Chapter 54
Micah
Obviously I knew Dakota and Mason were—and had been—fucking.
I’d known it the instant they first saw each other in my house, because I could feel all those emotions in their heads.
I had to assume Mason at least suspected I knew, unless he’d become incredibly goddamn stupid and somehow couldn’t put those pieces together.
I mean, I’d seen him on campus—likely going to her, I realized now. Even if he hadn’t known I could sense all his obsession towards Dakota in his brain, he would remember me seeing him there.
I hadn’t decided when I would confront Mason about it.
I’d been enjoying watching him squirm, and knowing that the secrecy made his moments with Dakota even slightly less enjoyable was satisfaction enough.
Same went for her guilt. If she felt any amount of guilt for lying to me every day, hopefully it made her orgasms with him slightly worse.
But as mad as I was at her, I couldn’t bring myself to want her any less.
Nor did I find myself capable of judging her questionable decisions.
When she’d spilled that tiny glimpse into her past trauma, it’d ripped my heart apart, only made worse because of something I’d noticed about her before I knew anything at all. Sometimes when Dakota cried, she cried like a child.
Broken, exhausted, unable to get enough air in, gasping sobs, tired eyes squeezed shut, big tears rolling down her cheeks. The way she was so drained afterwards, like her emotions had taken such a toll on her body and all she wanted to do was sleep. It made more sense now.
When I saw her like that, how could I ever want to hurt her?
Dakota telling me about her brother was less of a confession, and more of a dare for me to stay. I could recognize that. I could recognize how she saw herself as messy and broken and untouchable. Now she just needed to recognize how I didn’t give a fuck about that.
I turned when I heard the door to the lab opening, Dakota slipping in quietly. She went to her usual stool. The distillation column was already running, and she was almost thirty minutes late, but I didn’t have it in me to scold her for it today.
“Mason talked to me,” she started, piquing my interest. I wondered how she was about to spin this, wondered what she would confront me about. He could’ve told her anything, but I had my suspicions.
“Yeah? When?”
“At your house before dinner.”
Doubtful. “Continue.”
“Why would you try and make me believe he hates you and you don’t hate him?”
There it is.
It was exactly the sort of thing I would’ve expected him not to be able to keep his mouth shut about.
If she’d mentioned to him what I’d said, he would have a very hard time not correcting her misconception about me.
He was itching to ruin me in her eyes, yet he wasn’t grasping how impossible that was, not unless he was ready to spill our entire past.
I was so tempted to take her doubt, take her mistrust, just so I wouldn’t have to lie now. Mason was making it so easy to cross so many of my self-imposed lines.
“It’s complicated. I don’t care enough about him to hate him, though.”
“And he does care about you? Why won’t you tell me how you know him?”
“I have told you. We’re both fallen angels, and he’s helping me out with some business.”
“What fucking business, Micah?” she snapped, hands on her hips.
“He kills demons, Dakota.” It was the truth, just not the whole truth.
Her face paled and she crossed her arms over her chest, shoulders rounding. She narrowed her eyes, stepping away from me. There was something mildly unstable in her gaze, and I could almost see all the ways she was barely keeping her head on straight.
Evil, precious, broken girl.
Let me hold you.
My endless desire to try and fix people, to hold their brokenness in my hands and mold it into something only I could cure. Even for a Thrausian, Mason had less control than most. And I was the exact opposite, because I was one of very few Sigeians with the ability to take every sense.
“Can we move past this?” I questioned, moving forward. She was shaking her head and for an instant, it made me irrationally angry. I tamped it down. “We have runs to do this afternoon.”
Her lips pressed together tightly and she glanced away, then back. “Fine.”
“Good.”
━━━━━
Mason walked in through my front door, bypassing me sitting on the couch, walking straight through to the kitchen. I tightened my jaw, looking back down at my laptop.
“Is Aamon dead yet?” I asked loudly.
“No, he’s not. Still holding out hope he’ll sneak up on you and end your pathetic life before you get a chance to bring me down with you.”
I could hear him getting out dishes from the cabinets, helping himself to everything I owned, as usual.
“Why are you here, Mason? I’m not asking you to spend this much time at my house.
” Honestly, it was pissing me off how often he stayed here.
Sure, at first I made him stay over a few nights so I wouldn’t be murdered in my sleep, but I was sick of it.
And I had no fucking clue what was taking Mason so long to do the one singular thing he was supposed to be doing. What did he even do all day long?
“You know why I’m here.”
“I don’t.” The urge to do what I’d threatened to do was pushing at the seams of my mind, a disgusting desire I couldn’t ignore.
It wouldn’t be particularly difficult. All I had to do was make him fracture bad enough that he’d lose himself in his own darkness.
I’d push him straight into it, headfirst.
Then he might explode my entire house, or he might drown himself looking for the high of neon deprivation. Either way, he would end up dead. I’d make sure of it.
“Do you have water bottles?” he asked.
“Garage.”
I stayed in the living room, waiting the two seconds it took Mason to see what was in my garage.
“You kept that fucking truck?” he shouted, storming back inside, sounding more angry than he had the right to.
Yes. I kept it.
A+K FUCK
Mason was the one who wrote that shit on the visor, back when he liked me. Back when we fucked. I’d told Dakota I’d gotten the car used—which wasn’t even true, but she hadn’t known at the time that I might’ve been old enough to buy it new. She didn’t suspect a thing. My name starts with M.
“Do you have a problem with the truck?” I asked, crossing my arms as Mason came into the room. “Too many memories for you to handle?”
His expression morphed into disgust. “You accuse me of being hung up on you because I’m spending time at your place, but you kept our truck.”
“Our truck? It’s mine, not yours. And it’s a nice truck. I had no reason to get rid of it.”
He furrowed his eyebrows, his hands clenched, electricity skating over his knuckles.
Looking at him now, I was struck by memories of how his face had looked at the end.
The absolute, earth-shattering devastation when I told him I couldn’t keep doing this with him anymore—and meant it.
The way he’d begged me not to leave him, swearing to me he would get better, promising me he would figure out some way around his own fucking nature.
I swallowed the tightness in my throat, shoving the imagery aside.
I didn’t regret it. I couldn’t regret it.
But sometimes I wondered if he thought it hadn’t hurt me too.
If he thought that walking away from him hadn’t felt like a thousand blades stabbing my chest. If he thought it was something I’d done to him, when in reality, I’d done it to both of us.
Nothing between us had ever been one-sided, and that included our end, because I didn’t want it either.
But he was going to drown me right alongside himself if I let him, because I couldn’t save him on my own.
I never would’ve been able to save him—as hard as I tried.
And I’d tried really goddamn hard.
“No reason to get rid of it?” Mason scoffed. “Getting rid of me was enough?”
I got up from the couch, pushing past him into the kitchen. “You don’t get to be the victim anymore,” I muttered under my breath.
He didn’t say anything, but I could feel his agony.
“You’re not the only one who gets to break things,” I added, biting out the words.
“But I’m the only one who has to face the consequences, right?
You finally embrace your Sigeian breeding?
” His voice dripped with disgust, and I hated what he was saying because it wasn’t true.
I didn’t look down on him for being born Thrausian the way most angels did.
“Say you hate me. At least that would be honest.”
“I don’t hate you for being Thrausian. You fucking know that.” I laid my palms flat on the counter, bracing my arms against the cool surface. I didn’t look back at him.
“But if I wasn’t Thrausian, we would’ve—”
“If you weren’t Thrausian, you wouldn’t have been you!” I spun around, anger raising the volume of my voice. “We wouldn’t have been together in the first place if you weren’t! Stop putting words in my mouth that I never said!”
He just shook his head, backing out of the kitchen. “I’m done,” he said under his breath.
“Fine.” My jaw clenched as I turned back.
I stared down at my hands pressed flat on the counter, hearing him leave the house behind me, my heart pounding in my chest stronger than it had in years. Pain lanced my chest when the door slammed shut hard enough to shake the walls.