated tiles into my bedroom, then crawled on the bed, letting her towel fall off, her wet skin dampening the comforter, her soaked hair dripping everywhere. There was a pile of pajamas I’d laid out for her on the bed and she grabbed them, tugging my t-shirt over her head and pulling up her cotton shorts.

She looked over her shoulder, eyes sweeping up my body, landing on my face.

“Do you want me to brush your hair?” I asked.

For a second, she did nothing. Then she nodded.

I sat behind her on the bed and squeezed the excess water out of her hair into the towel, then started carefully brushing it. We didn’t converse while I worked through her tangles, but I winced every time the brush snagged.

After her hair was smooth, she faced me and let me rub lotion on her cheeks, her forehead, her chin, her nose. She stared at me the whole time, not blinking.

Dakota rolled her lips together, then spoke one word. “Aquaphor.”

“I have it,” I said while I grabbed the tube off the comforter and held it up. She watched me put some on my finger then smooth it over her lips.

I love you so much I feel like I can’t breathe.

Dakota laid down and snuggled herself under the covers, rolling to face the window instead of me. For a minute, I just watched the back of her head, her ear, the barest bit of cheekbone that I could see from this angle.

Then I changed into my own pajamas and joined her.

I wasn’t going to fall asleep, not for a long time. It was still early. And if I lost consciousness, all her heartbreak would come flooding back into her brain, too big for her to handle alone. I had to stay awake until it faded away.

Nobody understood how Sigeian power felt, except Sigeians. It wasn’t as simple as manipulating how other people felt.

I had to burn through the weight of the emotion I stole before relenting my control, or else it’d wreck the other person. That was why I could threaten Mason. If I took all his instability and did nothing to dampen it before shoving it all back into his brain, it would be fucking unbearable for him to receive everything at once. Guaranteed fracturing.

I supposed if I took something positive—like happiness—away, it would feel like some weird euphoria for me to give back, but I’d never done that. Nor considered it.

Someday, I’d explain all of it to Dakota.

Explain how saving Mason from a fracture was fast but exhausting, while saving her from heartbreak was slow but bearable. Explain how emotional weight worked. Explain how it felt to eventually relent control.

But not today.

“Are you disappointed?” Dakota asked, almost too quiet for me to hear. I shifted how I was laying, tilting her face towards mine.

“Why would I be disappointed?”

“That I’m probably not who you thought I was.” Dakota ducked her head, pressing her forehead to my sternum, body curled up against mine. Her voice was still strangely detached. “Like if you thought I was interesting when you first saw me, or something, and now you know I’m not. And I’m probably more sad and messy than you thought, too. And annoying to be around.”

“That’s not true,” I murmured. “Not in the slightest.”

“Okay.”

“Is that what you think I think of you? That you’re annoying?”

“Probably.”

“You’re not annoying, Masters. You might be sad and you might be messy but I wasn’t blind to either of those things when I chose you. Messiness doesn’t make you untouchable. Remember?”

And I might be sad, too.

She was quiet.