Chapter 68
CHAPTER SIXTY-EIGHT
MASON
It was exactly what I’d expected.
Micah was back, and Dakota would choose him. I’d served my purpose.
The miracle was over, and now she could have the man she actually wanted.
So many times, I’d envisioned our end, my knuckles white as I attempted to cling to some version of the future in which we ended up together, but my brain always reminded me of the truth. We were unsustainable. Especially now.
I didn’t fit in this new world, and it was time I stopped forcing it. Micah deserved for me to fucking back off, once and for all.
So no, Dakota and I weren’t ending with a giant argument or with me killing her or killing myself or anything violent.
It was a quiet ending.
She loved me, and I loved her, but I wasn’t blind.
Micah did not and never would want me in his life again, and I owed him my absence.
Dakota would be accepting of that, because she needed him more.
I laid flat on my back on my bed, staring at the ceiling.
I’d never found the motivation to clean my apartment, so it still sat in disarray around me.
Splintered wood, shattered glass, jagged lines of onyx striking across the floor and walls and ceiling.
If I could step into my old self, I knew I would go fight for her again, say fuck it to every horrible thing I’d done to Micah and not give up on getting Dakota back.
Things were always fixable. But I could not be that person anymore.
I was a new person. A person who had watched both loves of his life die within seconds of each other. A person who knew what he was truly capable of.
The sound of my front door opening made me jump out of bed, and I silently prowled down the hall to see who was here.
I stopped dead in my tracks when my eyes connected with Dakota’s.
I looked past her, trying to see if she’d brought Micah, but she was alone.
It was the first time this week she’d left his side.
“Dakota,” I said, keeping my voice flat to conceal my racing thoughts. She could sense them if she wanted, though. “Why are you here?”
“Because you should come back. I don’t like when you’re here.” She gestured to the disaster of my apartment. “I came to get you myself.”
“I don’t think that’s a good idea, baby.” I approached her, a lump in my throat and a burning in my eyes. I held her face. “I think we’ve run our course. You have Micah back now. You don’t need me to come over there anymore.”
She grabbed my wrists and pried my hands off her face, stepping even closer to me, the same defiant look in her eye I used to hate.
“No. I can’t leave you. I’ll never want to. And you can’t leave me, either. You promised me. We are toxic and messy and fucked up, but I am nothing without it. I would never choose him without choosing you. You know that.”
“I’m not sure about that anymore.”
“Mason, what the fuck? You used to hold me against my will, and now you’re trying to force me out?”
“Maybe I don’t want to be that type of person anymore.”
“But I love that type of person. I love you. We will get through this.”
I didn’t believe her. Not really. I didn’t understand how it was possible for her to choose me in any capacity. She took a few steps forward, gently pushing me farther into the apartment.
“We’re broken together.” She leaned up and pressed her lips to mine, softly at first, until her hunger leaked into the kiss. Her lips parted and my lips parted and her tongue swept along mine as she wrapped her arms around my neck.
“You’re not broken in the same way I’m broken. You’re good,” I mumbled.
“I love you,” she whimpered, ignoring my words, moving to kiss my throat. “I love you. I love you. I will never leave you, Mason.”
Micah promised that, too.
I swallowed against the knot in my throat.
“I’m never going to be the person you need.”
“Neither is he,” she whispered, standing flat on her feet.
“Not without you. He’ll freeze me out. You’ll drown me.
But you live inside of him, and he lives inside of you.
You can hold him in a way I can’t. And he can hold you in a way I can’t.
You know him in a way I never will. Okay?
This doesn’t work with only two of us. You know that. ”
I wanted to scream at her.
No, I don’t know that.
He will never want anything to do with me ever again.
I have been a stain on his life. I’m the worst thing that’s ever happened to him.
“I love you, and I love him.” She wrapped her arms around my neck. “You love him, too.”
“I don’t fucking love him, Dakota.” My pulse was too violent, my throat too tight.
“This isn’t you, Mason,” she whispered.
Yeah, I know it’s not me. But it’s kinda hard to keep being myself after learning what I’d tried to do to Micah at the end, after watching him fucking die, after going nine months without ever being able to apologize to him.
Even with him back I still couldn’t find the words.
It made me feel sick to think about. Really sick.
I kept thinking about how he must’ve felt in that moment, with me trying to force myself on him, trying to invade his body in the same way he’d been traumatized. I’d done plenty of terrible, unforgivable things in my life, but this was sticking with me.
That was probably the worst thing I could’ve ever done to him.
I was the only person Micah ever felt comfortable enough with to tell me what happened to him. The only other man he ever let top him. The only person he’d ever shown any amount of vulnerability to.
And I knew that he was telling the truth because I’d probably done the same thing to Dakota.
“You need to talk to him,” Dakota said quietly. “You know he doesn’t blame you for anything.”
“It’s fucking paralyzing me, Dakota,” I choked out. “I don’t even know—”
“He’s okay. He’s strong. Okay? You didn’t re-traumatize him. You brought up an old wound he didn’t know how to deal with.”
I pressed my lips together, looking away from her. “Why are you fighting for this?”
“Because I cannot live in a world without you.” She shook her head, her eyes getting glassy.
“We crave the seconds before our death in a way other people don’t understand.
You know the taste of my fear better than anyone else.
I don’t want to be without that, so I’m going to fight you on this.
And I’m immortal now, so prepare for real never-ending stubbornness. ”
Dakota took my hand and pulled me with her down the wrecked hallway to my bedroom, then crawled onto the bed. I joined her.
“We can survive this,” she said. “We will fix it.”
“We almost broke apart entirely,” I reasoned, anger slipping into my tone.
“No.” She shook her head. “We almost collapsed into each other. Like dying stars turning into black holes, colliding because our gravity is so strong that we’ll always be pulled together. Not apart. Never apart. Gravity doesn’t work like that.”
I wanted to believe her, but it was difficult.
Then again, everything had always been difficult for us.
She reached over and clicked off the lamp on my nightstand.
It’ll be easier in the dark.
Her lips found mine, soft as flower petals, her pulse fluttering at the base of her throat. Butterfly wings.
I kissed her harder.
It wasn’t long before our clothes were off and I was inside her and it felt different than it had it months.
It felt almost the way it used to. Inevitable and intoxicating and like I’d found someone who didn’t flinch at the worst parts of me.
Like him. The universe had given me two people like that.
Dakota held my wrist and laid my palm over her face, covering her mouth and nose so she couldn’t take in any air. Her expressive eyes flicked back and forth between mine, her ribs frozen beneath me.
The only way an angel can die is by asphyxiation.
Even now, as an unbreakable creature, she still wanted me to push her to the edge of her life. Things had changed, we had changed, but our cores remained the same.
I thought of my hand over her mouth in the back seat of my car. Her terrified eyes. The way her pussy clenched around my fingers as her consciousness faded. Her blade against my neck.
Her hand extending through dark waters, reaching for me, a stranger. Blue lips coming out of the ocean. Shivering.
Again, her hand extending through dark waters, reaching for me, no longer a stranger. Glowing skin coming out of the ocean. Swimming.
I fucked her until she came, then I came, and it was the first time in so many months where I felt any amount of normalcy between us. Where I could ever even consider imagining a future that involved both of us together. I laid down on top of her warm body, breathing hard, clinging to her.
“I love you,” I panted. “I don’t know what to do.”
“Go talk to him.”
I stiffened, my eyes slamming shut tight. “No, baby. He doesn’t want that.”
“The Mason I love would never willingly let someone slip away from him again. Don’t let Micah slip away from you. Please.”
“He was never mine to begin with. He’s not slipping away.”
“Don’t lie to me,” Dakota said, her lips brushing my temple. “Not right now. Please.”
I lifted my head up to look her in the eye but didn’t respond.
“We were given a second chance, Mason. And I’m not going to let you fuck it up.”