Chapter 10 #3
“Don’t forget,” Micah gritted out, shoving his thumb deeper, controlling my head with his invasive hold. “You got this slutty mouth from me. I fucking made you. I fucking owned you.”
And then you ruined me.
“So you have no idea what I want to do,” he said under his breath, then straightened up and started toward the stairs, thumb falling from my lips.
I was on my feet in an instant and I caught up to him quickly, grabbing his shoulder to stop him. He spun around, wrenching out of my grasp.
“Don’t touch me.”
“Pretty sure I do know what you want to do,” I said, releasing him.
“Pretty sure you don’t.” His eyes flashed in the darkness as he spouted his lie.
“I know you better than you want me to. Did you forget that? Did you forget that despite you leaving me, I still knew you all those years? I can see exactly what you’re doing with her.”
“And what does she have to do with you knowing me?”
“Everything. She hurt you, so you’re keeping her at arm’s length while you hurt her back. You think I can’t recognize that shit?”
“What are you doing, then? Hurting her and pretending you’re not keeping her at arm’s length? You’re doing the same fucking thing thing as me, Mason, but pretending you’re not just because you’re still fucking her.”
I pressed my lips together; there wasn’t a good answer to that question. We were both being as horrible to her as she was to us—significantly more horrible, actually. And Dakota didn’t deserve that.
“Whatever.”
I pushed past him, heading for the stairs.
“Go home,” Micah said from behind me. “I don’t want you sleeping here.”
“Fine by me,” I snapped as I spun back around, changing course to go grab my shoes and keys. “I like to be out of your presence as often as possible.”
He didn’t say anything else as I left the house.
The sound of me slamming the door shut felt too loud, and the outside felt too quiet in the aftermath.
I shrugged some of the tension out of my shoulders, sucking in quick breaths.
What am I doing?
Hooking up with my ex once was bad enough, but tonight should’ve never happened.
I dragged my palm over my face, roughly pulling my skin down, then looked up at the sky, the stars poking holes in the darkness.
Especially not with all the fantasizing I was doing in my head, thinking about all the ways I wanted to do this again with him.
Which could never and would never happen. My need for sex wasn’t so great that I had no choice but to keep doing shit with him.
I had Dakota.
He had…whatever he had. His hand.
I wished I didn’t have so many years of memories with him, wished they weren’t so deeply ingrained in my brain.
If I’d been older when we met, if we’d been together for less time, if he hadn’t been my only male experience, maybe it all would be different now.
But none of those things were true. He’d fucked me up from the start.
And I’d fucked him up, too.
I got into my car and slammed the door too hard, raking my hands roughly through my hair. Don’t think about this. Don’t think about him.
Instead of driving back to my apartment, I decided to spend the rest of the night aimlessly searching for those yellow glowing eyes and letting guilt eat a hole in my chest.
There wasn’t a way to justify my actions, no way to twist them into something acceptable—even in my own mind. So I stopped trying to. I was a piece of shit.
And as much as I wanted to pretend otherwise, my hatred for my ex did nothing to lessen my obsession. I wanted to rip myself to shreds for feeling that way. It would hurt less than the alternative.
This violent, all-consuming, life-ruining obsession.
He used to be just as obsessed with me as I was with him, and that was dangerous.
Lethal.
At first glance, it seemed good to be on an equal playing field with your partner, to have evenly distributed feelings. But with me and him? It was a deadly drug.
We dragged each other deeper, spurred it on, fought to be more obsessed than the other. Both of us had been far too young—and naive—to have it any other way. I couldn’t stop myself. I used to be so protective of him. He made me somehow more insane than I already was.
Because he accepted my Thrausian nature, and he was able to help me harness it, I could never stay away from him, could never stop needing him all the time.
Back then, it’d shocked me that he let me rely on him.
I couldn’t understand why someone like him would want to tie himself to someone like me, but it became clearer to me as I got to know him.
Micah was layered and confusing, but it wasn’t all without reason.
His complexity, his cruelty, his devotion.
They were all knotted tightly together, and if I let myself think about it too much, I’d feel drawn to that again, even if that same knot had been the thing to wreck me in the end. Even if he broke me beyond recognition, I’d still be lured to his poison if I thought too long or too hard about him.
So I didn’t think about him.
I reminded myself how it felt to be left by him, how it felt to smell him on Dakota, how it felt to see his life now. There was enough pain in those things to crush my sickening need.