Chapter 30
CHAPTER THIRTY
DAKOTA
“Get out of the truck, Dakota,” Micah said as I slammed the door and slid across the bench seat towards him. The key was in the ignition, but he had yet to start the engine.
“Where are you going?” I questioned. We were sitting together in his truck in the garage.
I’d rushed out of the house behind him in only socks, carrying my boots with me, because I didn’t want him to leave without me.
He’d been irritable all morning—and, to be fair, so had I.
Yesterday felt like a breaking point for us.
I’d pushed too far; he’d shut down too hard.
“I’m getting some air,” he responded angrily.
“I want to come with you.”
“I need fucking space.”
I bent forward to put my boots on, not responding.
He’d have to physically remove me from the seat if he wanted to go somewhere without me right now.
I’d been patient; I’d given him time and space and let him do whatever the fuck he wanted to me.
But I wasn’t going to let that keep happening with no forward movement in our relationship.
Especially now that I’d told Mason I loved him.
“Masters.”
“Dr. Killshaw,” I said, just to antagonize him. Our eyes connected.
“Why are you calling me that?”
“Oh, are we in a relationship or something? Should I call you something else?”
He was silent for a minute, his lips pressed together in a tight line, his eyes staring blankly out the windshield at the wall of his garage. His hand flexed on the steering wheel, his face unreadable.
“I need more than this,” I pressed.
Whatever he was thinking about, he could tell me. Whatever was hurting him, I wanted to know. I wanted to know him so fucking badly, but every time I voiced that desire, he pulled back even further. Micah would rather let us crumble into pieces than allow himself to be seen by me.
What lives have you lived?
Who have you loved?
Who has loved you?
Who has hurt you?
What bad things happen in Heaven?
Micah didn’t say anything else, but he turned the key in the ignition, the engine roaring to life, then backed us out of the driveway.
The sky was gray, clouds hanging low as we rumbled down the road. I leaned against the window, my breath fogging up the glass before I wiped it away with the side of my fist. It looked like it was going to rain—like always.
I thought about everything that’d happened with Micah over the past few months.
All the staring in class, the tension suffocating me during every late night in his lab, the charged silence between us in the elevator, the times he’d fucked me on this very bench seat.
Sleeping in his arms, his voice walking me through heat transfer problems, the sight of his back muscles flexing around his scars when he washed his hair in the shower.
Rope around my wrists, the cruel edge in his tone, a gentle kiss on my forehead.
I would never survive without every piece of him. I needed them all. The full map of his labyrinth, every shadowy corner and sharp edge and dark center.
My eyes drifted over to trace his side profile.
He was beautiful. Ridiculously so. If I’d been asked to picture an angel before actually knowing two of them, he was what I would’ve imagined.
Neither of us spoke again until he parked the truck at the entrance to the same forest he’d taken me to before—the one with the cliff.
I knew there was a significance to this place, but he’d been vague about it last time.
He’d told me it represented something he’d never be able to undo, reminded him of his past choices, reminded him to be careful with his future ones. It was vague—though almost honest.
But that was before he knew I was also fucking Mason.
He didn’t find out until later that night.
I wondered if he regretted telling me anything at all then.
Micah shut the engine off then stepped out of the truck before walking around the hood to help me do the same.
We stepped together into the forest, heavy branches swaying over our heads, damp earth beneath our feet.
Everything was green. A mirage of life, the ground speckled with pine needles and swathed in shadow, moss dripping over logs and ferns growing in the gaps, breaths of fog sweeping around tree trunks like ghosts.
It was quiet, all sounds swallowed by the forest’s unbroken silence.
The soles of my boots squished down dead foliage on the trail, crunching over branches, avoiding rocks.
Even surrounded by the scent of real coniferous trees towering over me, I could still sense the underlying thread of Micah’s kapnos as he walked at my side.
It was different, so much more complex than pine and moss and fern.
It was him. Layered and dark and addictive.
We approached the gap in trees where the sky went wide over the ocean, everything else falling away into one of the most beautiful views I’d ever seen.
Wind swept up over the cliffside, blowing my hair off my face as I stared out at the waves tumbling in a net of constant motion.
Micah sat down on the same large rock as before, and I joined him, but I didn’t speak.
We sat together in silence, feeling the dampness in the air on our faces, tasting the salt of the Pacific, the looming forest at our backs.
Micah was taking deep breaths, like he needed as much air in his lungs as possible, and it made me think about the low neon content in the air on Earth.
“You said Heaven has more neon in the air,” I started quietly.
“It does.”
“How much?”
“Enough that my skin constantly glowed when I lived there.” He looked down at his forearms propped on his knees, and I could see all the tension in his shoulders. I wondered if the neon research he’d done for his dissertation had anything to do with himself. It had to.
“That’s called ultraneon, right?”
“Yeah.”
“What do Sigeians do in Heaven?”
He turned his head so his stare connected with mine. “I didn’t come out here because I wanted to talk about myself. I came out here to be alone, in the quiet.”
I frowned, my gaze falling away to linger on my fingers twisting together.
Every bone in my body ached to be closer to him, closer than humanly possible, to live safely under his skin as a part of him. All I wanted was to belong to him and be so close that his ribs protected my heart, too. But he wasn’t even touching me.
“But,” he continued, making my heart lift.
“The main job of a Sigeian is to help humans get to Nepenthe. All of our powers are designed around that, around making people comfortable as they pass to the afterlife. Most people are nervous, or combative, or scared, or confused, and everything about a Sigeian is supposed to help remedy these things.”
He paused. I didn’t prompt him to continue, though. He could go at his own pace.
Micah took a deep breath.
“I can remove people’s memories of myself if that isn’t the perception of Heaven they want.
Nepenthe itself is very nebulous, and it can be anything, but the journey there is not.
I can remove senses and emotions that are distressing.
I can even make myself invisible if my presence is too disorienting. ”
I listened in awe as he reframed everything I already knew about him. I’d always wondered the purpose of his aspect, and now it made complete sense. He was a guide, a leader, an angel capable of helping humans make the toughest transition of their life.
“So Sigeians in Heaven don’t do what I do,” he continued. “They don’t usually take anything from other angels.”
“And Aiglens?” I questioned tentatively. “What do they do?”
“Create asteria, protect all of Heaven, do other regular jobs like people have on Earth.”
“Like accounting?”
“No.” The corner of his lip curled up in slight amusement. “There’s no accounting in Heaven. They grow and prepare food, take care of the environment, keep things clean. Things of that nature.”
“What’s asteria?”
“Starfire. It’s the only type of fire that burns in Heaven, and it can only be created by Aiglens. It’s used for almost everything.”
“No matches or lighters?”
“No matches or lighters.”
I contemplated this. The more he spoke, the more I wished I was able to see Heaven myself. Micah explained it wasn’t idyllic, but that didn’t lessen my curiosity. It was a whole new world that I’d never really known existed. I wanted to see his skin glowing, his ultraneon.
“And what do Thrausians do?”
Micah’s jaw flexed and he hung his head. “Wait to die. Or fall to Earth and die there.”
The words stole my breath, and I wanted to cry for all the anguish I knew Mason felt over his aspect. Hearing confirmation from someone else’s mouth about how Thrausians were viewed in Heaven hurt just as bad as hearing it from Mason’s mouth. More, maybe.
“What did he say to you yesterday?” Clouds collided over the ocean, the teal water always moving, always swelling and churning and rushing. Never still or stable. “Mason,” I added to clarify. “Is whatever he said the thing that made you upset at the diner?”
“I was already pissed off,” Micah snapped.
“But what did he say?”
“It doesn’t matter! Some bullshit! Like he always says!” Micah shouted, tossing his arms up, sparking anger in my own blood.
“God fucking forbid I ever ask you a single question about your emotions,” I grumbled.
“Don’t start,” he warned, his tone getting lower.
“I’ll start whatever I want to start.” I stared at him, fingers trembling.
Fighting with him wasn’t going to do anything productive, but I just couldn’t stop.
He was making me feel insane. “Do you know how fucking badly I just want things to be normal with you, Micah? You act like you hate me half the time, and I’m trying to be patient, but you’re not giving me much to go on. ”
“I want things to be normal, too! But they can’t.” His eyes pierced mine, stabbing right through me in all their blue-gray intensity, hooking deep into my soul. Razor wire, embedded in me too deep to remove. “I can’t be normal,” he gritted out.
“Do you think I’m normal? No. That’s not what I meant.”