Page 219 of Breathe Like Hell

“You aren’t any better!” I yelled at Mason, unable to stop the breakdown that was building up in my brain, the instability running through my veins. I was falling apart, lashing out, lost to the depth of my own emotions.

I can’t tread water anymore.

I’m done.

I’m drowning.

It’s already too late.

“Okay,” he relented, holding his hands up, but I couldn’t breathe. I was going to die in this fucking truck.

“Pull over,” I said, panic growing massively inside my skull.

“Just—”

“Pull the fuck over!” I screamed. “Pull over!”

Micah jerked the wheel and slammed on the brakes, stopping the truck on the shoulder. I climbed over Mason, desperately clawing at the door handle, shoving out of the truck and taking as big of inhales as I could.

Mason and Micah both got out of the cab, tentatively approaching me as if I was some scared animal. Maybe I was.

Even a worm will turn.

What about a doe? At what point has she been pushed too much? Mistreated enough to fight back?

“I’m sorry for what I did, but both of you knew!” My eyes darted back and forth between them. “You both knew the entire time that I was unfaithful and constantly fucking up. I didn’t get to know anything. You kept it from me, and I won’t pretend like it doesn’t fucking hurt every time I think about that. I try to be okay with it because I know it needs to happen, and I know I can’t stop it, and I don’t even want to, but I feel like I’m owed more of a fucking explanation than you gave me at the breakfast table!” I was breathing hard by the time I finished, blood pumping hot and hard all over my body.

“I’m done,” I continued. “I need a break from all of this, okay?”

Both of them were just staring at me, watching me slip through their fingers. I could see the hurt on their faces, the anguish, the toxic love we’d wrapped ourselves in. A part of me wanted to believe that was enough, that loving each other this viciously had to count for something.

But it didn’t change what we kept doing to one another.

Every time we got close, someone bled. Every time one wound finally began to close, another opened somewhere else. We kept reaching for each other with shaking hands, only to tighten our grip until it hurt. I loved them. They loved me. Somehow, it still wasn’t enough. We weren’t working in the same direction; we were always tearing each other apart.

Maybe it was all my fault. Maybe I was the biggest problem here.

This destructive trio wasn’t something I could live in forever.

It was going to wreck me.

“Don’t follow me,” I snapped before turning on my heel and stalking off along the side of the road.

In the secret parts of my brain, the parts I hated, I kept wishing they would follow me. They wouldn’t let me leave, not for real, and even though I needed a break, they would figure out how to fix it without giving me one.

Because as bad as they hurt me, absence would only ever hurt worse.

It wasn’t logical. I knew that. But love had never felt logical to me. It had always felt like standing on the edge of something, waiting to see if someone would reach for my hand before I fell.

Waiting to see if I’d be too much.

This was the cruelest part of loving people. They were able to wound me so deeply I couldn’t breathe, yet somehow the thought of them choosing not to come after me was even more unbearable.

Don’t let me leave you.

It all happened so fast.

One second, I was angrily walking away from them, grit and gravel crunching under my boots, cold air blooming deep in my lungs, heart thrumming fast and shaky against my ribs. The next second, I saw new headlights. My steps stuttered and stopped, hair catching on the wind and lifting around my shoulders.