Page 138 of Breathe Like Hell

MICAH

Mason was an actual fucking nightmare. He would not leave my house. It was as if he’d made it his life’s mission to take away any spare second I might’ve had with Dakota alone, and I didn’t appreciate it at all, especially now that I was actively trying to soothe the friction in my relationship with her.

Because every glance they shared in my kitchen, in my living room, even in my own bedroom, worsened the fear.

The paralyzing fear that I was somehow about to lose her to him.

Mason was just as much of a liar as me, but I could tell that he’d already been far more honest than I was capable of. Dakota saw herself in him, and I knew she loved him, probably long before she’d ever loved me—if she did. He loved her, too.

And sometimes that fear did catch me off guard. A hitch in my chest, a tightness in my throat.

A reminder that I couldn’t be what she wanted me to be. Not fully.

Maybe one day she’d be sick of it. Sick of the distance and dishonesty and unyielding dominance I needed to enact over her. She’d be sick of trying to accommodate me and all the things I’d never speak about. Mason tore her apart, but I froze her out, and it wasn’t so easy to decide which of those was worse.

Every time I closed my eyes, Dakota was there—kneeling in the same place I’d once watched Mason crash into the ocean. Her hair tangling around her shoulders, her eyes lowered, her palms pressed to her thighs.

The image wouldn’t leave my head.

Every thought of Mason’s fall now carried the mirror of Dakota kneeling. She’d somehow rewritten the memory without erasing it, giving me an even stronger tie to that patch of land. Because now it wasn’t only the place where I’d found him again, but her as well.

I could still do our normal.

Sometimes.

But I needed certainty, needed to know every decision belonged to me. That she wouldn’t ask for more than I could give.

I needed to know that she wouldn’t push me past the point where my own body stopped feeling like mine. The point where my need for power and control overcame everything else.

Ever since hooking up with Mason, something had shifted. Sex with Dakota frightened me because I no longer trusted myself. I was terrified she’d unknowingly corner me somehow—that panic would take over, and I’d hurt her just to escape it. I’d already hurt her enough for reasons she couldn’t understand. Mason didn’t even understand them fully, and he knew more about me than anyone else.

But her submission had shown me she was willing to place herself in my hands without asking anything in return, which was what I needed.

I didn’t want her pity. I didn’t want her anger. I didn’t even want her understanding.

I just wanted her.

Quiet and trusting and beautiful and mine.

In those moments, I could breathe.

But if Mason wasn’t around, I couldn’t.

Mason wasn’t here now, though. Dakota had requested he go pick up food for her, at a place far enough away that I had time to be with her alone. I didn’t know if she did that on purpose, but I was grateful regardless.

She was lying on the rug in my living room on her stomach with her laptop in front of her, the screen glowing on her focused face.

“It’s getting cold outside,” I said, looking at the frost around the edges of my windows. “It might snow soon. The weather says we could actually get a good few inches this year.”

“I know. Maybe I can go sledding.” She giggled, then folded her arms on the rug and rested her head on them. “I never really went sledding. Not on a real hill, anyway. Sometimes my brother would drag me around the backyard on this shitty plastic sled we found one year next to a dumpster. It had a big crack in the side that pinched my fingers. And he was mostly dragging me around in the mud, with only some frost on top.”

Hearing Dakota talk about her brother—even casually—made me feel so violently unstable that I almost didn’t know how to respond. It made me feel sick to my stomach. But I kept my expression normal.

“I’ll get you a new sled,” I said.

“No,” she groaned.

I crawled over her body, hands sliding up her thighs, over the soft curve of her ass, until my fingers could curl in the waistband of her yoga pants. She didn’t protest as I slowly dragged them down with her underwear, exposing her perfect ass.