Chapter 29
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
DAKOTA
The distillation column was cooling down as Micah helped me with the last problem on my Process Safety homework.
We’d successfully completed all my missing assignments at this point, and I was fully caught up in all my classes—as caught up as I could be.
Having Micah’s help didn’t make me into a genius able to instantly comprehend all chemical engineering topics.
He’d been explaining things—engineering concepts I was supposed to know—to me in bed sometimes, with my head on his chest and his voice all rumbly against my cheek. I liked it, even when I forgot stuff.
As much as I hated being denied the closeness that came with sex, it’d forced me to learn about him in other ways.
He was so damn perceptive. It scared me and comforted me in equal parts—and made me wonder why I’d ever thought he wouldn’t know I was hooking up with Mason.
Of course he knew. Sometimes it felt like he knew every single thing about me.
I didn’t sleep with him every single night, but most of them.
I usually spent the other ones with Mason.
When Aamon was still alive, I’d been dying to get my independence back, tired of being passed between them like a child with divorced parents, but now I didn’t mind so much.
Sleeping alone wasn’t a particularly appealing notion to me.
Aamon’s death had simplified my life in some ways, but complicated it in others.
I no longer had any moments with Mason and Micah together.
Our awkward dinners and tension-filled movie nights were now a thing of the past, and I didn’t like it. Even with the animosity between them, I wanted to be around both of them at the same time. It made me feel whole in a way I never did when with only one of them.
That was why I’d told Mason to pick me up from campus now. To force an interaction.
I was counting on his guilt still being strong enough to do what I wanted him to do.
“You ready to go?” Micah asked, drawing me out of my scheming brain.
“Yes.”
Micah nodded, then helped me pack my stuff up and held the door open for me.
Since this run hadn’t needed the whole day, it was only mid-afternoon now, and less cold on our walk across campus.
Sometimes I worried that people would be suspicious of us walking together, but then I remembered Micah could entirely prevent that with his aspect.
The sight of Mason’s 4Runner in the parking lot made my heart squeeze, and I could sense the moment Micah noticed it.
He wasn’t happy.
“Masters,” he said.
“What?”
“What are you doing?”
“Nothing.”
“Misbehaving.”
“Are you going to punish me?” I looked at him, not shying away from the intensity in his stare, my heart beating harder. “I can handle it.”
“Don’t get cocky. I’ll make you eat those fucking words.”
Please do.
We’d reached the parking lot now, and Mason was standing outside his car, arms crossed, eyes locked on my face. He was blatantly refusing to look at Micah.
“Hi,” I said as I approached Mason. I had a plan. Revenge or mania, I wasn’t certain. “Get your gun and come with us.”
He did look at Micah then. Maybe trying to figure out if he’d known about this, or had a clue what I was planning. He didn’t.
“What if I say no?” Mason asked, his body tense.
“Then you don’t get to see me today.” The words sounded bitchy coming out of my mouth, and I might’ve felt bad about that had Mason been a better person.
But he wasn’t. So I didn’t care to be, either.
I could hold my presence over his head like some sort of trophy he’d only be awarded by listening to me.
Micah walked past the car towards his truck and Mason took the opportunity to grab my arm, speaking low in my ear. “You think you’re that fucking special? Huh?” His other hand slipped around my back, pulling my body close.
“I hope I am,” I said softly, my fingers raking up the back of his skull, threading through his brown hair.
“Yeah. You are.” He groaned and tilted his head as he stared down at me, like he was annoyed with how incapable he was of saying no to me. “If somebody cracked open my skull and looked at the inside, all they’d find is your name scratched into my bone thousands of times. I’m that far gone for you.”
My pulse fluttered with the thrill of his dark obsession.
“So you’re going to come with me?”
“You are sick and twisted and evil.” He leaned down to kiss my mouth once. “And I deserve it. I’ll do whatever it takes.”
“Good.” I pressed up onto my tiptoes to kiss him again, then stepped back. “Get your gun.”
“What do you need the gun for?”
“You’ll find out.”
He didn’t question me again, which I enjoyed.
I started across the parking lot towards Micah’s idling truck, walking with purpose around the bed of the truck to the far side, then yanked the door handle.
Gray-blue eyes glared at me as I climbed in the passenger side and slid across the bench seat to be right next to Micah. His exhales were harsh, his brows pushed together. But I didn’t back down, didn’t look away, didn’t put any more space between us. I’d known he was going to be pissed about this.
His body was so warm against the side of mine. Powerful yet motionless.
His gaze slid down to my mouth, then slowly, painfully returned to my eyes.
My stomach flipped.
The tension in the cab increased tenfold, his kapnos a sweeping shadow in my lungs, stirring liquid heat in my core. My desire to throw myself at his feet was somewhat humiliating with how quickly it overcame me. All my braveness melted into submission, my body turning soft and pliable and wanting.
And Micah hadn’t said a single word.
All this, from the barest glance.
The passenger door creaked open, startling me, and I shifted on the seat, my eyes flicking over to Mason as he climbed in. The men clearly weren’t pleased with each other’s presence, but that wasn’t my problem. Sitting between them like this made me happy.
“Where are we going?” Micah asked me. “I’m assuming you have a plan.”
“I do have a plan. I want you to go to the beach first.”
“First?”
“Yes.”
“Okay.” He pulled out of the lot, wheels crunching over pine cones, and I started to press buttons and turn knobs on the radio.
There was no way to hook my phone up in here, but Micah had a few cassette tapes that I could play if I wanted.
I messed with the radio until I found a station with no static, then increased the volume.
The song was unfamiliar to me, but it was some sort of classic dad rock.
We were picking up speed, cruising along one of the fast two lane roads that went through a small town and curved around the shape of the forest, telephone wires strung up on tall poles following the same shape.
Neither of the men were speaking—to me, or each other—but the music was loud and having both of them together again was making me giddy.
I scooted over to the passenger side and reached over Mason to crank the window down, cold air rushing into the truck and rippling Mason’s shirt. I glanced over at Micah, his wrist resting on the top of the steering wheel, then he rolled down the driver’s side too.
I climbed onto Mason’s lap so I could put my face out the window, his arms wrapped tight around my waist. He was so warm and strong and steady, securely holding me against his body.
Yeah, I’d said I would choose Micah over him in the middle of the worst fight we’d ever had, but I didn’t know if that was true in the aftermath. Mason had to understand that.
He had to understand that I couldn’t choose Micah, because I couldn’t choose just one of them. It had to be both.
I would never willingly give one of them up. It was settled in my mind.
I would let myself be ripped apart by this before surrendering my heart.
The wind funneling into the car was like a riptide pushing into my lungs, filling me up, swallowing all my normal air and replacing it with instability. That was how it felt being with Mason, like he’d replaced everything else with his own darkness, and I craved that with every beat of my heart.
Sink or swim.
But then there was Micah, grounding me, covering me with a blanket made of shadows, keeping me safe under there from everything except himself. The rest of the world felt so dull in comparison to both of them, so boring and normal and pointless. This was what I wanted. What I’d always want.
I leaned backwards out the window, my hair streaming wildly in the wind. Cold air bit at my cheeks, and I was grinning wider than I had in months.
Maybe I was having some sort of manic episode. Definitely.
Thoughts of Thanksgiving and seeing Anthony again had been tormenting me, making me desperate to do something that would push them away.
I need to do something so hugely violent I can’t even remember what’s coming. I need to use up all the space in my brain on other things.
I ducked back inside the car just as Micah began to slow, preparing to park the truck at the top of the rocks surrounding the beach. The song from before had long-since ended, and there was something mellow on the radio now.
“So, what are we here for?” Micah asked as I slid back into the middle of the bench seat.
“I want to shoot Mason.”
Micah raised his eyebrows, then looked over at the other man. “She’s going to shoot you?”
“This is literally the first I’m hearing of it, but I guess that’s fine.” Mason turned my head to face him. There was a look of pure surprise on his face, which I liked. I wanted to be surprising to him. Not boring. “You gonna shoot me in the heart, baby? Pretend you’re killing me?”
Yes, that’s exactly what I’m going to do.
I just shrugged.
“I guess that would be fine,” he said after a minute. “Why do you want to?”
“I’ve never shot anyone.”
“Well, neither have I. Most people haven’t. It’s not exactly a standard experience.”
I leaned close to his ear. “I deserve it.”
He caught my eye as I sat back up, shaking his head slowly. He didn’t protest, though.