Chapter 63
CHAPTER SIXTY-THREE
DAKOTA
Nine Months After
Mason entered Micah’s home office while I rifled through drawers, gathering things into my arms in a teary mess, my brain running in an endless loop.
I wondered how many times a person could retrace the same memory before they finally wore a hole through it.
Wondered how many times I could cling to the stupid hope that maybe I still could fix this.
“What the fuck are you doing?”
“Trying to find an object that had meaning to him. Something special. But I don’t fucking know what to take,” I cried. “I tried other things and they didn’t work. I think I just had the wrong things.”
I never got to know him as well as I wanted to.
I thought I understood what was important to him, but I was learning now that I’d been wrong.
“I just—”
“Dakota,” Mason cut me off, shaking his head. His face was solemn.
“What?” I questioned, eyes wide.
Mason looked away from me, out the window. “The Syndesmos leader told me this wouldn’t work.”
“They could be wrong!” I sobbed. “I didn’t try everything yet!”
“I don’t want you to—”
“I didn’t try everything!” I screamed, dropping the papers and random items that I had in my arms. “You don’t know for sure that this won’t work! Nobody can know that!”
“I do know that!” Mason shouted at me. “You need to fucking stop doing this shit. It’s not going to work, and I genuinely cannot stand to see you keep giving yourself false hope like this. It makes me fucking sick to my stomach.”
I just stared at him, tears still pouring down my face, sobs catching in my chest.
Sometimes I couldn’t tell anymore whether we stayed together because we loved each other or because neither of us could endure losing one more person.
“Please, just stop,” he repeated, his voice lower now.
I could see all the pain in his brown eyes, see all the ways I was hurting him by doing this. Every time I dragged Mason out to that tree, forcing him to mourn all over again because I’d been wrong for the hundredth time.
Mason had loved Micah long before I’d ever known he existed. Long before I existed myself.
I’d only lost months with him. Mason had lost a lifetime.
There were entire versions of Micah I’d never get to know, and Mason carried every single one of them. I was being unfair by asking him to do this for me over and over.
I just couldn’t stop. I’d become selfish in my grief. I kept telling myself I was doing it for Micah, but maybe I was only doing it because I couldn’t survive finally letting go.
“Can we please just try for one more day?” I asked, my voice barely audible in the silent room.
“Okay. Today is the last time. And you were the most important thing in the world to him. Not any of this,” Mason said, gesturing to the mess I’d made of Micah’s home office.
“Get the shark teeth he found for you. They’re still in his nightstand drawer.
If that doesn’t work, nothing will. He loved you more than anything else. ”
His voice was exhausted. He was giving in to me. He didn’t believe this would work.
But I had to believe it.
I simply couldn’t accept the fact that Micah wasn’t coming back. The angel at the Syndesmos was wrong. If I found something important enough to him, I could bring him back from wherever he was. If I wanted it bad enough, focused hard enough, grounded my mind. It had to be possible.
I stood up, leaving the messy office behind as I went to Micah’s bedroom, my feet pounding up the stairs, my hair a tangled mess hanging down to my hips.
I rummaged through his nightstand drawer with trembling hands, messing up all the neatness and order he’d left there, grabbing the shark teeth and holding them tight in my palm until the sharp tips cut into my skin. Mason was standing in the doorway when I turned around, my eyes wide.
I remained afraid that this wouldn’t work, and I would have to give up.
But it would work.
It had to work.
“Will you come with me?” I asked.
Mason nodded.
He drove me to the forest in his 4Runner, and I tried to ignore how there was only one car in Micah’s garage. Mason had totaled his Audi, so only the truck was left. I assumed it was on purpose, because he’d crashed into a tree at almost two hundred miles per hour. We never really spoke about it.
Once he’d parked, Mason and I climbed out and headed into the trees. He followed me as I wove through shadows and branches, stepping around ferns and fallen logs until I reached the one tree which glowed faintly. Mason recognized the tree by this point, even without the ultraneon.
The shark teeth were still tucked in my fist, and I carefully laid them at the base of the tree in the area I’d cleared from needles and pine cones.
Mason sat on the ground a few yards away, his forearms propped on his knees, his eyes tired.
We’d always been twisted, broken mirrors of each other. Now, the only thing we were capable of reflecting was our shared grief, distorted into something ugly and mean.
My eyes slid shut and I laid flat on my back, focusing on the feel of the Earth below me, my fingers sinking into the moss, my shoulder pressed to the base of the tree.
I breathed as deep as I could, allowing my consciousness to expand, searching through the endless complexity of the forest I laid within.
Where are you?
Are you here at all?
He had to be.
Quiet tears slipped down the sides of my face, my strength already waning. I couldn’t do this for very long. My mind was tearing apart at the seams. Keeping Mason alive was difficult enough; I didn’t have the strength to spare for something that would never work. But I couldn’t give up. Not yet.
This would be it.
If I was patient, if I focused, Micah would come back into reach. I would pull him out of whatever dark place he’d been locked inside of, bring him back to me.
I laid there until the sun began to set and the air got colder. My fingers had gone numb against the damp moss, coldness sinking into my bones.
The forest changed gradually around me. The greens dulled first, surrendering to deeper shades as the sun slipped beyond the cliffs. Shadows pooled beneath the ferns, then climbed slowly up the trunks of the trees until the entire forest was wrapped in twilight, save for the glow of Micah’s tree.
The bark dug into my shoulder every time I shifted, rough enough to scrape my skin but familiar now after so many hours. I traced one deep groove with my thumb without thinking, memorizing another piece of his tree.
But the tree hadn’t ever cared.
It hadn’t changed.
It had watched me hope for so many months without answering.
It watched me now, laying here, my last futile attempt nestled at its base, my bared soul pleading with the universe to listen to me. For once, please let something good happen to me.
My heart sank further with each passing minute, each crawling hour.
So much time had poured over the forest, over me, and yet, none of it would bring him back to the place where he’d fallen.
My tears had run dry and my chest was empty, my heart carved clean right out, laid on the moss in the form of shark teeth, begging.
This will be the thing to finally kill me.
I have already surrendered.
And then, the exact thing I’d been dreading happened.
Mason laid his hand on my shoulder.
He did it gently, the warmth of his palm seeping through my sweater, but that was enough to break the spell of fragile peace I’d so painstakingly constructed around my mind for the past few hours.
Months of misguided hope collapsed into the weight of a single hand on my shoulder.
That was it.
There wasn’t another theory waiting for me when I got home.
I’d run out of things to believe.
“Mason,” I choked out, closing my eyes tight.
“Baby,” he murmured, his voice thick.
I wanted him to tell me to try again, that it was okay, that there had to be another way. But he wasn’t going to do that. It was over. He wasn’t asking me to leave, to go home, to go sleep this off. He was asking me to let go.
There wasn’t another answer hidden beneath this one.
There was only silence.
“Mason,” I cried, my tears coming back with a vengeance now. I opened my eyes to see him kneeling beside me, his eyebrows pulled together and his jaw tense. I couldn’t leave.
No.
No!
Please!
I’m not ready.
I will never be ready.
Give me another day.
Another hour.
Another reason to try this again.
Mason didn’t say anything else, but he didn’t need to. He’d promised me one more day, one more try. And I’d used it. It was all over now.
The tree looked exactly the same.
Completely indifferent.
Something inside of me broke.
Every bit of hope I’d somehow been clinging to without really knowing was gone now.
I slammed the sides of my fists into the ground and screamed as loud as I could.
No.
It was supposed to work.
I wrapped my arms around the tree and pressed the side of my face against the bark, my teeth clenched, my eyes squeezed shut, tears pouring down my face. My chest was so tight I could hardly get a single breath in. It felt like my heart was going to break through my ribs.
I can’t do this.
I can’t breathe.
I just need it to stop hurting.
I squeezed the trunk harder, shoved my face against the rough bark, my tears staining the wood.
I just kept pushing harder and harder, needing the pain, until a sharp piece of the bark finally cut through my skin, stinging my cheek.
That tiny sting reached right into the very heart of me, spearing deep into my soul, ripping me to shreds.
No longer did I get bruises on the backs of my thighs, leather kisses, cruel hands that knew how to take care of me better than anyone else. I only got this. Wood pricking my tear-slick cheek.
It was so fucking unfair.
Before I could make sense of what was happening, something hot and bright appeared to the side of me, taking my breath—a crimson flame, building up taller and taller and—