Page 268 of Breathe Like Hell

My eyes traced the scars carved into his back, slanting from his shoulders towards his spine. I wanted to touch him just to prove he was real. But I couldn’t make myself move.

“She said it was nine months,” Micah started, still facing away from me. His voice was hoarse.

“It was,” I confirmed.

“You didn’t go to her graduation, did you?” He turned his head just enough for me to see his side profile. The straight bridge of his nose, the cruel perfection of his mouth. The black veins snaked up his throat and ran along his jaw. Every time I saw them, I remembered how his body had looked engulfed in flames.

“I didn’t.” Those words were quieter. I wasn’t proud of it.

“And is she still working?”

“At the gas station. Mostly everything is the same as before, except she’s now a full Sigeian. She went to Heaven, then fell the day after.”

Micah didn’t say anything to that. He got more water, then opened his fridge, finding it almost entirely empty. The pantry was the same. He crossed the room and sat at the table, resting his head on his hands, his ribs expanding and contracting with each slow breath. I joined him at the table, sitting in the farthest chair possible. He kept his head down.

“She knows,” I said, my voice low. “Just so you’re aware.”

“Knows what?” He lifted his gaze and stared at my face, his eyes as intense and sharp as ever, despite the exhaustion smudged dark beneath them. Glacier blue, frozen over, holding endless barren tundras.

“That we were together. Knows how long, too.”

Micah was quiet for a minute. “I suppose she also knows I was the one to leave you.”

“She would’ve known that even if I hadn’t told her.” I thought of our conversation on the beach, when I’d finally confessed to her my fear of being left, back when she was a human. Even without that, she would’ve been able to figure it out by my actions. Sometimes it felt like I had it stamped across my forehead, everything I did colored by this central wound. Abandonment issues.

I deserved it, though.

“What details did you tell her about the end?”

“Not many.” I glanced away, focusing on the trees outside the window to avoid looking in his eyes again. “But you know.”

“No. I don’t know. I’m going to need you to spell it out for me.”

“I told her that I—that I almost…whatever.” I dared to look at him, the tightness in my throat like shards of glass. “What I almost did to you.”

Almost.

That word held so much weight. But how much of a difference did it really make? And was it even true? Maybe I’d actually forced myself on him before he could get away from me. I’d been wrestling with that possibility every second of his absence.

“Why the fuck would you tell her that?” Micah questioned, his voice harsh enough to make me flinch. “I don’t want her to know that.”

“You were dead, Micah.” I swallowed against the regret and guilt threatening to suffocate me. I should’ve known, but all I ever did was fuck up. I’d spent nine months begging the universe for one more chance to apologize to him, and I felt as if I’d already ruined it.

“So you thought you’d taint her view of me?” His eyes slashed to mine, the slightest shine gathering around his eyelids.

His words gutted me.

He hated himself more for what happened than he hated me.

“Taint her view of you? No. What are you talking⁠—”

“Don’t fucking give me that. Just don’t. It was hard enough for me to tell you that. And now—” he cut himself off, voice strangled in his throat. He hung his head, fingers gripping the edge of the table. “And now she knows it, too. Knows I’m…whatever.”

“No. I did it because I needed to be punished for it. I didn’t want that to die with you, for her to be with me without knowing what I was capable of doing—of how I’d hurt you.”

“That wasn’t your decision to make!”

“What part of you being fucking dead doesn’t make sense to you?” I shouted. “I watched you die!” My voice cracked on the last word, panic and fear and grief swelling in my chest, crawling up my throat. “I. Watched. You. Die. And I’m sorry I made the wrong choice after that. I wasn’t fucking thinking. I didn’t know you would ever be back.”