Chapter 55
Dakota
“Pull off here,” I instructed Mason. He turned the steering wheel, driving us off the shoulder into the small lot, his tires crunching over the cracked asphalt and pine cones, headlights catching the misty raindrops.
He put the car in park, then stared silently out the windshield, both hands gripping the wheel, fingers tightening.
I turned to face him, my gaze tracing his profile, my mind futilely trying to rationalize what I was doing to Micah once again.
But this wasn’t an accident, wasn’t something I could argue into nonexistence; it was me choosing the sickness over and over again. Making the bad choice.
I knew it was wrong, but maybe I’d always been destined to be wrong. To be ruined.
I didn’t deserve anything more than this dim survival, throwing myself between two massive forces, betraying them both, betraying myself. Neither relationship was destined for happiness in the end, and I couldn’t quit pushing on the wound of that. Testing the limits. Giving in to my compulsions.
Last night, the grade for my Process Design quiz had been inputted. I failed. Bombed, really. It was the lowest grade I’d gotten on a test in a while. I didn’t tell Micah.
And then this morning, I got a notification for a zero on a different assignment in a different class—that I had also completely forgotten about.
Panicking, I’d frantically emailed my professor about an extension, but he’d only reminded me of the policies outlined in the syllabus stating that late work would not be accepted without prior approval.
He hadn’t even been rude about it, but I’d still cried in the shower until the water ran cold.
Everything I thought I had a grip on was slowly but surely sifting away through my fingers.
Ignore it.
Mason sighed, then shut the engine off and got out of the car.
My eyes tracked him while he walked around the hood before he opened my door, leaning in to unbuckle my seat belt for me, then pulled me out of the car.
I left my phone and all my belongings on the seat, leaving behind the unanswered texts from Mila.
I started towards the dark entrance to the forest on my own, pushing thoughts of all my failures away. I stopped when I could hear Mason wasn’t following me. I glanced back at him, still standing by the car.
“Did he take you here?” Mason asked, voice strained.
“Do you know this place?”
“Answer my fucking question.”
I ignored him, then trudged onto the trail, not caring about the mud getting on my boots or the rain wetting my hair. But I had a pit in my stomach over his question, and I wasn’t sure why. Clearly Mason knew this place meant something to Micah. What else did he know about him?
Mason caught up quickly, visibly mad at me, visibly distracted by whatever he was thinking about.
Perfect.
I needed him not to realize what I was planning to do before I did it, because he would definitely stop me if he figured it out. I didn’t want him to give him the option. Recklessness thrummed through my blood.
The trees were dark and ominous above us, the sky barely showing through.
Dampness in the air made it feel cool in my lungs, a few raindrops pattering through the foliage.
I thought about the oxygen I needed, and the neon Mason needed.
I’d looked up the percentage of neon in Earth’s atmosphere—it was low. I wanted to know what Heaven was like.
Mason and I walked without speaking along the mossy trail, covered with pine needles and overgrowth, ferns springing up around the edges.
Clear drops of rain shivered on the tips of branches, dripping on my shoulders and darkening the wet rocks under the trees.
But I almost didn’t feel any of it through the hollow in my chest, the crazed desperation leaking out of me.
We reached the place where trees parted for sea, the sky cracking wide open above us. I eyed the edge of the cliff nervously as I stepped towards it. Self-destructive. Risky. Stupid.
A death wish.
I don’t care.
There was some reason Mason wasn’t speaking, but I couldn’t figure it out, and I didn’t really care to.
Maybe he was right—maybe I didn’t want to live through this. Maybe I’d stopped caring about my own life a very long time ago.
The wind teased my hair, strands lifting around my shoulders as mist wet my face.
I licked the salt from my lips as the clouds rolled and rolled, thunder settling into the landscape in deep vibrations.
Darkness swept over the waves, over the white peaks and shadowed dips, over that endless violence.
Mason was standing next to me now, looking out at the ocean like I was.
His eyes lifted to the tumultuous churn of the clouds as a bolt of lightning cracked across the sky, flashing white over his features.
My clothes were getting damp and clinging to me, an involuntary shiver working its way through my muscles.
I stared at him. If death was the only language he understood…
My heart beat harder, a relentless pounding on my fractured ribs.
I needed to break through his walls, and I would do whatever it took to achieve that.
If he wouldn’t give me the truth, I’d rip it out of him, force it out of him, over my own corpse.
I’d been sitting in his rejection for days, letting it hurt me, feeling smaller and smaller. No more.
Another step towards the edge.
Mason looked over at me, his chest heaving, a flicker of emotion in his face shoving urgency into my movements. He could sense something was off. Maybe he’d finally realized he had underestimated me.
You want me to show you why people like us shouldn’t be together?
“Dakota,” he said harshly. “Step back.”
My gaze drifted down to the rocks at the base of the cliff.
Surrounded by swirling seawater and fog, stained with salt, sharp, solid, unforgiving.
A pebble fell over the edge, kicked off by the sole of my boot.
The cold air tasted like knives, and God, I wanted to breathe it deeper.
He’d already made me believe I was going to die once, what was one more brush with death?
Your turn to be afraid.
“Dakota.”
Exhilaration urged me forward, my need guiding me past my terror of falling.
“Get the fuck away from there,” Mason snapped, frozen in my periphery, as if he was afraid to spook me, to make me do it.
My entire life balanced on a razor’s edge.
I would rather risk death than let you stay hidden from me.
I don’t care what happens to my body, my safety, my sanity, as long as you can’t shut me out.
Self-destructive intimacy. Suicidal closeness.
I jumped.
The weightless lurch of my body leaving solid ground was a sickening sort of freedom.
Wind tunneled through my clothes and hair, rippling the fabric and whipping my hair behind me, roaring in my ears, tearing down my throat. My stomach flipped inside out, like it was being ripped from my spine.
I was in complete freefall. And I was falling fast.
The sharp rocks were a blurry mirage, looming closer and closer, making me dizzy. The smell of the ocean swelled up, hitting me in the face, flooding my lungs. I could hardly hear my own scream over the wind, and every hair on my body prickled with anticipation.
I squeezed my eyes shut.
Catch me.
Any second.
It’s too late. I’m already gone.
Almost, almost, almost—
Warmth enveloped me as I was roughly snatched up into the sky.
“Oh my God,” I panted against Mason’s bare chest, relief pouring over me, my eyes shut tight. His arms were securely wrapped around me, solid as the cliff I’d jumped from. “Oh my God.”
“Why the fuck would you do that?” he shouted.
“Because I had to see,” I said, probably too quiet for him to hear, as my eyelids slid open and I finally glimpsed them.
Beautiful black wings.
The smoky feathers quivered on gusts of wind, the wings stretching ten feet on either side of him, tearing through the air, black and endless.
His fingers dug painfully into my flesh, angry and mean as he held me, but I liked how that felt.
We were soaring further and further from land, surrounded by nothing but the storm and the ocean.
I needed this. I needed you like this. I want to know you. I want to keep your secrets.
For one wild second, I thought this was it, that I’d actually done it. That he was mine. I’d broken his walls. But in the next breath, he dropped me like I was nothing.
He fucking dropped me.
I screamed, my eyes flying wide and my hands shooting out to try and grab him, but I was already falling, plummeting towards the waves. His stare stayed on mine as he let me fall.
I could practically hear him taunting me, his phantom voice echoing in my head, my heart sinking. You want danger? Then drown in it.
Real, icy fear gripped my chest in a vise grip.
Mason never let me push him without pushing back. And I had no clue how far he was going to take it this time.
Thrausian.
That word scared me. And I hardly even knew what it meant in real life.
He never let me see it.
I wasn’t going to hit the rocks this far out, but I wouldn’t be able to make it back to the shore by swimming. The current was too strong, too merciless. The ocean was a wreck of crashing waves and brutal wind, rain starting to pour from the thunderclouds as they collided above Mason.
My eyes remained desperately locked on Mason’s, terrified and searching for some signal in his expression, a reason to believe he wasn’t going to let me die right now. He yanked the shredded remnants of his shirt off his head.
Before I could blink again, he pivoted sharply, diving straight down towards me.
He wasn’t going to be fast enough.
Even flying straight down, I was still so far below him he’d never reach me in time. Already close enough to the waves to feel the cold spray hitting my arms. I sucked in a deep lungful of air as I prepared to crash into the water, almost accepting this fate.
But I didn’t hit the waves.