Chapter 57 #2
I pivoted, walked out of the kitchen into the living room.
It was so clean in his house. So expensive. Tasteful.
“Hey.” He grabbed my wrist and turned me. I kept my eyes level with his chest, refusing to look up. “What’s going on? What’s wrong?”
Everything. Everything is always wrong.
That includes you.
I’d been so worried about Mason, I’d hardly seen Micah coming. As much as I’d tried to protect myself, my skin was soft.
And his teeth were so sharp.
What would Micah think if he knew Mason had fucked me with a gun to my head, making me believe he was going to kill me for real?
That he’d held me underwater while I fought him?
Would he understand all the ways I’d wanted those things?
He knew how my brain was wired to an extent; he knew I liked the fear, the threat of my own death, but how deeply did he feel that himself?
“Come here,” he instructed, towing me towards the couch while I dragged my feet, digging my heels into the rug. He sat on the leather couch cushion with me standing in front of him.
“Micah, stop it,” I said, turning away from him. “Stop.”
He looped his arms around my waist and pulled me onto his lap. “Tell me.”
“You’re insane,” I said through my teeth. My palm connected with his chest once, twice, hitting his solid muscles.
He grabbed my face, pulling me towards him, tipping our foreheads together.
I squeezed my eyes shut tight, hating the tears always threatening to spill down my face.
All softness and no sense. The flash of a white tail disappearing into the darkness.
Prey. I’d tried to learn to protect myself, but I’d never truly be able to. I was too trusting. Too desperate.
Run, prey, run.
“Masters,” he whispered. “Don’t keep me out. Don’t make me watch you hurting from outside your little world. I’m right outside the door, alright? I’m not going anywhere. Let me in.”
“What if I don’t fucking want that? What if I don’t want you in my head?
” I questioned, sounding frantic. The amount of trust required to be around someone capable of the things Micah was capable of was enormous.
I was trusting him not to rewrite my own brain.
“Are you even capable of keeping yourself out?”
“You’re allowed to let someone take care of you,” he said, disregarding my questions. “Do you know that?”
“Is that what this is? You taking care of me?”
“That is all I ever try to do, Dakota.”
His words added to the constant guilt hanging on me like a heavy blanket, soaked with cold water. I fucking hate myself.
I broke.
An exhausted sob burst out of me and I turned my head, laying my face in the crook of his neck while tears poured down my cheeks, shoulders shaking, lungs stuttering.
“You hate me,” I cried.
“I don’t hate you.”
But I felt like he was lying. Somehow, I knew he’d figured it all out. He probably knew all along, and I was just the fool, thinking I could hide anything from him. He’d been punishing me since the day Mason walked into his house.
Making me suck his dick, getting mad at me over it, making me feel as if I was walking on eggshells. I hated keeping this secret from him, especially when I felt like he already knew and wasn’t confronting me for some reason.
And the worst part was, it was entirely fucking unfair of me to be upset with him over any of this, because I was the one being unfaithful.
As far as I knew, Micah hadn’t done a thing with anyone else since we got together the first time.
I wished I could say the same about myself.
It would come out at some point, and it would wreck everything. I just didn’t know when that was.
I’m a horrible person. I was letting him console me, letting him comfort me, even while I’d been going behind his back. Finding the strength to launch myself off his lap, I stumbled back into the kitchen, panic and anxiety rising in my brain, swallowing me. Smothering me. Burying me.
Everything was compounding, building, making every other thing worse. I couldn’t separate all my sadness. It was wrecking me.
Every time I thought of myself in high school, I thought of Anthony. Thought of all the things he’d done to me, all the time I’d spent with him, all the shame. He’d ruined every single memory of my teenage years. Fourteen wasn’t fourteen anymore. It was the year my life ended.
“Dakota—”
“I saw—I saw videos,” I choked out through pitiful sobs. I’m a mess. I’m a fucking mess. That’s all I’ll ever be.
“Videos of what?”
“Doesn’t matter.” I whirled around, feeling my sanity slipping.
I couldn’t even articulate exactly what combination of things was making me so unstable right now, but my nervous system had been on edge for so long it didn’t matter.
I was ripping apart at the seams. I shouldn’t have come here.
I shouldn’t have done any of the things I’d ever done in my pitiful life.
In the future, when I think of myself in college, is this all I’ll remember?
“Of course it matters.”
“You’re not mad at me?” I questioned desperately, backing away from him, tears falling faster and faster.
My entire brain was flashing red, alarms blaring in my skull.
It was like I was trying to make him hate me by prompting these questions over and over.
My obsessive reassurance-seeking would be my downfall.
There would never be enough reassurance. Nobody on Earth could fill this endless void of compulsions.
“I told you I’m not.”
My eyes flicked over to my side and I grabbed a knife from the butcher block on his counter, the blade sliding out of its casing with a metallic sound. I needed something to hold, something to be tethered to outside my skull. My fingers flexed on the cold metal handle.
“Are you fucking sure about that? Don’t lie to me.” I could barely see him I was crying so hard. And now I was holding a knife, as if that was going to fix any part of this situation. Maybe I could kill myself with it. Slit my wrists and bleed out on his kitchen floor, crimson blooming on the wood.
“I’m not lying.”
“You are,” I gasped.
“Quit doing that. Tell me what the fuck is going on so I can help you.”
Visuals of my wrists bleeding assaulted my brain until I really felt like I was going to do it, with or without my own permission. It was inevitable. My body would take over and kill itself any second. Kill me.
Has there been a single day in my entire life where I haven’t thought about my own death?
I screamed as loud as I could.
Not any words, just an agonized, hoarse, painful scream tearing out of my throat.
I am losing my fucking mind.
I can’t even imagine what Micah must think of me, watching this.
He must be disgusted by me. Horrified.
The scream shattered into loud sobs and I was choking on air, hardly able to get any into my lungs, my vision getting black on the edges.
Micah crossed the room rapidly, standing in front of me half a second later, and I jerked the knife upwards, holding it between us, pointing it at him, my arm shaking violently.
I couldn’t even kill him like this, or at all, probably.
I was so unspeakably afraid of all the things he could do to me.
I’d had nightmares about that nothingness, waking up with my heart pounding and my hands clenched into fists, my brain blind with fear until I realized it wasn’t real.
“Masters,” he said forcefully, grabbing my wrist to steady the knife. “Pull yourself together, or I’ll do it for you.”
More tears squeezed out of my eyes as I shook my head over and over, not wanting him messing around in my brain again—but I was tempted. My muscles were going weak, my fight slipping away from me. It was so terrifying to trust him inside my head, but what choice did I have?
The relief was near-immediate when I felt him take some of my bigger emotions for me, and I didn’t care that he hadn’t waited for me to consent to it.
The knife clattered onto the counter and Micah wrapped me up in his arms, holding my head to his chest as I caught my breath.
Calmness enveloped me like a blanket in the absence of everything else, soothing me.
Micah couldn’t plant new emotions in my mind, nor could he alter them, but he could take them away. And that was enough.
It was a strange sensation, though, knowing he was doing something inside my thoughts I had no control over. It would’ve made me panic had I been capable of it, but I wasn’t.
In some ways, it was good.
In other ways, it was bad. I knew that. I could recognize that somebody having this sort of power over the inside of my brain wasn’t good. Sometimes I was afraid he would erase me from my own mind, but I couldn’t care about that now. Maybe he was taking away my ability to care about it.
“Do you want me to take you to one of those rocks in the ocean?” he asked, tilting my chin. “I remember you saying you’d want to go sit on one if you ever grew wings.”
My lower lip wobbled. “I’m tired, Micah.”
“All you have to do is let me carry you.” He looked at me. “Let me hold this tonight.”
Let me take care of you.
My endless fight.
“How many times have you taken my emotions away?” I was afraid of the answer.
“Three times, including now.”
Some hidden anxiety settled in me with his response.
“It was when you told me you were an angel, wasn’t it? And when I wanted you to leave my place.”
He nodded.
I heard the lock of the front door turning, unlatching. Both Micah and I angled to look through the entrance of the kitchen to the door.
Mason walked in after a second and when our eyes met, I wanted to sob all over again.
I wanted to run to him and let him wrap me up in his arms, let him hold me so close to his body I could hardly breathe.
But I was already in Micah’s arms. Mason could probably tell how hard I’d just been crying, and I wished I could read his mind.
What was he thinking? What did he assume I talked to Micah about?