Page 158 of Breathe Like Hell

She isn’t soothed by my presence, but by the mere fact of me being a particularly capable Sigeian.

That wasn’t true. There was no way that was true.

It just scared me when she said shit like that, when she got so mad at me for showing up and not turning her into a shell of herself. Couldn’t I be enough on my own? Couldn’t she understand that I didn’t want to make her into a ghost?

Was I only worth my abilities?

I worked on shutting off my brain as I laid in my bed with her. She needed me.

Now wasn’t the time to spiral into the deep end of all my hidden fears.

Dakota was sleeping restlessly, curled up in a shaking, sweating ball on my bed. She was freezing cold and burning hot at the same time, soaking the sheets with sweat as she tossed and turned and cried more.

She was so damn young. Her youth struck me more harshly when she cried—it always had. She cried like all her sadness was too big for her body, like it was using up all her energy just by existing. All I wanted to do was take it from her, and I did sometimes. But knowing I couldn’t do it all the time might be my eventual undoing.

As much as I tried, I could never get my mind to quiet down as I watched her sleep.

I spent hours replaying conversations with Mason in my head, criticizing the things I’d said, agonizing over every detail, praying I hadn’t been exposing myself in any of our interactions.

Don’t let yourself become attached to any part of his presence.

Don’t tell him anything.

Don’t let him realize how much this still affects you.

Those were the things I told myself over and over. My silent reminders.

Being around him reminded me of the version of myself I hated.

The version that got hurt. The version that needed things from people. The version I never wanted anyone to see.

All my emotions from my past with Mason were bleeding so heavily into my current relationship with Dakota sometimes I thought I might just break her myself. I needed to regain control somewhere in my life, and I’d lost it with him.

So, all of that coldness landed on her.

I could try to cut the agony out of myself, bleed it out of my veins over and over, but it would always be back once the wound healed. Fuck.

For the millionth time, I wished that this had unfolded differently. I wished she’d never done something to hurt me, so I’d never have to hide the pain from her. I wished he’d never come back into my life and stripped me down to all the ugly vulnerability I’d worked to conceal over years. I wished I wasn’t like this at all.

But there was nothing I could do about that.

Dakota threw up again sometime in the middle of the night, this time into a trashcan I’d put on the nightstand for her, and she didn’t protest when I held her hair back or blew cold air on her neck. She just let me do it, gripping the sides of the trashcan hard, trembling as tears glided down her flushed cheeks.

When I tried to convince her not to go to her parents’ place tomorrow, she refused. She claimed it would be easier for her to get it over with; it would cause less problems for her.

I wished she was wrong.

CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

DAKOTA

I woke up with a fever. Low-grade, but an actual fever. I’d thrown up two more times in the night, too nauseous and tired to care about what Micah would think anymore.

My anxiety about Anthony had actually made my body ill. Strange.

But I still had to go to Thanksgiving today.

It’d been a while since I’d seen either of my parents—even longer since I’d seen Anthony—and I just needed to get it over with. I didn’t have class or work today, which was unfortunate only because it meant I had no way of distracting myself, unless I created one myself.