Page 250 of Breathe Like Hell

“I almost…” The words died on my tongue.

How was I supposed to phrase this?

I wished she would be horrified by the admission once I told her, but she knew me too well for that. She’d already been let down so many times by me, already seen all the terrible sides. This wouldn’t be a surprise, as much as I wished it was. But I needed her to know just how disgusting I could be, how bad things were going to get.

“I almost sexually assaulted him. And I don’t really know if he’s lying about the almost part. But what’s worse is I didn’t even know I was doing it. I was completely gone.”

Dakota was silent.

“If I could do that to him, imagine what I could do to you,” I continued.

“I don’t have to imagine it.”

The knot in my throat grew until I couldn’t breathe at all.

“I think it’s best if you leave,” I said, trying desperately to clear my throat, making some attempt to appear stable.

“Why? I already know what you’re capable of.”

“You don’t understand,” I pleaded. I wasn’t the first person to do that to him. I knew how badly he was hurt by his past, and I somehow still lost control to the point where I traumatized him again in the exact same way. I couldn’t tell her that, though. “You just⁠—”

“I understand perfectly. You’re a terrible person. I don’t care. So am I.”

Her words dug into me.

I felt really stupid then, because while I knew it was the truth, maybe some part of me didn’t actually want to be such a terrible person. Maybe some part of me wanted to have been born differently, to have been perceived differently for my whole life, to have been capable of making morally correct choices and controlling myself.

But I was a terrible person. And I always would be.

I had done so many terrible, terrible things.

My stomach twisted.

The version of myself I’d been on my last night with Micah was the truest one of them all. That was who I became when I was lost to instinct.

“You should care, Dakota. Don’t be fucking stupid. You’re not bad like I am.”

“I’m not leaving, so quit telling me to. I don’t listen to you anymore.”

I sensed her in my skull, digging all my messy emotions up.

Violence surged in my thoughts with the sensation, and Dakota’s entire body tensed, preparing for whatever physical or emotional harm I would inflict on her.

She didn’t try and stop it, no. She braced.

The only emotions she ever took from my brain were the ones that would harm me. Not her. Never her.

I didn’t have Micah to fight with anymore, and all the Thrausians that’d been living in this area of Washington were either dead or fast on their way to that brutal end. Dakota’s transformation into a real angel had thrown off the fragile balance all of us had been living in for the past two decades. There didn’t seem to be any other Angelakia here—at least not any other Sigeian ones.

I lunged forward and my fist broke through the drywall next to Dakota’s head.

She flinched but didn’t move.

“I’m going to hurt you. You need to leave,” I said through my teeth, despite knowing I’d already hurt her worse than she could recover from. In every way possible, I’d infected her with darkness and violence.

She had a deadly fantasy when she met me.

I took that fantasy and turned it into a nightmare.