Chapter 52
CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO
DAKOTA
Micah hadn’t spoken to me since picking me up from my trailer for dinner. Every inch of ground I’d gained with him had been seemingly ripped away, and I’d been shoved several yards backwards. It was making me feel sick.
His eyes stayed fixed on the road, one hand resting loosely on the steering wheel, the other unmoving in his lap. Not touching me.
I stole glances at him every few minutes, waiting for some sign that he would eventually look back. He never did. I kept wondering if I’d done something wrong, mentally retracing our last interaction for some invisible mistake I’d missed. With Micah, there always seemed to be one.
But how could that be possible now?
He’d been the one to fuck up. Not me.
I forgave him. I went looking for him. I told him I loved him.
Was he so terrified of honesty that he was back to being incapable of accepting my love? I wasn’t forcing anything on him, would still obey anything he told me to do, was still willing to try. But he clearly wasn’t.
“Please pick up Mason, too,” I reminded him.
His grip tightened on the steering wheel until his knuckles were white, a muscle in his jaw twitching. “No,” he said.
“Yes.”
“No, Dakota. I’m not picking him up.”
“Then tell me why,” I demanded.
He glared at me. “Are we really going to do this shit right now? You’re going to start demanding explanations from me again? Have you considered I don’t want to give them to you?”
“Have I considered it?” I stared at him in disbelief.
With him, my ribs were always pried wide open, my heart completely available for him to slice and stab and cut, to do whatever he wanted to.
And while I’d been content to bleed out on his desk with his belt hitting my thighs, I wasn’t content to do it now with him sitting so far from me.
“I don’t need to consider it, Micah. I already know you don’t want to tell me anything.
Unfortunately for you, that’s not going to stop me from asking right now. ”
“You don’t trust me.”
“Of course I fucking trust you.”
“Then what is this? Why are you pushing?”
I crossed my arms, turning away from him. I didn’t have any pretty words to say about that other than his silence was slowly killing me, like the air in the truck had been stripped of oxygen.
“Pick up Mason,” I said angrily.
“I’m not doing that.”
“Yes you are!” I screamed, head whipping around, stomach turning with my anger. “Yes you are! Or drop me off at his apartment, then! I don’t want to be with you alone right now!”
“Am I not enough for you?”
“When did I fucking say that?”
Micah didn’t respond, and every passing second stretched the distance between us a little farther. I would’ve rather heard something cruel than nothing at all. Cruelty could be argued with. Silence only left room for abandonment.
“I can’t fucking do this.” I said finally, shaking my head, tears welling in my eyes faster than I could blink them away. “I can’t keep making myself smaller and smaller and smaller, terrified that you’re going to shut me out if I say the wrong thing. Do you know how that feels to me?”
It feels like Anthony.
It feels like I have to be perfect or else I’ll lose you.
That realization slammed into my gut like a fist. I hated him.
Hated every lie he’d ever told me. Hated how easily he disappeared behind another wall whenever I reached for something real.
Why should I keep believing someone who admitted he was lying to me?
Why should I trust a man who treated the truth like a weapon I was trying to use against him?
And I already knew my screaming now wouldn’t fix anything. It never did. He would only retreat farther into himself, locking every door I’d almost managed to pry open. He could build walls around me so high that nothing in the world could reach me, could protect me.
But I should’ve realized sooner he was even better at building those walls around himself.
He knew how to make me feel safe from everything except him. Every time I reached for the parts of him he refused to share, he felt my love like a threat.
“I’m sorry,” he bit out. “I’m not trying to be that way.”
“But you are.”
“Okay.” His jaw flexed again, hand gripping the wheel tight.
“You said you accepted my messiness, that it didn’t make me untouchable. But every time I care for you in a way you don’t accept, I become untouchable.”
“Fuck, Dakota!” he responded, louder. “It’s not your messiness! Can’t you understand that? I can touch all of you. I love you. All of you.”
His next words were silent, yet I heard them louder than anything else. But you can’t touch me. You can’t love all of me.
I hadn’t noticed that we’d switched directions at some point during the argument and now were close to Mason’s apartment.
Tears slipped down my face, and I wiped them away before Micah could see.
When we pulled into the parking lot, I typed out a text to Mason with shaky thumbs and blurry eyes.
I wasn’t sure why I’d even wanted any of this. Dinner alone would’ve been better.
I couldn’t force this to work, as badly as I wanted to.
Mason’s response vibrated in my palms.
Mason
I can’t tonight. Not with him
My cheeks heated with embarrassment, my tears coming faster than I could wipe them, small hiccups escaping me. Micah was silent, but I felt him watching me trying to keep it together. I reached for my silver locket, clicking it open and shut repeatedly.
Me
Please. I’m begging
Mason
I think it would be best if you just had dinner with him tonight. He doesn’t want me there
Me
I don’t care. I want you here. I need you here
His typing bubble popped up, then disappeared. I stared at the screen desperately, waiting for it to pop up again, but it wasn’t. After a minute, the passenger door to the truck opened, making me jump. Mason climbed in.
The men didn’t say anything to each other, and the tension now was worse than ever. In a different, more painful way. The history I didn’t know about was using up all the air.
I sniffled, scooting over towards Micah to give Mason room.
“Don’t touch me,” Micah murmured, making my heart clench. “Please.”
The lump in my throat grew and grew. I kept myself against Mason’s side. “I wish you would talk to me,” I said to Micah, knowing he’d hate me even more for doing this in front of Mason, but unable to find the strength to care. He pulled out of the parking lot onto the road.
“I wish you’d let me have dinner with you alone.”
Mason stiffened against my side. Barely, but enough for me to feel it.
Anger crackled through me.
“You don’t get to act like this without telling me why.” My voice was steadier, louder. Micah’s lips pressed together tightly as he accelerated, the truck speeding down the road.
“Stop.”
“No. I’m not going to stop.”
“Dakota—” Mason started, but I cut him off.
“You aren’t any better!” I yelled at Mason, unable to stop the breakdown that was building up in my brain, the instability running through my veins. I was falling apart, lashing out, lost to the depth of my own emotions.
I can’t tread water anymore.
I’m done.
I’m drowning.
It’s already too late.
“Okay,” he relented, holding his hands up, but I couldn’t breathe. I was going to die in this fucking truck.
“Pull over,” I said, panic growing massively inside my skull.
“Just—”
“Pull the fuck over!” I screamed. “Pull over!”
Micah jerked the wheel and slammed on the brakes, stopping the truck on the shoulder. I climbed over Mason, desperately clawing at the door handle, shoving out of the truck and taking as big of inhales as I could.
Mason and Micah both got out of the cab, tentatively approaching me as if I was some scared animal. Maybe I was.
Even a worm will turn.
What about a doe? At what point has she been pushed too much? Mistreated enough to fight back?
“I’m sorry for what I did, but both of you knew!
” My eyes darted back and forth between them.
“You both knew the entire time that I was unfaithful and constantly fucking up. I didn’t get to know anything.
You kept it from me, and I won’t pretend like it doesn’t fucking hurt every time I think about that.
I try to be okay with it because I know it needs to happen, and I know I can’t stop it, and I don’t even want to, but I feel like I’m owed more of a fucking explanation than you gave me at the breakfast table!
” I was breathing hard by the time I finished, blood pumping hot and hard all over my body.
“I’m done,” I continued. “I need a break from all of this, okay?”
Both of them were just staring at me, watching me slip through their fingers. I could see the hurt on their faces, the anguish, the toxic love we’d wrapped ourselves in. A part of me wanted to believe that was enough, that loving each other this viciously had to count for something.
But it didn’t change what we kept doing to one another.
Every time we got close, someone bled. Every time one wound finally began to close, another opened somewhere else.
We kept reaching for each other with shaking hands, only to tighten our grip until it hurt.
I loved them. They loved me. Somehow, it still wasn’t enough.
We weren’t working in the same direction; we were always tearing each other apart.
Maybe it was all my fault. Maybe I was the biggest problem here.
This destructive trio wasn’t something I could live in forever.
It was going to wreck me.
“Don’t follow me,” I snapped before turning on my heel and stalking off along the side of the road.
In the secret parts of my brain, the parts I hated, I kept wishing they would follow me. They wouldn’t let me leave, not for real, and even though I needed a break, they would figure out how to fix it without giving me one.
Because as bad as they hurt me, absence would only ever hurt worse.
It wasn’t logical. I knew that. But love had never felt logical to me. It had always felt like standing on the edge of something, waiting to see if someone would reach for my hand before I fell.
Waiting to see if I’d be too much.
This was the cruelest part of loving people. They were able to wound me so deeply I couldn’t breathe, yet somehow the thought of them choosing not to come after me was even more unbearable.
Don’t let me leave you.
It all happened so fast.
One second, I was angrily walking away from them, grit and gravel crunching under my boots, cold air blooming deep in my lungs, heart thrumming fast and shaky against my ribs.
The next second, I saw new headlights. My steps stuttered and stopped, hair catching on the wind and lifting around my shoulders.
A truck flew around the bend, speeding past the dense pine forest with all its secrets and shadows, veering off the shoulder, heading straight towards me so fast I could hardly make sense of what I was looking at.
And for some reason, I couldn’t move.
I just stood there, frozen, watching the glow of headlights swallow the darkness at a speed that felt impossible. A statue of fear.
Time slowed for an instant.
Tires skidding off the road, wind raking through the trees at my back.
I couldn’t move. Even as four thousand pounds of steel barreled directly at me. I was paralyzed, stuck staring at the bright lights magnifying, getting bigger and bigger like two artificial suns. Reflecting in my wide, glassed-over eyes, illuminating my pale face and stiff body, racing toward me.
Prey.
If my predator doesn’t kill me, something else will.
The forest was close, but not close enough. I didn’t have the time or the strength to get there.
I thought again of the dead doe I’d seen on the side of the road all those weeks ago, wondering for the hundredth time if she’d been running or still when she was hit.
If she’d died instantly or had to lay there waiting for it to happen.
Then I pictured the doe I’d seen disappear into the forest as a child and thought about how I wasn’t sure what noise caused her to run off in the end.
I’d never know those answers.
It didn’t matter now, though.
At the last second, I shut my eyes.
The world is cruel and I can’t run forever.