Chapter 11 #2
I didn’t feel that bad for asking, even if he thought I should’ve. All his questions were invasive, sharp, and aimed straight at the parts of me I tried to hide.
“I was born with them. Better?” His fingers tightened a bit on my thigh, squeezing me. A flutter of heat danced in my stomach.
Did he want to move his fingers higher? Would I let him? Would it matter?
“So, what? Your shoulders fused to the placenta in the womb or something? I don’t see how that would happen.”
“That’s another question.” He gave me space to respond, but I didn’t. Sure, it was technically another question, but it felt like a follow-up, not something new. “What’s your last name?”
“Masters. What’s yours?”
“Ashborn. Do you have siblings?”
“No,” I lied. “Do you?”
“No.”
I turned my head and our eyes connected. Neither of us were being honest, and we both knew that. We just didn’t know what things the other was lying about. Strangely, I liked it that way.
I couldn’t hide my soul from him, but I could control my words, turn my tongue.
You’re a lot more like me than you want to admit.
He slid his palm a half-inch higher on my thigh, warm even through my jeans.
My breathing got faster.
“How old are you?”
“Twenty-one. You?”
“Older than that. Is your birthday soon?”
“In December. When is yours?”
“February. What’s the worst thing you’ve ever done to someone else?” Mason asked without pause, twisting his old question slightly, his gaze dark and intense. Like he was daring me to give him my answer, to say the words, or tell him off for asking.
Like he wanted to test my limits.
Maybe I should tell him to stop.
My palms started to sweat and I wiped them on my black jeans. Funny how quickly he’d shifted our conversation from birthdays to secrets I’d never share.
“Pass,” I said, trying to push the torrent of memories in my mind to the side, to shove them where they belonged: buried deep in the back of my brain. “How often do you go in the ocean to hold your breath?”
“Often. Do you like your major?”
Weird question. “I like it enough to push through. Do you ever hold your breath anywhere other than the ocean? Like a pool or bathtub?”
“Yes. How’s your relationship with your dad?”
“It’s fine,” I replied. We could both play this game, if he wanted that. The mommy-issues-or-daddy-issues game. He was asking about the wrong man, anyhow. “How’s your relationship with your mom?”
“Nonexistent. Have you ever hurt yourself?”
“Define hurt.”
I’d never taken a razor blade to my wrist, if that’s what he was asking. I’d hurt myself in other ways, though. With little shark teeth, with other people, with my own mind. Mason’s fingers flexed on my thigh, sending a pulse of heat through my core, feeding the hungry ache inside of me.
I wished I hadn’t been missing how his body felt on mine. I wished I didn’t crave it again now.
“That answers my question,” he said, not giving me a clue as to what he meant. Maybe he could figure out everything about me by my short response.
“Okay.” I bit the inside of my cheek. “How long was I unconscious on that day?”
“A few seconds.” The same answer as before.
We sat together in silence for a little while, thoughts crashing like waves in my head. I could almost taste the salt in my mouth as they swept me under. Brutal, volatile, cycling. He was easy enough to talk to, but I didn’t trust him.
Do you think about me like I think about you?
Do you hate it the way I do, too?
Do you want to hurt me again?
Did you mean it when you said I could hurt you back?
Why did you say that?
What is so different about you, and why does it draw me in so badly? Are we too similar? Am I safe? Do I even want to be safe?
Each thought in my mind mirrored the water creeping up the beach, mirrored the rolling and turning, the way the ocean could never hold still, would never let go.
I curled my fingers around the spine of my journal and squeezed, just waiting for the wave that would finally race all the way up to the rock I sat on, the one what would finally suck me under.
The sun wasn’t visible behind the clouds, but I could tell that it was setting now.
“You’re in my head, Dakota,” Mason said, his voice low as he cut through our silence. Are you lying to me? Using me? I couldn’t help but to wonder. He had everything to gain, and I had everything to lose. “Nobody gets in my head. But you did.”
You’re in my head too, I wanted to say, but I swallowed the words, keeping my mouth shut tight. It was stupid. It was way too fast. There was no logical reason for him to be such a significant fixture in my skull already.
“I’ve been going to this beach, waiting for you to come back. I knew you would, I just didn’t know when.”
“So you are stalking me.”
“I can do a whole lot worse than this,” he said with a dry laugh. His grip tightened on my thigh, almost painfully. I could feel him looking at me now. “I’m serious.”
“I believe you.”
There was something vulnerable in my tone; I hated it.
I couldn’t afford to be vulnerable with someone who scared me the way Mason did. He would take every opportunity to work his way deeper into my bones, infiltrating me so completely I’d never get him out. But maybe the worst parts of me wanted to do that to him too. Wreck him. Drown him.
Fuck him up.
Could I do that?
Mason’s large hand slid up to cup my jaw, and I knew he was going to turn my head to face his, maybe kiss me, and I was nervous for it. My pulse raced. My head spun. I licked my lips, his fingers digging into my jaw like I owed him something. He angled my face towards his.
His free hand was already disappearing under my sweater, fingertips running along my skin. Under the waistband of my jeans, feathering over the curve of my waist, scattering goosebumps over my flesh.
His features were gorgeous. Overwhelming, now that he was so close.
The brown of his irises was so deep I could get lost in it, his eyebrows dark and pulled down, like he was focusing. His gaze slid to my mouth, his eyelashes sweeping downward.
“Give me a secret.”
“No,” I whimpered as his palm moved to my throat, his fingers circling my neck. His grip was too tight.
“I wasn’t lying when I said I wanted to own every little terrible thought you hide from the world. Every bad thing you’ve done or wanted to do. I still feel that way.”
“I can’t give them to you.” My voice was hardly a whisper, barely rising above the wind. “I don’t know you.”
“That’s bullshit.” His thumb was pressing into the side of my throat, my pulse flying fast beneath it. “You don’t need to know me how you think you do, not when your soul has been tormenting mine for years.”
He sounded strangely serious when he said it.
So serious that I almost believed him.
His eyes flicked upwards, colliding with mine and igniting a steady burn deep inside of me. I was dizzy with the pressure of his grip on my neck, with the feeling of all his attention directly on me. I wasn’t getting enough oxygen to my brain. He pulled me closer.
My hand landed flat on the rock, fingers splayed, my body leaning into him.
It was so hard to resist him. I almost didn’t want to.
Why not abandon what remained of my sanity and dive in headfirst?
I had a feeling I’d be destroyed by him in the end, so what was the point in delaying the inevitable? I couldn’t do normal. My brain didn’t work that way. I hungered for reckless obsession, thirsted for sickening devotion, craved life-ruining toxicity.
“What do you want me to say?” I breathed, desperation coating my words. My chest began rising and falling quicker when he squeezed my throat even harder; maybe hard enough to bruise.
Do you want to bruise my flesh like you bruised my mind? Give me something to remember you by every time I look in the mirror? Maybe my professor will see these bruises too. I wonder what he’d think about you if he knew you gave them to me.
“What’s your oldest memory?” Mason asked, studying me. His hand under my sweater was warm on my skin, caressing me, mapping the shape of my waist and the divots between my ribs.
“Seeing a deer in my backyard, through the window. I had to be on my tiptoes to look out.”
“Just one?” He tilted his head, shifting his grip to brush his thumb over my lower lip, tugging it down a little. A chill dripped down my spine.
“Just one,” I confirmed. “A doe.”
“Why do you think you remembered that?”
“Because I thought she was pretty,” I said, pulling the shadowy image back into my mind. The fading white spots on the doe’s tawny coat, my small fingers gripping the windowsill. “And she was holding so still. I didn’t know why she was that still back then. Maybe I was scared, too.”
“Scared of the deer?”
“No.” I swallowed, Mason’s palm still pressing against the motion of my throat. “Scared she’d run away.”
“Did she run away?”
“Yes.”
The memory wasn’t clear in my mind; it was like looking through murky water, swirling and dark.
I figured I was about three or four years old, looking out the back window of the trailer I’d grown up in.
We didn’t really have a backyard, but the way the forest backed up to the park made it feel like we did.
Most of the kids who lived near me were scared of that forest. It was so dark, darker than things should be during the daytime—or maybe my childlike mind was magnifying it. But I knew I wasn’t scared of it, even back then.
Just like I’d always liked the violence of the ocean, I’d always liked the darkness of the forest.
There were loud voices in the memory of the doe, shouting and angry. That’s why I was scared she was going to run away, because she’d hear the yelling.
I couldn’t remember now what had caused her to dart off in the end. Maybe it was the yelling, or maybe a car driving down the road, or a can getting crumpled under a foot outside. I did remember being sad about it, though. I remembered the flash of her white tail.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
“It’s okay.” My body was hot and I was staring at Mason with heavy eyelids, my lips parting, giving him permission. I didn’t want to think about my childhood.
“What’s your first memory?” I asked.
“The first one that matters is grabbing your wrist.” He nodded his head towards the ocean.
If I had known what I knew now, would I have gone in after him on that day? I had no idea.
Uncontrollable waves, saltwater in my mouth, heavy clothes sticking to my skin, tangled hair, choked breaths, dangerous currents. The warm, solid presence of him pulling me out.
“I don’t know if that counts,” I protested quietly.
He used his hold on my throat to bring me even closer, so close his lips brushed mine when he spoke, “Well, that’s my answer.”
He ran his mouth over mine and butterflies exploded in my stomach.
Eat me alive. Scare me to death.
Swallow me whole.