Page 126 of Breathe Like Hell

It was a truth I’d been trying to ignore, because it was so much easier to accept the inevitability of my decay with Mason than with Micah. Understanding that two people who craved death would never last was simple. Understanding that I was attached to my anchor with a rigid metal rod rather than a flexible chain was not simple. He kept me close, but never close enough.

Nervously, I turned to watch him again. Each of my heartbeats belonged to him.

I regretted everything. I wished things were different.

There were so many pieces to Micah’s puzzle, and I felt I held such a small, pointless amount of them. I knew fucking nothing about his life, other than the fact that he taught classes in chemical engineering and conducted research at the same university. What I hadn’t initially realized was that him taking care of me meant I’d never be allowed to do the same to him. The power was only allowed to flow in one direction.

My mind raced.

Maybe that was just it.

The power.

My eyes flicked back to stare out over the ocean as the gears in my brain whirred, my teeth anxiously chewing my lower lip. Micah wasn’t wired the same way I was, so I couldn’t apply my own thought patterns to him the same way I might’ve been able to with Mason.

I couldn’t be gentle with him, nor could I be abrasive. To Micah, my sympathy felt as bad as my arguing. Neither one of those things gave him the control, and maybe that was what he needed.

I’d been looking at the situation and seeing two paths, when I should’ve seen three. The first path was to fight with him, make him jealous, make him snap. The second was to show him how much I cared about him, how obsessed I was, how much I’d love him.

Those things could work with someone else, but not Micah.

I needed to back off completely and grant him complete control over the situation, over me. It wasn’t that he didn’t like me caring about him; it was that my care always came with imposition.

This could be simpler than I’d been making it.

I hope.

Slowly, I got off the rock, lowering myself to my knees in front of him.

He looked down at me kneeling with a tortured expression on his face.

I don’t know what I’m doing, but I want you to see that I’m trying.

I laid my palms flat on my thighs and cast my eyes downward.

“You can tell me to do anything you want,” I whispered. “I won’t fight you.”

Micah was quiet for a solid minute, and I glanced up to watch him staring out at the waves. His expression was unreadable, but the intensity in his eyes made me look back down at my thighs.

What are you thinking?

I was tempted to lean forward, to put my cheek on his quad and hug his calf and wait for him to hold my face with his hand. But he hadn’t asked for that, so I wouldn’t do it.

“You’re done doing that immature shit with him. No more fucking him to try and make me jealous,” he finally said. The sheer authority in his tone thrilled me, waking up all the butterflies in my stomach. “Repeat it.”

“I’m done with it,” I breathed without looking up.

“Your body is mine, and you know that. Doesn’t matter if Mason gets to fuck you sometimes. He’s not in charge of you. I am. Repeat it.”

“You’re in charge of me.” My palms were still warm on my thighs through my jeans, and I wholeheartedly believed every word I was repeating. Micah’s dominance threaded itself through my bones, all the way to the marrow, each strand keeping me together.

“You are mine to break and mine to fix. My evil, precious, broken girl. I told you to be patient, and I’m only half satisfied with your following of my instructions. How does that make you feel?”

“I wish you were fully satisfied.”

“Right. But that means you have to listen to me. You have to trust me to do what’s best. I’m not sure you do.”

“I do,” I said quickly, looking up at him now. “I do trust you. You know what’s best.”