Chapter 59 #2
The wind took over for our voices, racing over the choppy gray waves, funneling against the cliffs at our back.
The scent of the ocean was heavy in my lungs, thick in the air, but the scent of Mason was still there below it, seeping under everything like dark fog.
I licked salt off my lips, which might’ve been from the ocean or my tears. I was never sure anymore.
I could feel the coldness of my body, my damp skin, my clothes clinging to me, but in my new body it didn’t ache in the same way. My nose was running, and I wiped my face with the wet sleeve of my shirt.
“Maybe if we talk, it can help you,” I said quietly, quiet enough that Mason could pretend he didn’t hear it if he wanted. “We’re not really talking about anything.”
“I can’t talk about it.” He shook his head. His voice was rough, grating over my bleeding heart.
“Well, I could—”
“No. Shut the fuck up.”
I looked at him, my vision blurry. Despite us sitting together on this miserable beach, I was completely alone. I was always alone.
“You hate me when I try to talk about him. You’re acting like he never existed,” I said, ignoring the tears that’d begun rolling down my cheeks. Pathetic.
“No—I’m acting like I watched him die,” he bit out.
“Okay. I’m sorry.”
The wind claimed our conversation again, all our words blown away into the gloomy sky.
Drops of ocean water clung to Mason’s strong shoulders, gliding down his chest, dripping off his jaw.
His dark eyes stared at the dark sand, but he wasn’t looking at it.
He was watching something replay in his brain.
I watched him die.
In my own memory, I thought about images of Mason’s face looking at Micah before everything happened, all the longing in his expression.
Micah’s face looking at Mason, all the angst in his eyes.
Their bodies together in the shower. Their voices arguing with the venom that only came with great familiarity.
Fists thrown across jaws, crimson blood and golden ichor.
A ritual rooted in many years of history.
They weren’t business partners.
I’d never truly believed that, but it took me until now to fully understand what I’d been witnessing the whole time. In the back of my head, I felt it. I knew.
“How long were you and him together?” I asked quietly.
“We weren’t—”
“Mason,” I cut him off, shaking my head. He wouldn’t look at me. “I know you loved him.”
Even if I didn’t know that, I could feel the deception in his brain. He wasn’t strong enough to try hiding it from me now, to try curating some form of indifference with his emotions to conceal the truth. I knew he hated when I searched the inside of his skull, but I found it difficult not to.
His grief was too consuming for just sex.
“Please just tell me how long,” I begged.
A pause.
His voice was strained. “Fifty two years.”
The words burrowed in my chest, stabbing through my heart.
“Fifty two years? Together?”
My ribs ached and I couldn’t remember how to breathe correctly, because I could hardly conceptualize a number like that, could hardly comprehend how it would feel to lose something that’d lasted more than double the number of years I’d been alive.
Fifty two years. That was more than love. That was a lifetime.
More tears dripped down my cold face, my heart breaking for everything that came before me. Even as sea-soaked air wrapped around me, my lungs took on nothing.
“And then we broke up. He’s the one who left me. It’d been twenty two years since I’d seen him before you.”
Right before I was born, they broke apart.
There was no girlfriend causing Mason’s fear of abandonment. It was Micah.
My eyes squeezed shut, my lungs gasping for a breath as the lump in my throat grew.
I didn’t need anyone to explain what had caused them to break up, because I already knew. I’d been in a relationship with both of them. I’d loved both of them. I’d felt their flaws separately.
I could see how perfectly they would’ve fit together, and how perfectly they would’ve torn each other apart. I knew where Micah retreated, where Mason pushed, and how neither of them knew how to stop until everything had been decimated.
“You’re A, from his truck,” I whispered. “Ashborn.”
Mason swiped under his eyes quickly, his throat constricting when he swallowed. “Ash,” he corrected. “Ash and Kill.”
A + K FUCK
Ash and Kill.
For fifty two years.
I had no words for him now. There didn’t exist a combination of sentiments I could string together to convey the sorrow I felt for him, to articulate just how deeply this knowledge was pierced through my heart.
I’d expected something more meaningful than they’d been letting on, but this was an unthinkable level of connection that’d been lost.
Not just once, but twice.
Two times, Mason had lost Micah.
One of those was because of me.
I wanted to throw up.
Mason stood up without warning, walking to the rocks and up towards his parked car. I followed him, carrying my boots.
“Can we go to the diner and get food?” I asked quietly once we were both sitting in his car. He hadn’t gotten a towel or a change of clothes from the backseat. Maybe he’d run out of those things.
“I don’t want to go there.”
“Okay,” I whispered, my chest tight with heartache and anxiety.
“I’m going to take you back to your place.”
“Will you stay?”
“No. Not today.”
I looked out the window as Mason accelerated onto the road, trying to hold in my sobs. This was Mason’s sorrow, and I didn’t want to make it about myself. My hands shook so I pressed them together between my knees.
Without looking over, I felt for his emotions, terrified that he would become unstable once alone.
“Don’t fucking do that, Dakota,” he snapped, making me flinch. “Get out of my head. Angels don’t do this shit the way you’re doing it. I’m serious. You’re being incredibly invasive.”
“I’m sorry,” I whispered, my voice too small. “I just wanted to make sure you were safe.”
He didn’t say anything to that.
I knew I was being invasive. I just had to ensure he wouldn’t die once I stepped foot inside my trailer. But all I’d felt within him was sadness, like lead. Heavy, slow-moving, suffocating emotion. A blue so dark it’d become black, like the bottom of the ocean.
Neither of us spoke when he pulled up to my front step. Mason stared blankly out the windshield. I pushed out the passenger door and walked around the hood of the car, then up the few steps.
Mason pulled away before I even got my door unlocked.
━━━━━
My bedroom was dark, my eyes puffy from crying. Every single hour of the day was hard, but these were always the worst ones. When I laid awake in the middle of the night, alone in my bed.
A weak sob escaped me.
I miss you so much I can’t even think about it.
I don’t know what to do.
I don’t know how to survive this.
I rolled over to face the other way, Micah’s t-shirt twisting around my body.
Somehow, I’d been forcing myself to go to all my classes, forcing myself to turn in my assignments and complete my exams. Micah would’ve wanted me to.
That was probably the only reason I did anything, ever.
Because it was what he would’ve wanted me to do.
With each passing day, it all felt more pointless, because what the fuck was I working towards? A stupid degree?
If I’d had anything more than one semester left, I would’ve dropped out. This wasn’t worth adding to my misery.
But I could do a few months for him.
When I studied, I felt closer to him than any other time. Usually, I pretended he was in the other room refilling my water bottle, and that’s why I had to be alone. It was only temporary and he would be back.
I didn’t have many classes this semester because I’d spent the past four years expecting to fail something, so I always structured my schedule with some time at the end of my degree to retake any classes if I needed to. By some miracle, I’d never actually failed anything.
But most of the time I couldn’t pretend. Not really.
I’d gone to his office in Stanton and stole his three degrees off the wall, afraid that someday they would clear out his space and they’d be lost forever. I kept all three of them under my bed. Undergraduate, masters, doctorate. All chemical engineering. All his.
Dr Micah Killshaw
I need you.
I need you. I need you. I need you.
I need somebody to know how to take care of me, and to love me enough to try.
I crawled out of bed, everything smeared through my endless tears, stumbling towards my front door. It was freezing cold outside, but I didn’t put on any other layers. I walked off my porch barefoot, the wind blowing around me, snaking between my clothes and my skin.
There was already a slit in the back of my t-shirt, which I’d carefully cut myself, so it was easy for me to conjure my wings and pull myself into the sky. Brutal channels of air ruffled my night-dark feathers, tossing me unevenly as I flew towards Micah’s house, my nose running.
Anthony’s wedding was only a few weeks away now, but I had no plans of going. Both of my parents were going, and they would hate me for not showing up, but how could I? I never wanted to in the first place.
Especially not now.
Eventually I approached Micah’s house and landed on his back porch. The door wasn’t locked, so I went inside and straight up to his bedroom, seeking the comfort of his bed, his scent, my wings around me like his arms used to be.