Page 299 of Breathe Like Hell

“An honest one.”

I swallowed, feeling the knot in my throat, fingers curling into my palms. “Will you be honest, too?”

“I’ve been honest, Kill. Ever since you died.”

My head turned, my eyes finding his like a magnet. My mouth was dry. Why else had I come out here if not to be truthful with him? Why else did I keep chasing him if I never wanted to actually catch him?

This is it. The end of the tracks.

Speak or die.

“Do you still dream about me?” I dared to ask, my breath caught somewhere beneath my ribs.

Am I still the only face that finds you while you sleep?

It was a confession more than a question.

Because suddenly, painfully, I knew exactly what answer I wanted him to give. Somewhere between the words leaving my mouth and the charged silence that followed, I’d unveiled my own truth.

I wasn’t asking about dreams. I was asking if there was still a place for me inside his mind.

I was admitting that I wanted there to be one.

I remember you. I still think about what we used to be. I still know things about you.

“Yeah, I do,” Mason said, looking down at his hands. “After you died, too. Almost every night.”

“I’m sorry,” I whispered.

“I don’t know how to exist in a world where you aren’t,” he said, quiet enough that if I chose not to answer, it could’ve been played off as if I hadn’t actually heard him.

But I had heard him, and I did want to answer.

I want to. I need to. For once.

I struggled to find my words, my tongue hung up on every year of history I’d built with Mason Ashborn.

The physical distance between us was becoming unbearable. I needed to move closer, but I couldn’t. My mind kept searching for the right sentence, something careful enough that it wouldn’t change everything between us. But there weren’t careful words left anymore. It was pointless to keep searching for them.

I’d spent years trying to learn to live without him, finding pursuits to distract myself with, clinging to ways I could swallow my depression like a pill I pretended didn’t exist. I had engineering, a career, a lab. I found Dakota. I built a life that looked whole from the outside.

But sitting here, listening to him say those words, I could no longer pretend those things had replaced him. They hadn’t. They never could. Without Mason, I was a shell. Enough time had passed now that I could admit it to myself.

I’d mistaken survival for living. Distance for strength. Convinced myself I was capable of living this painful lie forever.

But I wasn’t capable of that.

Forever is a long time.

A long time with him, yes.

But without him, that time stretched to infinity.

Forever was unbearable in his absence.

I don’t want to survive without him anymore.

If we broke again, it wouldn’t be my choice. I wouldn’t be the one to leave this time. I’d already done that once. I knew now it had nearly destroyed us both.