Page 251 of Breathe Like Hell

“I can’t leave, Mason. I need you.” She shook her head, teary-eyed. “Leave with me, then. We can get out of here for a little bit.”

I’m so sorry.

I’m so sorry for who I am.

CHAPTER SIXTY-ONE

DAKOTA

Five Months After

Wind blew across the field, catching strands of my hair and ruffling the tassel on my graduation cap. My mind was numb.

A gray sky arced above my graduating class as we sat in rows of chairs on the football field. I’d never been inside the stadium before now, but I couldn’t look at any of it. I stared at my boots on the turf, the black polyester robe draped over my exhausted body. I hadn’t been able to eat anything this morning, and my stomach ached with emptiness.

No one was here to see me get my diploma.

Not my parents.

Not Mason.

Not…

I blinked fast, looking up at the sky as I grabbed my locket and warmed the metal between my pointer finger and thumb.

I am nothing and no one loves me anymore.

I’d recently developed a fear of opening my locket in public, because I was afraid Micah’s picture would somehow fall out, so I didn’t mess with the clasp at all, didn’t click it open and shut like I used to. I just held it.

I didn’t even have my own picture of him to use. I’d printed out the one of himself hiking from his introduction slide he’d pulled up on the first day of lecture, on the first day I met him. That was the only thing I fucking had. I hated myself for that. I’d made a mental note to take a picture of him for his contact photo, but I never did it.

The voices of my classmates were a million miles away, but none of them were talking to me, so it didn’t matter. Nobody ever talked to me, and I never spoke.

I tried to swallow the lump in my throat.

Tried to focus on my inhales and exhales.

Out of the thousands of people in this stadium, I was the only one who remembered him. The only one who knew he ever existed.

And that might’ve been the worst part of it all.

Micah Killshaw didn’t exist here.

He’d shaped so many minds, contributed so much to the school’s body of knowledge, spent so many hours working on his research, writing his own doctorate, and yet, if I spoke about him, not one soul would know who I was talking about.

I could even show them his picture, or point to the plaque next to his office—if it was still there, and it would all be blank in their mind. The second they stopped looking at it, everything reset.

None of them had ichor in their blood, and because of it, he’d been forgotten.

I wouldn’t have remembered him either, if I hadn’t been turned into an angel.

I could feel the makeup on my face, and I wasn’t sure now why I’d even bothered with it at all, why I’d thought it would be good for me to try and look nice today. Today was the worst day ever.

The second worst.

My mom could’ve showed up for me, but she didn’t. She only lived thirty minutes from campus. I’d texted her the date and time of the ceremony a few weeks ago, but she’d given me some excuse I couldn’t remember now. Probably mad I didn’t go to my brother’s wedding last month. And Mila was out of the country, visiting family in Russia.

There wasn’t anyone else I expected might’ve been interested in supporting me.