Page 235 of Breathe Like Hell

I slammed her against the wall harder, her skull cracking on the tiles.

“What the fuck are you doing?” I yelled, trying and failing to keep the panic from my voice.

She stared at me, unblinking. I released her throat angrily so she could speak.

“I wanted to see it for myself,” Dakota said, sparking a bit of real fear in my blood. She would learn all my truths now, seek out everything I’d ever tried to hide from her. Her voice was hoarse because of the way I’d choked her, but my fingers twitched with the desire to do it again.

“Did you get what you wanted?” I was breathing hard.

“I don’t know,” she admitted, tears slipping over her lower lashes. “I don’t feel like myself.”

Neither do I.

We’re never going to feel like ourselves again.

And you’re about to learn how long never really is.

I couldn’t find the words to respond to her. She didn’t even know who Micah was to me—not yet, anyway. All I’d ever done was lie to her about him.

It terrified me, the way she could access the inside of my mind now, the way she’d never spent time around any other Sigeians besides Micah, so she thought this was normal. I wasn’t accustomed to her specific soul searching through mine and had no defense against it. She didn’t even know which of my senses she’d be able to take yet.

My sight, maybe. Like how Micah had done when he almost broke down on the floor in his kitchen while Dakota was upstairs miscarrying his child.

Or maybe my voice. Like how Micah had done when he spoke the terrible thing I’d almost done to him on our last night together, not wanting me to respond back to him.

Almost.

I’d never know if he was lying about that.

If it was his last desperate line of defense against me.

I’d never know what actually happened on that night, because I couldn’t fucking remember it. At the time, I’d known things were getting bad. I just didn’t know how bad they were. I should’ve realized he’d never tell me the extent of it.

Dakota motioned for me to turn off the shower, so I did, then wrapped her in a towel. She started breaking down all over again after changing into her pajamas, her body wracked with anguished sobs, ribs expanding and contracting, shoulders shuddering. I wanted to hold her.

But I fucking couldn’t.

How are we ever going to survive this?

CHAPTER FIFTY-SEVEN

DAKOTA

Two Weeks After

I curled up on my side, the wind sweeping up off the ocean and over my body. My shoulders shook with exhausted sobs and my eyes stung with tears that never stopped coming. I gasped for air, choking on it, my skull aching like it was being crushed by something bigger than me. So much bigger than me I couldn’t even comprehend it.

I was too weak to move. All my muscles were limp, my body slumped on the cold ground while I cried, feeling every ounce of strength drain away, feeling him.

Mason, above the ocean, shattering into a thousand pieces.

He couldn’t control it, and so we were here.

Me, laying on the cliff. Him, carving lightning into the cloud-covered sky.

I gritted my teeth, fingers twisting in clumps of grass, my mind screaming as I tried to hold him together, screaming for help. Mason was too strong, drowning in his darkness, yanking me down with him. A cinder block chained to my ankle in the middle of the coldest ocean. Lightning bolted across the sky and I squeezed my eyes shut, cheek pressed to the dirt.

He couldn’t stop it, and neither could I.