Chapter 51 #2
Everything was a blur, the force of the wind increasing with each powerful flap of his wings. All the blood drained from my face when I caught a glimpse at our current altitude. Micah brought us up higher and higher, a misty halo surrounding the moon as we passed through cold clouds.
Above them, Micah held us still in the air. His body was so warm.
“How are you doing?” he asked over the dull roar of the wind.
“As well as I can.”
Micah started in the direction of the beach, holding me so securely I could’ve let go if I wanted. I couldn’t see much through the clouds, but that was the point. I kept my face tucked against the crook of his neck.
If I thought about what was happening too much, I was worried I’d have a panic attack.
This wasn’t the first time I’d been hundreds of feet away from the ground with Micah, but it was scarier now—worse, since there wasn’t a cliff for me to lay on at all.
The wind was so harsh and cold, the clouds surrounding us, his wings huge and powerful as they cut through the air.
The flight didn’t take too long, which I was grateful for.
“Keep your eyes shut,” Micah instructed as I felt us start to descend.
I did what he said, not opening my lids until I knew we were on the ground. Micah’s wings were gone, but he looked as gorgeous as ever. It felt like I was betraying Mason in a way, by bringing Micah to our place, but it’d been my place with Anthony first, and I needed to erase those fingerprints.
The ocean was a black expanse, shifting with a metallic sheen, whitecaps flashing faintly where the waves broke. I wrapped my arms around myself, staring out at the familiar sight, feeling it deep in my bones. The constant roar and hiss of the surf was deeper at night, more ominous.
There was a rawness to the salt-lined air, a humming electricity.
“I sometimes try to find shark teeth here,” I said quietly, Micah’s presence looming from beside me. I breathed in the vast scent of the sea, silently wishing for the darker edge Mason’s scent had.
“I can see pretty well in the dark,” Micah offered, his voice stirring heat in my core.
“How well?” I narrowed my eyes.
“Considerably better than you can. Come here.” He tugged me to his body, hands molding to my waist, gaze seeking mine. I skimmed my palms up his bare chest, swaying a little. He lowered his mouth to mine, kissing me without hesitation.
“Do I taste like vodka?” I asked, breaking away.
“Absolutely. I don’t care, though.” A handsome smile spread across his lips, showcasing his white teeth.
Micah found me three shark teeth in a total of five minutes, my own drunk eyes spotting literally nothing in the dark sand.
Then my ears got cold, so he flew me back to my trailer, where we sat together on the couch in my living room, the tiny TV playing reruns of adult cartoons.
The kitchen light tossed dim yellow illumination over both of us.
“Why did you come here in the first place?” I asked.
“To see you. You weren’t in class.”
“You have my phone number, Micah.”
He looked at me, no humor in his expression. “Give me your phone. I don’t think your response messages are delivering to me. I’ll see if something’s wrong with your signal.”
“Don’t do that.” I got to my feet, stumbling a second before finding my footing. “Go home.”
“I’m not leaving you like this.”
“Like what?” I threw my arms up. “Drunk? I’ve been drunk plenty of times in my life. Leave.”
I turned and walked away from him, towards my bedroom. The sound of his footsteps followed me. I increased my pace, trying to get away, but I tripped over my own foot, tumbling to my knees.
“Fuck,” I muttered, holding onto the wall to stand up.
Micah was still standing right next to me.
“Get out of my house, Micah,” I snapped as I walked into my dark bedroom, then paused. “Actually, don’t. Please stay.”
The words made me blink, fucking shocked at what I’d just said. My brain no longer wanted him to leave at all. It sounded like the worst thing he could possibly do.
“Thank you,” Micah said.
Realization made my eyes widen in horror. Now that I knew about his angelic aspect, now that I knew what Sigeians could do…
“You can’t just do that!” I shouted. Rage exploded in my mind, burning hot and fiery. “You can’t take pieces of me away whenever you feel like it! You’re manipulating my fucking emotions to make me want you here!”
His jaw flexed and he looked away from me, anger and indecision marring his face.
“Do you want to take this too? My anger? Make me docile and compliant?”
“You want me to show you what I want to do?” he asked loudly, taking a step towards me. “It’s not taking your anger away.”
“Sure, Micah. Show me whatever sadistic desire you’re having right now,” I said, injecting as much bravery into my voice as I could.
In the blink of an eye, everything was gone.
Everything.
The entire world went silent and dark, my voice frozen somewhere in my throat. I could no longer feel my fingers curling into my palms, nor could I feel my feet on the ground. I couldn’t see, couldn’t hear, couldn’t speak, couldn’t touch.
A surge of panic so huge I thought it would kill me swelled in my brain.
The reality of the situation infused undiluted, primal terror straight into my bloodstream, cold and jagged and overwhelming. Lethal. It slid down my spine like spikes of ice, jamming up all my muscles until I was paralyzed. The only place I existed was within the confines of my own skull.
Just as quickly as the nothingness had overcome me, it dissolved away, and I was standing in my bedroom with Micah. The moment my eyes regained sight, and my voice regained its volume, I was screaming at the top of my lungs.
“Never fucking do that to me ever again!” I shrieked, taking fast steps backwards until my legs hit the edge of my bed and I fell onto my butt.
I scrambled away from him, pressing my shoulders to the wall, breathing hard.
I couldn’t stop thinking about how old he was.
He’d lived lives I had no idea about. He could do things so horrible to me I hardly had words to describe them.
“I won’t. But now you know.”
“I wish I didn’t know.”
“And I wish you weren’t sitting alone in your bedroom, drinking yourself to death.
Do you want to die, Dakota? Do you want to fucking kill yourself?
” There was something like panic showing in his eyes, and it unsettled me so deeply I felt nauseous again.
He was looking at me, but seeing someone else.
I don’t want to be whoever it is you’re thinking of.
I’m not your redemption.
“You don’t actually know me, Micah,” I said, fighting through the wobble in my voice. “You don’t have a clue what I’ve been through, or how I like to deal with it. I can hurt myself if I want. You don’t get a say.” My fingers gripped my comforter tightly, nails scraping on the taut cotton.
“I know more than you want me to know.”
“What, you can read my thoughts now? I liked you better when I thought you were just my engineering professor.” Every word was tipped with venom, dripping with painful vulnerability I wanted to hide.
If I’d hated the darkness inside my skull beforehand, if I’d been afraid of being swallowed by it on my own…
what I felt now was a thousand times more powerful. A thousand times worse.
Because now Micah was there, too.
He’s carving his own labyrinth into my brain. He’s erasing me.
“I can’t read your thoughts.”
“How do I know you’re telling the truth?”
“Because I have no idea why you didn’t come to class today. I don’t know why you drank half a bottle of vodka on your own. I won’t know unless you tell me.”
“Or unless you force me to tell you. Take away all my resistance.”
He just shook his head, clearly frustrated with my attitude.
“Punish me again. Wear me down. Hurt me. Make me tell you.” I couldn’t stop more tears from pouring down my face, hot and slick.
Maybe some part of me meant the words I was saying, a small part that secretly wanted to confide in Micah about my brother—but thinking about that terrified me all the same.
“I’m not going to do that. Come sleep with me at my house.”
I leaned forward, shoving my face into my mattress, wanting to scream until my voice broke. My head was swimming and my body was heavy. I can’t fucking do this. I can’t keep up with him.
“Dakota.”
Dizziness was building in my brain, rolling over and over, stirring sickness in my stomach. Everything felt suddenly too hot, too much. Cold sweat trickled down the back of my neck, my jaw slack. I drank way too much. Why did I do this? I’m such a fucking mess.
“Dakota,” Micah repeated.
No.
I launched myself off my bed, choking on saliva, gasping, clamoring towards my bathroom on my hands and knees.
Nothing will ever be okay. But I didn’t make it to the toilet before my stomach was heaving and my body was convulsing, bile searing up my throat.
Micah swept all my hair back, gathering it in his fist as I vomited onto the ground in the hallway.
Violent sobs tore through my chest and tears made my vision blurry, saliva dripping off my chin, my arms shaking so hard I almost couldn’t hold myself up. I couldn’t tell if I was crying because of him, or because he wasn’t leaving—no matter how disgusting I was now.
“Please go,” I wailed, spitting onto the ground, hardly able to breathe through my humiliation and despair.
“I’m not leaving you.”
I hung my head, feeling snot run onto my upper lip, my chest aching.
“When I said I wanted to take care of you, I meant that shit.” He stretched out his arm and grabbed his shirt from the ground, then wiped my face with it. I was too weak to resist him, heaviness blanketing my mind.
My eyes stared blankly at the ground, my sobs quieting.
“You’re doing a good job at letting me help you tonight. You just have to keep letting me a little more. Alright, Masters? Can you do that?”
I could hear my own breathing in my ears, puffing in and out through my open mouth.
A string of saliva snapped off my lower lip. My throat burned with acid.
The dim light from the kitchen showed my bare legs sprawled on the ground, my bruised shins and blue veins, sticking out from the wrinkled t-shirt dwarfing my tired body. Micah’s longer legs were crouched next to mine.
A few pieces of hair were clinging to my sticky cheeks.
My spine was slouched forward like it couldn’t support my weight anymore. My fingers were wet with spit and vomit, trembling, pressing against the thin carpet that was spotted with years of faint stains I’d worked so hard to scrub out when I first moved in.
I thought of myself then, on hands and knees, crawling around with a bucket and my dollar-store cleaning products, so excited to have my own place.
A place where Anthony had never been, because this aunt was my mother’s sister—unrelated to him.
Even though the trailer was a piece of shit and I still didn’t have a car and I was drowning in chemical engineering assignments, I’d been excited.
I’d wanted this place to be scrubbed clean, untouched by him.
But now I was sitting here on the gray carpet, in a puddle of my own vomit. He found me anyway.
Before I could stop myself, the horrible words came out, flat and wrong in the stale air, “My older brother fucked me for four years.”
Micah went stiff.
“That’s why…” I motioned to the vomit on the floor, to myself. “That’s why I was drinking so much. He texted me today about his wedding. I hate when he texts me.”
“Dakota,” Micah whispered.
“I don’t want you to ask me any questions, okay?”
He paused. “Sure.” It sounded like he was forcing himself to say it. “That’s fine.”
“I was fourteen and he was eighteen. I never really did anything to stop him. He doesn’t live in Washington anymore.
That’s all I’m going to say.” I tried to take a deep breath, but my throat felt thick and choked-up.
“And if it’s too much for you, then whatever.
You can go if you want. I won’t kill myself. ”
“I’m not leaving. Not for this. Not for anything,” Micah said. I turned my teary eyes up at him. I knew my cheeks were red and blotchy, my nose running, my chin dripping, but he didn’t look at any of that. “If this is the messiness you think makes you untouchable, then watch me touch you anyway.”
Micah helped me wipe my face again and put on fresh pajamas, cleaned my carpet as best as he could, made me drink water and eat crackers, packed some of my things in a bag.
He carried me out to his truck wrapped in a blanket because I didn’t want to put my boots on.
He drove me to his house and tucked me into his bed.
And then he held me tightly as I finally fell asleep.