Page 282 of Breathe Like Hell

Those strange few days when my future suddenly had a very different possible shape.

“Are we researching?” Micah asked, glancing down.

“No. I’m looking at my mom’s Facebook. Do you want to see me as a baby?”

There was the briefest hesitation in his speech, and I wondered if he thought of the same thing I did. That impossible moment in the past where we might’ve had something else together.

“Of course. Show me,” he said and cleared his throat.

I turned my phone to show Micah the screen. His brows furrowed instantly, his grip tightening on my waist, as if holding me had become more vital than before.

“What?” I asked.

“Have you lived here your entire life? In this part of Washington?” Micah’s analytical eyes remained locked on the photo.

“Yes. Why? Is something wrong with that?” I tried to pull my phone back, but Micah held it strong. His fingers were trembling slightly.

“This is you? And your mom?”

I nodded, worried now.

“It had to be me,” he breathed. I tried to look at his face again, but he grabbed me and pulled me back to his chest, wrapping his arms so tight around me I could barely breathe as he buried his face in my hair. “No. I don’t know. Fuck.”

“What was you?”

“I was the one to fucking mark you as a baby,” he choked out.

“You were?” I sat up. Micah also sat up, plucking the phone from my hands to stare at the picture again, tapping the screen so it wouldn’t go dark. He was shaking his head.

“No—never mind. It can’t be me. This just looks so familiar. Unless⁠—”

“Unless the place where you fell from Heaven has ultraneon for me?”

Micah turned his head, his eyes darting all over my face, his expression full of awe.

“Does it?” he asked quietly, holding my face between his palms. My chin quivered.

“Yes. Does that mean something, if it glows?” I questioned, my voice barely more than a whisper.

“I should’ve realized this earlier. That’s how you brought me back.” His thumbs swept across my cheeks, catching the tears already rolling down my face. “You bled, didn’t you? Some of your ichor touched the tree.”

I nodded, sniffling, chest aching.

My cheek.

When I’d cried and hugged Micah’s tree, I’d pressed just hard enough against the bark to cut my cheek. It hadn’t seemed significant to me at the time, or I hadn’t fully noticed, or I’d been too distracted by my own grief to find any meaning in it.

“So you marked me as a baby?” I asked with my trembling voice. “And you didn’t know that?”

“Correct.” Micah’s eyes were glistening now. “I genuinely don’t know how I couldn’t put the pieces together on this sooner. Of course this is how you brought me back from the dead.”

“Really?”

“Yes. And it was at the post office, of all places. I’m not sure I’ve ever thought about this memory again until now, but I recognized your mother when you showed me the photo.” He glanced down and grabbed my phone off his lap again, giving it to me to unlock, then we both gazed at the picture for a minute. Micah recognized her. My young mother. With a baby version of me.

“What happened?”

“I was in line at the post office, and your mom was in front of me. She was holding a ton of shit, including you. You were screaming your head off and she was trying to set her stuff on the counter, then her phone started ringing too, and the post office worker was just staring with this shallow sort of sympathy—I mean, everyone was just watching her. I just…offered to hold you for a second. She handed you over, then started trying to gather up all her shit, and I took away just a little bit of her panic, then yours too. Enough for you to stop crying. I held you for maybe two minutes while she shipped whatever she was shipping—I don’t know. She thanked me profusely, then left. I never thought about it again because I had no idea I would be irreversibly changing the baby I offered to hold.”