Chapter 16
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
MICAH
Typically, I prided myself on my ability to control my emotions, my reactions to things.
Stability was my strong suit. But I was losing all of that now; all of the strength I’d worked to build back up after Mason was eroding away into every raw emotion I’d been running from. Everything I didn’t want to face.
I’m shocked you’d even say that, Micah.
Hooking up with Mason was going to literally shatter whatever fragments of my mind I’d managed to keep whole. He didn’t even know the way I was affected by him. But it wasn’t like he’d care if he did know. I could see that in the way he spoke to me now.
And Dakota was making me fucking paranoid.
For the second time in my life, I loved someone with a death wish.
My brain knew the shape of the end, knew exactly how this would play out if I couldn’t be stronger than I was last time, but I couldn’t stop.
And now there were three players in this game, three pieces on the board, three points anchoring our web.
It wasn’t the two dimensional tug of war between Mason and I that I’d smothered myself in for so many years, not the oscillating wave of two people fighting each other, themselves, and every other force in the universe trying to break them apart. It was three dimensional now.
Dakota changed everything.
She reshaped the whole equation.
My mind lingered on the box in the drawer at my house, on the extremely temporary solution to my permanent problem. My fingers twitched, aching for the precision of it, the proof of my life. Something quick and grounding and controlled.
Not permanent, never permanent, but enough to chase the feeling away for a few minutes.
Even if it’d only make me think of him.
My head snapped up at the sound of the door to the lab opening. Dakota stood in the doorway, looking like she was on the verge of tears. I got to my feet quickly, walking over to her.
“Hey,” I said. “What’s going on?”
“I don’t want to talk about it,” she replied and wiped her eyes with her sleeves.
“Tell me what’s going on,” I repeated, more forcefully now.
She paused, looked at me above her sleeve cuffs. “If I don’t want to tell you, I don’t have to tell you.”
“Then why are you here? You’re not scheduled to work with me today—and I’m pretty sure you have another class right now.” My voice was too harsh, my words too accusatory.
“Wow. Never mind.” She turned around and stepped into the hallway as if she was going to leave me, but I didn’t let her get far. I held her arm and pulled her back into the lab with me, shutting the door and then the blinds.
“I’m sorry. I want you here. You don’t need to tell me anything.”
Dakota didn’t speak, but she didn’t try leaving again either.
She pushed past me to sit in her usual spot, dumping her bag on the scuffed black countertop, boots squeaking on the metal rung around the legs of her stool.
I just watched her, watched the quiet tears sliding down her face as she continuously wiped them, watched her trembling hands pull her laptop out and power it on.
Well, she tried to power it on.
It was dead.
When the screen wouldn’t turn on, she slammed it shut and slumped down on the table, burying her face in her folded arms, her shoulders shaking with little cries. She was so different now than the last time I’d seen her—more sad, less angry—and I felt bad for it.
“Masters,” I murmured as I went to her and set my palm on her back, rubbing circles. Her hair was soft, cascading over her shoulders, hanging all the way to her waistband.
The room was quiet for another minute before Dakota spoke again, voice muffled in her sweater. “I’m failing all my classes,” she said, then turned her teary eyes up to meet mine.
“Were you afraid to tell me that?”
She rolled her shiny lips together and nodded, then her expression broke and she started crying harder. I held the back of her head as she pushed her sad face into my abdomen just above my belt, clinging to me now.
I sifted my fingers through her hair, lightly scratching her head.
“I don’t want you to be scared to tell me things. Alright?”
There was a very distinct feeling of regret knotting in my gut.
How many times had I considered abusing my privileges to see her grades in her other classes?
To look at her other exams? I’d convinced myself that she would come to me if she needed help, but I’d been wrong about that, and I hated myself for letting this happen. I could’ve stopped it.
And now I was making it worse by tormenting her. Playing fucking games.
Not a day went by where I didn’t wish this never happened the way it did. It was all I could think about sometimes. Why did she have to meet him first? Why couldn’t she have just been a student in my class, my own perfect girl? Why did she have to be tied to the most painful part of my life?
And why was I so incapable of responding rationally to the situation? I could’ve made everything simpler if I chose one of the two typical paths—leaving her or forgiving her. But I couldn’t do either of those things.
I couldn’t let Dakota go, even though the proximity hurt.
And she probably thought Mason was the one of us who grew up craving pain. She didn’t know he’d gotten it from me. By nature, all Thrausians in Heaven were solely pleasure-seeking. He used to be, too.
“Well, I don’t feel like I deserve anything from you right now, so I don’t know. I keep fucking up with everything.” Her voice was small and quiet. She still had her face pressed against my stomach.
“What you deserve isn’t relevant. I don’t deserve anything from you, either. But you know I need to take care of you.”
In my soul, I knew she deserved better than me. Even if she’d lied to me, deceived me, tried to go behind my back, continued doing it after I found out, I was just as bad. My need for control didn’t outweigh my ability to see the truth of the situation.
She leaned back, inspecting the damp spots she’d left on my shirt with her tears, the black smudges of mascara on the white fabric. Her lower lip started wobbling again.
I tilted her head back with a finger under her chin, physically stopping her from overthinking or ruminating on the stains.
“I’m going to help you with your classwork,” I started. “All of it, not just my stuff—which you are not failing, by the way.”
“I know. I didn’t want to disappoint you, so I focused on your class the most.”
Her words ached in my chest.
I wanted to tell her she’d never disappoint me, but that wasn’t the truth in every context.
She already had disappointed me, more than once.
There were so many chances for her to stop, and she never did.
Every time I caught her looking at Mason with my arm around her shoulders under the glow of the TV, every lie that’d spilled so easily from her pretty lips when I fucked her, every quiet moment in the middle of the night with her hair spread around her head on my pillow, smelling like the shampoo at his apartment instead of the one I’d bought for her.
Pain slashed across my heart so violently then that I had to actually look away from her for a second.
It was sharp and brutal and quick, wrecking me in the space of a single breath.
I liked to pretend that if forced to choose, Dakota would choose me. It was what I said to Mason when I wanted to hurt him. But sometimes, in the most guarded parts of my brain, I was completely terrified that she wouldn’t. Especially not now.
I steeled myself, bit back the bitterness clawing at my tightened throat.
“Your other classes are important, too,” I managed to say. It was a pointless statement, but I was off-balance and couldn’t think of anything better to tell her.
“Obviously I know that.” She turned her head out of my grasp.
“I didn’t say you didn’t.”
“Well, I don’t know what the fuck you’re trying to say here,” she snapped. “I don’t know what you’re ever trying to say. You act like you hate me—”
“Dakota.”
“And since I’m fucking failing all my classes, I’m going to lose my scholarship and I can’t—”
“Hey,” I cut her off. “I’ll pay for your school if you need me to. As much school as you want.”
“You can’t do that,” she protested, her chin quivering as her gaze slid timidly back towards mine.
“Why not?”
“I don’t know. I just—why? Why would you do that? It’s my own fault for slacking off with my schoolwork. And it’s expensive.” She didn’t pull away when I held her face, but her expression still twisted like I was hurting her. “And you hate me.”
“Dakota,” I started, bringing her closer.
“You know I don’t hate you. My anger isn’t indicative of how this is going to end up.
And I would gladly pay for your entire life if you let me.
I already told you I wish I could teach you for longer, go farther with you in engineering, so why wouldn’t I want to pay for your school?
Money shouldn’t be a thing stopping you here. I want to see you succeed.”
A few more tears slipped down her flushed cheeks. “I wish you weren’t mad at me.”
I wish that too.
“It’s okay,” I said quickly, automatically.
“I’m horrible and fucked up and annoying, Micah. I hurt you.”
My jaw flexed. I didn’t like her saying that.
“Are you going to look me in the eye and tell me I haven’t hurt you?”
She was quiet for a beat, like she hadn’t considered that. Or maybe she had.
She was barely keeping herself together, and it’d been this way for weeks.
Months, really. I hated seeing it, hated knowing I was making it worse, hated that she’d felt like she needed to keep this from me.
But there had to be something at the end to make all of this worth it, and I’d never get there without gaining back some control in my life.
“I’m not going to let you fail your classes,” I continued. “But I’m also not going to let you stress about paying for them if you do. Will you let me help you with this?”
Let me take care of you because I don’t think anyone else knows how.
Mason doesn’t know what you need. He thinks he does.
But he’s fucking wrong.