Page 284 of Breathe Like Hell

“I’m sorry.”

The wind rustled through the trees at my back, lifting strands of hair around my shoulders. Micah brushed them away when they started blowing in his face.

There wasn’t much to say about it.

Micah died. That was the truth. I had to live with the grief and guilt of that for nine months without him. There would always be that small gap in our memories of each other, this place where neither of us existed for the other. He’d had nothing of me, and I’d had only past memories of him. I wasn’t sure I knew how to navigate that.

But he was back now, we had our second chance, and I was going to fight for him.

And fight for Mason.

They deserved to be together just as much as I deserved to be with either one of them.

“Anyway,” I said, breaking our silence.

“I think I would’ve come to this realization sooner had I not just been risen from the dead,” Micah commented. “Or I would’ve suspected it. This is the only thing that makes sense—the only conceivable way I could’ve been brought back from the void after death.”

“So, since you were the one to mark me, I am able to bring you back to life at the place you fell to Earth with my ichor?”

“It would’ve worked if I was alive, too. Angelakia spilling ichor at the point where their creator first touched the Earth will bring them back to that point. It shows that the transformation has been completed,” he explained. “You could’ve actually brought me back to Heaven, too. My birthplace. Angelakia can use ichor to summon their creators—not their transformers—at their creator’s birthplace or the place they fell to Earth.”

“In Heaven, they actually asked me about that,” I said, slightly awestruck. “But I had no clue what they were talking about, and I didn’t care. All I wanted to do was get back to Earth. I guess I’m shocked most angels don’t know about this.”

“Heaven likes its secrets,” Micah said, almost under his breath.

I knew his opinion of Heaven, just like I knew Mason’s opinion. It wasn’t the idyllic place I’d been led to believe it was. Corruption, sin, malice. Those things all hid within the crimson flames there, just as they did on Earth. A governing body keeping secrets from its people was one of the oldest truths in the world.

Even if Micah sometimes regretted falling, I knew it wasn’t because he preferred Heaven to Earth. But maybe he’d been less alone there. I didn’t want him to feel alone now, or ever again.

Eventually, we got off the roof and went back inside. The door to the guest bedroom was closed, so neither of us spoke to Mason again for the rest of the night.

━━━━━

Mila opened the door to her apartment with her hair thrown up in a messy bun and her lips pulled up in a tentative smile.

I’d never actually told her that someone died, and I was grateful for that now—even if I’d been very distant because of it. It was strange to think that Eric knew, and my best friend did not, but it’d been a strange terrible period of my life. My decisions didn’t make a lot of sense. I had yet to fully discuss the logistics of Sigeian memory erasure with Micah and didn’t know how it would work with him no longer dead. Sometimes I wondered if I’d told Eric it was Micah who’d died that he would’ve forgotten it. Everything was very much a mystery to me.

It didn’t matter now, though.

“Hug?” Mila asked, arms extended.

“Yes.” I wrapped my arms around her, breathing in the scent of her body mist and laundry detergent, doing my very best to keep from tearing up. Genuinely all I ever seemed to do was cry these days, and I had to try putting a stop to it now. “I’m sorry,” I said, my voice mumbling and quiet.

She rubbed her palm up and down my back, and I could feel her shaking her head. “It’s okay. I know sometimes shit gets tough.”

We’d still hung out a few times over the months Micah had been dead, but it was never the same. Not even close. I was aware at some point she’d probably have to be informed I was no longer human, but I wasn’t sure when that day would come. She’d yet to see my scars, and that was probably the biggest physical indicator.

Even then, I could alter her memory to make her forget if I wanted to.

But I didn’t particularly want to.

I wanted my best friend to know me fully. All of me. This new version that’d been through much more than she could even suspect.

Later, I would tell her. Somehow.

For now, we had some normal catching up to do.

I’d actually brought some snacks this time instead of only stealing all of her food, and Mila could hardly contain her excitement about it. I considered getting more peach rings, but I was fairly certain she was still recovering from her previous giant bag, so I brought sour gummy worms instead. And baby Goldfish.