Chapter 26
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
MICAH
Dakota was quiet by the time we arrived at my house.
Her hair was damp and tangled, her eyes and nose red from crying.
I’d had a lump in my throat the entire drive back from Mason’s apartment because I didn’t like doing this with her, didn’t like what I’d felt in her head—what she’d asked me to take away.
It was more than sadness or panic or overwhelm.
It was heartbreak.
I knew better than to take something so integral from her, but there was no way I could look her in the eyes and deny her in that moment. The emotion was so deeply rooted that erasing it left her with next to nothing. Just numbness.
But I knew what it was like to crave that, and how it felt to never be able to get it, so I did what I shouldn’t have. I gave her that deadly anesthetic.
Dakota made no moves to get out of the car after I parked in the garage, so I went around to the passenger side and got her out myself, then carried her inside. Her eyelids were heavy as she clung to me, making soft noises under her breath that might’ve been cries had she any strength left.
“Do you want to wash your hair?” I asked as I brought her upstairs, the lengths knotted and draped over my arm like a waterfall. “I could get a bath ready for you.”
Dakota stiffened in my arms.
“No bath.”
What the fuck did he do to you?
“Would you want me to shower with you?”
She nodded, cheek pressed against my chest.
I carried her into the bathroom, then set her on the counter next to the sink while I turned the shower on.
She remained sitting in the same spot when I left to get her some of my clothes to wear as pajamas, not saying anything.
Steam had begun fogging up the glass shower, drifting towards the ceiling.
“Do you need help undressing?”
Another nod.
I put her on her feet then motioned for her to lift her arms. She did.
I took off her shirt, then knelt to remove her pants and underwear and socks.
Once she was bare before me, I undressed myself, then guided her into the shower.
She shivered when the hot water hit her skin, visibly relaxing into the warmth.
After a minute of her standing unmoving under the spray, it became clear to me that she wasn’t going to wash her own hair.
Too tired, too numb, too empty. I hated it, but I’d promised her I could give her this night.
Now, I wondered why I’d ever made that promise.
Fighting with her would feel better than this. But she needed it.
I uncapped the shampoo and tugged her backwards a half step so the water was no longer pounding the top of her head, then started to wash her hair.
This was far from the first time I’d done it, but usually she reacted to my touch.
Sighing with pleasure when I massaged her scalp, reaching back and trying to grab my dick, spinning around and demanding to wash my hair next. None of that was happening now, though.
I turned her to face me and tilted her head backwards to rinse the suds.
“You hurt me, too,” she said as bubbles streamed down her back. “Different than he does, but it cuts me the same.” Her voice was monotone.
I didn’t respond to her, because there was nothing I could say.
She looked up at me, blinking water from her eyes, droplets shivering on the tips of her eyelashes, her cheeks red from the heat.
I had the sense that she would’ve been crying if I’d left her with any sadness, but I just continued siphoning all the pain from her head, ensuring nothing slipped through the cracks. She wasn’t going to cry again tonight.
“I’m going to die, Micah.”
“Masters,” I said softly, shaking my head, trying to hide the way those words took my breath away.
“And I know it will be soon,” she continued, still not reacting when I firmly held her shoulders, pulling her in my direction so I could condition her hair next.
The air felt too hot, too humid, steam filling my lungs.
“When Aamon was still alive, I thought I was getting this awful feeling from him, but now he’s dead and I still feel like this.
You don’t get it because you’re not going to die, but it’s like I can see it in the corners of my mind.
Like it’s some real thing and it’s watching me, waiting for me. ”
“As long as I’m breathing, I will keep you alive.” I attempted to make her look at me, but her eyes were unfocused. I needed her to know I meant it.
“How, exactly, do you plan on doing that? You can’t kill everything. There are other ways for a human’s life to end. Maybe I’ll kill myself.”
“I’d know if you were going to do that.”
“I never told you this, but my first memory is of a doe,” Dakota said, shifting the direction of our conversation.
Water was trickling over her lips, glistening when she spoke.
“That’s why I dream about deer sometimes.
In the memory, I was looking out the back window of the trailer I grew up in and she was just standing there, then she got scared by something and ran into the forest, and I can’t stop thinking about her all the time now. It feels like me. Like I’m her.”
“I can still protect you,” I murmured.
“No you can’t.” She lifted her eyes to meet mine, and the green of her irises was perhaps the most transparent it’d ever been.
I could see every single ounce of hurt I’d caused her over the past months, the hurt Mason had caused her, the hurt she’d been suffering her entire life.
She was so fucking broken, slipping farther away from me every day, drifting between my cowardly fingers as I hated myself for letting this happen to us.
“Dakota,” I said quietly, sliding my palms up to her shoulders.
“I am prey, and prey dies.”
“You aren’t prey.” The words felt like a lie as I said them, and I wasn’t sure when I’d allowed myself to start thinking of her this way. From the first time I saw her probably. I was a much worse person than she gave me credit for.
She closed her eyes and let water stream over her face. The liquid formed a clear mask, clear enough for me to see her, but rough enough to distort things.
I thought of Mason then.
Thought of his face at the end.
His ragged voice, choked off sobs, teary eyes.
He’d asked me why?
He always asked me that. Why are you doing this?
Dakota did, too.
Why, why, why? Why did I do any of the things I did? Why did I hurt people? Why did I hurt myself? Why was I making everything more difficult than it needed to be?
I don’t fucking know.
There’s something wrong in my head and I don’t want to admit that, even to myself. Something happened that I’ll never want to talk about.
And then, with him…
I gently pulled Dakota out from under the stream, then uncapped her body wash and lathered it in my hands.
She was unresponsive as I ran my soapy palms all over her skin, wet and soft, pink from the heat.
I didn’t linger anywhere except her shoulders, which I massaged for a few minutes while Dakota shut her eyes.
She was so tense all the time. Her body was never relaxed, except when she was sleeping.
I’d gotten less sleep over the past few months than usual, simply because I preferred to lay there and stare at her sweet face, unmarred by anxiety. The steady rise and fall of her chest.
I turned her back to face me, letting hot water rinse over the back of her hair.
She looked up at me again, all her hurt on display in those big eyes, her pain so close to the surface now that it made my own eyes sting. There were falling stars in her eyes, glistening on the way down. So beautiful, but so, so sad.
I love you.
I pressed my lips to her hairline, squeezing my eyes shut, gripping her head with both hands. I love you more than anything on Earth.
I wished I found her before Mason did.
I wished she belonged to me and only me, wished I’d never let my own problems infect us, infect her.
I wished I could love her cleanly.
But I couldn’t. I loved Dakota like a double-edged blade. Carving her into pieces, scratching ownership into her skin, and cutting my own palm by doing it.
She thought she needed me, thought she needed this pain, but she didn’t realize my need to bleed was greater. I craved my own blood dripping over steel more. I was the one starving without her.
I couldn’t let go of her.
She wasn’t pure—far from it—but she felt that way in my hands.
I stared down at her and felt everything.
My anger corrupted me and I fucking hated the fact that this was because of Mason.
I’d worked to build my life, build my sense of self after him, gain back the control I’d lost to him, and none of it even mattered.
A few months with him back in my life and I was no longer the man I’d tried to become.
I was bitter and jealous and hateful and obsessive.
I didn’t want to let Dakota be with him, and I didn’t want to let him be with her.
But in the same breath, I wanted to control both of them—and control them together.
It was messing me up inside.
Everything was messing me up inside. Every old wound was being ripped open; every desperate piece of armor I’d constructed around my heart and my soul was being weakened.
I’d spent years building myself into someone who couldn’t be hurt, but none of it mattered now. Either one of them could topple the entire structure I’d so carefully constructed with nothing more than a few words, a pitying look.
I’d buried my vulnerabilities under so many rules and routines and carefully maintained distance that I’d almost began to believe they were healed. Almost.
Now I knew they were not.
I’m slipping, losing my footing, losing my grasp on this whole thing.
I shoved those thoughts away.
Dakota looked like she wanted to get out of the shower so I shut it off and grabbed her towel, then bundled it around her body and squeezed her tight. She just stood there. Mason’s claws were so deep inside of her she’d become nothing without the pain he was causing her.
The lump in my throat was back.