Chapter 56
CHAPTER FIFTY-SIX
MASON
Dakota curled into herself on the floor, debris and broken glass all around her, cutting into her palms. She screamed and sobbed, her blood and ichor dripping on the wood while I could do nothing but watch.
All my emotions bled into one dark cloud of anger and agony, a storm blotting out any light I’d ever experienced.
Every noise out of her mouth pulled me back to that night.
The truck swerving off the road.
Dakota’s bleeding and broken body.
Micah’s hands cradling her head, his mouth pressing to hers, his breath pouring into her lungs as he exchanged her life for his own.
The red flame consuming his body on the pavement.
The silence after it was over.
I’d spent the last day trying to convince myself his death didn’t have to mean anything to me, that I could become numb to this, that I could survive it. I’d wanted him to die, at some point. I could have Dakota to myself now.
But none of those thoughts ever did anything to stop the swelling waves of despair crashing over me every time I breathed, shoving my head down below the surface, or the pure unbridled rage I felt thrashing in my skull.
He’d died before I got a chance to apologize to him.
He’d carried the truth of our last night together by himself while I knew nothing. He let me despise him for leaving without explanation. For years. That felt easier to him, and to me. I’d rather hate him than admit I missed him. He’d rather have me hate him than view him as a victim.
And then I’d called him a coward.
I’d told him he owed me answers.
I’d let my hatred shape my entire image of Micah, let it change how he existed in my mind.
Really, he was the only person who’d ever loved me how I was.
He fell from Heaven for me.
There was no other reason, nothing else he desired or needed from Earth, no pressure from Heaven to disappear. He just loved me that fucking much. Enough to give up his life.
He loved Dakota that much, too.
He gave up his life for her, too.
While my grief was the waves endlessly washing me under, my guilt was the weight wrapped around my ankle, pulling me down from below, murdering any chance of resurfacing I might’ve had.
Not only because of what I’d done to Micah, but also because I should’ve been the one to give my life for Dakota.
I should’ve gotten there first, should’ve been thinking faster.
I forced myself to walk over to Dakota as she sobbed, feeling incredibly unstable but less concerned about my violence because I couldn’t physically hurt her like I used to be able to. She would heal. She was safe from me now.
Or maybe she wasn’t.
Loving me is a death sentence.
I knelt beside her head, clasping her shaking hands between mine. I couldn’t be strong for her, though. I couldn’t be fucking anything except the disaster I’d been born as.
She cried like that for almost an hour, unable to move from her position on the floor, her body folded up small, her lungs gasping for air she couldn’t seem to find.
Every few minutes she’d ask me a question, and I wished she’d stop doing it because every time I answered it seemed to make her worse.
Are you sure?
He’s really not in Heaven?
Can we bring him back?
Are you lying to me?
Her hair was dry now, but still tangled and rough from the seawater, dark grains of sand clinging to the lengths. She must’ve fallen on the beach. I regretted yelling at her, but I knew I’d do it again. And again. And again.
She’d scream at me too.
We didn’t function together, not the way I’d always wanted us to.
She needed him, and the only reason I was able to accept that truth now was because she’d lost him.
My throat tightened, tears stinging my eyes, my chest freezing all the air in my lungs.
Panic and terror surged in my brain. I forced all of it back.
I still couldn’t fathom that this was real. Every time I remembered it was real, it felt like I’d been shot in the chest, and not in the way Dakota had done it. There was no love in the bullets this time.
Despite claiming to want it, I’d never truly imagined a world with Micah Killshaw dead, and me still alive. It was a reality I’d been completely unprepared for.
In every ending of our story I’d ever imagined, I was the one who ended up dead.
Not him.
Never him.
It was completely and utterly unthinkable. Unfathomable.
I brought Dakota into my bathroom and started the shower, then unbraided her hair and took her clothes off.
Mine too. I knew she could feel my anger in the way I held her, the too-harsh press of my fingers against her upper arms, but she didn’t speak about it.
She didn’t speak about anything. She just cried.
We stepped into the warm shower together and when she turned around my heart squeezed so tightly it might’ve stopped altogether.
Two large scars, stretching diagonally from her shoulders towards her spine.
That was Micah. Those marks on her skin were the last living pieces of him.
She flinched when I touched them, as if she’d forgotten they were there.
My fingers traced the shape of them, brushing over the twist and pull of her skin where she’d been made into an angel.
She had wings now, black wings like me. I wasn’t ready to see them.
Every reminder that she’d been changed was only a reminder that he’d died.
The scar on the bottom of her foot would be healed, too.
Dakota stared at nothing, letting the hot water stream over her hair and her face.
After a minute, she turned around, her eyes finding mine. Green flashed through the heat and the steam, only made brighter by the red around her eyelids.
And then she was in my skull.
My hand snapped up to grab her throat before I even noticed what I’d done, crushing her windpipe.
She didn’t falter, though.
Her stare remained locked on mine as she dug through the emotions painted along the inside of my skull, as she sought out all my instability, all the ways I wanted to hurt her now.
Don’t do this.
My grip tightened on her neck until she couldn’t breathe.
“Get the fuck out,” I said through my teeth.
She hadn’t been raised in Heaven, didn’t understand that angels never did this to each other. Micah was different. And she’d gotten all her knowledge from him.
Dakota didn’t respond to me, likely because she couldn’t breathe.
But she didn’t need to speak for me to see the hatred in her eyes, glistening beneath her tears.
“Dakota!” I shouted, slamming her back against the wall.
You don’t get to do this to me.
Stubbornness and defiance claimed every inch of her expression, every bit of tension in her body language. She felt different in my head than he did, and my emotions were too strong to keep her shallow. The longer she explored, the angrier I got, the deeper she could go.
She wasn’t human now. It would take much longer to make her pass out.
Fuck.
I slammed her against the wall harder, her skull cracking on the tiles.
“What the fuck are you doing?” I yelled, trying and failing to keep the panic from my voice.
She stared at me, unblinking. I released her throat angrily so she could speak.
“I wanted to see it for myself,” Dakota said, sparking a bit of real fear in my blood. She would learn all my truths now, seek out everything I’d ever tried to hide from her. Her voice was hoarse because of the way I’d choked her, but my fingers twitched with the desire to do it again.
“Did you get what you wanted?” I was breathing hard.
“I don’t know,” she admitted, tears slipping over her lower lashes. “I don’t feel like myself.”
Neither do I.
We’re never going to feel like ourselves again.
And you’re about to learn how long never really is.
I couldn’t find the words to respond to her. She didn’t even know who Micah was to me—not yet, anyway. All I’d ever done was lie to her about him.
It terrified me, the way she could access the inside of my mind now, the way she’d never spent time around any other Sigeians besides Micah, so she thought this was normal.
I wasn’t accustomed to her specific soul searching through mine and had no defense against it.
She didn’t even know which of my senses she’d be able to take yet.
My sight, maybe. Like how Micah had done when he almost broke down on the floor in his kitchen while Dakota was upstairs miscarrying his child.
Or maybe my voice. Like how Micah had done when he spoke the terrible thing I’d almost done to him on our last night together, not wanting me to respond back to him.
Almost.
I’d never know if he was lying about that.
If it was his last desperate line of defense against me.
I’d never know what actually happened on that night, because I couldn’t fucking remember it. At the time, I’d known things were getting bad. I just didn’t know how bad they were. I should’ve realized he’d never tell me the extent of it.
Dakota motioned for me to turn off the shower, so I did, then wrapped her in a towel. She started breaking down all over again after changing into her pajamas, her body wracked with anguished sobs, ribs expanding and contracting, shoulders shuddering. I wanted to hold her.
But I fucking couldn’t.
How are we ever going to survive this?