Page 143 of Breathe Like Hell

Not one part of me believed him in the mood for sex, but I quietly climbed out of bed and walked through the dark hallway, past the closed door to his bedroom where Dakota was sleeping peacefully. She had no clue that we were hooking up—even more frequently now—and I felt like shit about that. But it wasn’t going anywhere. This was a relic of my past agony, a wound I refused to let heal, not something that would change the course of my future.

He was a drug, a needle in my vein.

Eventually I’d quit the habit. So would he.

And then I could be done with him for good.

Even with the door closed, I could smell that familiar scent mingling with the steam.

I silently pushed open the bathroom door, then shut it behind me. Micah looked over, but he didn’t say anything. His eyes slid shut, his head tipping back, water pouring over his body, tinted pink as it dripped off his elbows. He didn’t try and hide it from me, even as his muscles stiffened.

It was so starkly familiar it took my breath for an instant.

Without speaking, I took all my clothes off, then pulled the glass shower door open and stepped in with him.

“I don’t want you in here,” he said as he rinsed his hair, fingers twitching.

“You’re still doing it.” My gaze flicked to the matching vertical slashes on his forearms, blood trickling down with the water. The same ones I’d seen carved into his skin dozens of times over the years we were together.

It was his signature. Something he’d taught me, too.

Not necessarily because he hated himself, but because he needed a way to free himself from the shackles of his mind sometimes. He could take emotions from everyone else, but not from himself. Those had to be bled out.

“Did you think I’d stop because we broke up?” He tilted his head forward, silver-blue eyes piercing mine with icy anger. “I didn’t get this from you.”

“You have your life now.” The mist from the spray wet my skin, accumulating into droplets. “I thought it might’ve changed things for you.”

“This isn’t the life I wanted.”

I tried to hide the way his words knocked the air from my lungs. The way they fucking gutted me. Hearing him say it aloud made regret and self-hatred swell in my chest.

In a way, I’m the reason for that.

I’m the sole reason he left his entire life in Heaven.

“What life do you want?”

“Now? Her.” He jerked his head in the vague direction of his bedroom, jaw flexed. “That’s it.”

“And before?”

My question hung in the air unanswered, thickening the steam, making it harder to breathe. I’d known Micah wouldn’t answer when I’d asked, though. All I was doing was hurting us both by bringing it up. Jamming my thumb into that old bruise. Pissing him off. Reminding him exactly why he hated me now.

Still, that word haunted me.

Before.

Back when both of us were naive and hopeful, thinking we could somehow make this work for real. But neither of us would ever believe that bullshit lie again.

“She doesn’t know about this,” I surmised as I looked back at the cuts. Clean, right down the middle, spanning most of the length of his forearms.

He just looked at me.

They’ll be healed by tomorrow.

The reason both of us couldn’t ever stop to consider the implications of the ways we hurt each other—or ourselves. There was no physical evidence. Ever. The wounds disappeared long before the memories did. Broken bones, slit wrists. Bruises and blood and ichor. All of it—gone.

The lack of permanence almost made me desperate for it.