Chapter 69 #2
“Hey. Okay. We’re done,” Mason said without argument, still holding my eye.
I froze, my mouth slightly open.
Then I snapped my jaw shut and left the kitchen, heading straight towards the stairs.
I went into my bedroom, straight through to the bathroom, but I didn’t shut either door.
Doors wouldn’t keep Mason out if he wanted in.
I steadied my hands enough to grab the box of razors from the drawer, then sat on the tile and carefully slid the blade along the length of my wrist. The pain was sharp and familiar and simple. Enough to bring back some of my focus.
I repeated the process on my other arm, then set the blade on the floor and waited for the wounds to heal. It used to be so fast in Heaven. Since my resurrection, my healing seemed slower than ever.
It’s fine.
What almost happened with Mason is in no way similar to what happened with him.
My eyes slid shut, my head tipping back to rest on the wall.
I sat like that for probably an hour, allowing my heart rate to come back to normal, then I reopened my eyes and traced my fingertips over my skin. Not fully healed, but close.
Footsteps in my bedroom had me turning my head to see Mason enter the bathroom. I was so weak I almost wanted to reach for him. Pretending not to miss his familiarity might be the thing to kill me, long before my lies or my wounds. But I kept my mouth shut, and my hands to myself.
He sat down across from me without a word, then motioned for me to give him the razor blade. I did, then watched him slice identical lines into his forearms.
“I did this after you died,” he commented, wincing slightly. “So I could feel closer to you.”
“You also crashed my Audi.”
“I’ll get you a new one.”
“I’ll get one myself.” If the university gives me my job back.
I’d made no effort to contact anyone at Blackpine yet.
I would. Just not now. I took the blade back from Mason and recreated my wounds.
Blood and ichor were dripping all over the tile from both of us.
Nothing black stained my blood, so I had to assume only the outside of my veins had been darkened in the burn.
The scene we made now was too similar to the past. The lick of a blade over clean skin, blood-soaked love imprinted by a fist, his mouth just below my ear whispering promises that made life worth living.
I wasn’t sure if my death had made me more sentimental, or simply worse at pushing these thoughts out of my brain.
All I knew was it’d become really fucking difficult to keep hating him. It was hard to pretend that I wasn’t affected by our proximity.
“You’re the first person who ever intrinsically understood I wasn’t born craving pain,” Mason said, drawing me from my thoughts.
I looked at him, darkness blanketing the space around us.
He continued. “You’re the first person who actually cared to understand anything about being Thrausian. The first one to not despise me for it.”
“I know,” I said quietly.
“I’m just reminding you. And maybe this isn’t as poetic or nice to say but you’re also the first angel I saw have a dark complexity in their brain—one unrelated to being Thrausian.
I don’t want you to think I fell in love with you because I watched you slice your thigh open with a knife, but I want you to know it’s part of it. ”
The edges of my mouth twitched towards a frown, so I stared at my forearms.
“I don’t think I’d mind if that was the reason,” I managed to whisper. It was a dangerous, stupid thing to say. Why are we doing this? What’s really going to happen?
“And I don’t think I’d mind if you mostly liked me for being broken,” he breathed.
I didn’t look at him. I wasn’t sure if he was looking at me.
“We were so young,” I said. It was true. Mason was twenty one when I met him. Same as Dakota. The only difference being that I was twenty three at that time. We’d been living in Heaven, learning each other under the arc of the deep red sky.
“Too young to escape unscathed, probably.”
“Probably,” I agreed. I imagined it would be difficult to leave a relationship spanning half a century regardless, but it was certainly made harder by being with him during every year I spent learning who I was.
I’d never really learned how to live without Mason.
Thus, my need for immediate intellectual distraction in a world without him.
“Would you be happy if I gave up Dakota?” he asked. It was clear he’d tried to disguise the pain in his voice, but it bled through all the same.
I didn’t need time to think on my answer, but I waited a minute.
Maybe to delay this.
Maybe because it was too honest.
Maybe because at some point in my life, I had become a maze. I hid truths behind walls, smothered vulnerabilities in dark corners, concealed myself between routes to the center. And I wasn’t really learning how to stop doing that now, but perhaps there did exist a future in which I might.
Still the odds were slim. I wouldn’t ignore that.
“No,” I finally answered. “Because I don’t think that would make her happy. And her happiness matters more than however I feel about you.”
I wasn’t sure how to feel about him, though.
There were no simple words to describe any of this.
I didn’t know if there was a future between us, but my mind’s considerations didn’t say much about my heart. Maybe I was hoping for it, against the odds.
Maybe I was praying for it, terrified as I felt. Praying that I wouldn’t lose him again.
“Yeah.”
The room was quiet for a few minutes.
Then, “Do you care if I shower?”
“I’d prefer if you went to the guest bathroom.”
“Alright.”
Mason didn’t get up, despite what he’d asked. It made me slightly uneasy. I didn’t want him to try anything. A conversation, sex, something else.
“Dakota will be here in a little bit,” Mason said. “I’ll leave you alone tonight.”
“You’re not picking her up? I could get her.”
“She’s probably going to fly,” he reminded me.
Oh, fuck. Somehow, I’d forgotten she was an angel now. I knew it, but it wasn’t always my first thought. I’d still never seen her wings.
“Right.”
Mason stood up and left the bathroom.