Chapter 71
CHAPTER SEVENTY-ONE
MASON
“This place is a disaster,” Micah commented as he walked into my apartment.
The last time he’d been here was when he cucked me in my own bed—almost a year ago.
He’d actually texted me saying he was coming over and was undeterred by my lack of reply.
I just didn’t know what to say to him. There weren’t adequate words for anything I felt towards Micah.
“You died,” I said, my tone completely flat.
He continued walking into my kitchen, surveying the state of it.
I’d at least taken out the larger broken pieces like my fridge door and the marble half slab I’d snapped off the counter, putting them in a dumpster out back.
But no sweeping had occurred. I hadn’t cared about it until now that Micah was witnessing this physical evidence of my grief.
It was almost pathetic, how incapable I’d become of doing anything after losing him for the second time.
He turned, letting out a long exhale through his nose, his lips pressed flat. He didn’t comment on the mess again, though.
“I have something to tell you,” he started.
I leaned my shoulder against the doorframe, crossing my arms, focusing on keeping my breathing steady, my thoughts surface-level. “Okay. Go ahead.”
“I’m the angel who marked Dakota as an infant. The angel to make her one of the Angelakia.”
“What?” I coughed, pushing off the wall to stand straight, my eyes wide, all attempts at stability disappearing in the space of an exhale.
“Yes,” Micah confirmed, making my head spin. “Obviously it was pretty soon after we broke up.”
“How do you know? Are you serious?”
Micah opened his mouth to answer me, but my brain caught up before he got a chance to speak again. Of course. This was how Dakota brought him back to life.
“The tree,” I said.
Micah nodded. “Yes. I should’ve figured that out sooner. I’ve been distracted. It took me seeing a picture of her mother holding Dakota as a baby on Facebook to jog my memory and force the pieces together inside my brain. It makes sense.”
“So, you held her? When?”
“For a few minutes at the post office,” he answered, glancing down briefly at his hands, then back up at me. My chest tightened.
“You snatch babies at the post office?”
“Her mom was overwhelmed and everyone was just staring at her. I offered to help. Dakota was screaming—like, screaming her head off.”
“And you helped her mom by holding her,” I surmised.
“Correct. And used my aspect a little bit.”
“Probably shouldn’t have done that.” I pressed my tongue to the roof of my mouth, glancing away.
Sometimes I thought about the very first time Micah used his aspect on me in Heaven, the way his ultraneon dimmed and my panic spiked.
But I’d gotten used to that feeling pretty fucking quick. I craved it.
“Probably not,” Micah agreed. He dragged the tip of his pointer finger along the countertop, skimming the edge of it.
“I kinda wish I was there. It sounds cute. Dakota screaming her head off as a tiny baby.”
“There are pictures of her as a baby on her mom’s Facebook.”
“Oh, I know. From when I scrolled through to figure out the birthday cake idea.”
“Anyway, that’s when it happened.”
“And with her ichor, she could bring you back to the place you fell. Even back to Heaven if she wanted to.” I rubbed my forehead.
“Yeah.”
I’d known she had ultraneon from the tree, but it genuinely didn’t cross my mind that it might’ve been because Micah had marked her.
Even though the angel at the Syndesmos probably said those exact words, I’d been too caught up in my grief to fully understand.
The only thing I could focus on was the fact that she could not bring back the angel who sacrificed his life for her.
And that was all I thought Micah was to Dakota: the sacrifice that transformed her.
A lump formed in my throat quicker than I could make sense of why. But the more I thought about it, the clearer this emotion became.
Micah saved my life through Dakota.
Neither of us knew it, neither of us planned it, but her innocent life was the thing to keep me on Earth as an unstable Thrausian without my anchor. She’d been a vessel for Micah’s care since she was an infant. She’d grown up with his fingerprints on her soul.
His eyes caught on mine for a moment, then fell away. But not so quickly that I couldn’t see the emotion in them.
“I guess that means it was you, who…” I trailed off, my voice hoarse. I cleared my throat.
“Yeah.” He pushed his hair back, running his fingers through the dark blond strands.
I could never lessen anything I felt with Micah. He could see it in my eyes, feel it in my skull. He affected me just as much now as he had back then. More, probably.
I missed him so fucking much I couldn’t breathe.
I missed what we used to be.
I missed being in love with him, fucking him, living with him, sleeping with him every single night.
Showering together, watching random shit on TV, trying to cook things, fighting and making up.
He used to be my entire life, and ever since him, I’d been empty.
The world was so much smaller without Micah in my life.
“I need to ask—”
“Stop,” Micah cut me off, already heading towards the door. My pulse stumbled and sped up. He clearly already knew what was on my mind, what had been on my mind ever since he admitted to me the truth of why he’d left the way he had.
I stepped in front of him, holding his shoulders. The warmth of him seeped through his shirt, burying itself in my palms. He was so solid, so strong. A muscle flinched in his jaw.
“Don’t leave,” I said.
“Don’t ask whatever you’re about to ask.” His eyes locked onto mine. Brown and blue. Steel, cold smoke, washed out with exhaustion; his blue irises always belonged to the sky. And mine had always been trapped on the ground, destined to land here from the start.
“I have to.” I let go of him, but he didn’t move. He was holding perfectly still.
Standing before him like this was like standing before a towering pine, and I was the lightning always searching for somewhere to land. Let me talk to you. Please. I’m fucking dying.
Micah glanced away, his fingers flexing at his sides.
He wasn’t going to give me permission, but he hadn’t tried leaving again.
My mouth was dry when I opened it to speak again. “Did I?” I questioned.
Almost.
Our last night…
There was a pause while he searched my eyes, while he saw just how badly I needed this answer. I needed to know. Even if I didn’t deserve to know.
“No,” Micah answered. A beat of silence. “You almost did.”
Relief didn’t come with his response.
It was stupid to ever believe I could be comforted by this weak truth. Almost was never going to absolve me.
For months, I’d been hoping there was a version of this conversation where he told me no and everything inside my chest settled.
But it didn’t matter if I’d crossed the line or only stood with one foot hanging over it.
He’d still looked at me with fear. He’d still left.
“Why don’t you just blame me?” I asked. I hooked my hands behind my neck, fingers digging into my muscles. “This is my fault. It’ll be easier to accept that. I don’t need your protection.”
“Because that’s not what happened.”
“But almost isn’t any better than—”
“Stop trying to make everything fit in one sentence,” Micah snapped, his voice flat in a way that only meant he was overwhelmed.
“You’re still doing it,” I said, too loud. My chest heaved, my thoughts spinning too fast for me to make much sense of. It was as if he wouldn’t let me hate myself for what I’d done, like he still needed to protect me from something. “Stop fucking doing this shit. It doesn’t make me feel better.”
“Doing what?”
“Making excuses for me!”
“I’m—”
“You are! You won’t blame me for something I clearly fucking did! You’re make excuses for my behavior, and it doesn’t help either one of us.”
“It helps me, Mason.” His eyes were dark, glassy but not enough to become tears.
We were looking at each other like we were trying to survive the same war from opposite sides.
I don’t know what to do.
My throat was tight, my chest bound by anxiety, my hands itching to do something.
Hurt him or myself. Instability claimed my thoughts, cracking through my brain.
Last time, I’d been able to drop it. I backed off.
I let him retreat to the bathroom and slice his wrists open. But I couldn’t do it today.
I deserved the blame, the hatred, the responsibility of almost fucking breaking him.
Watching him carry this on his own shoulders made me irrationally angry.
I didn’t need his protection from this.
“I just don’t know why—”
“Because if I stop making excuses for you, I have to admit it almost happened to me again,” he interrupted me. He blinked slower than usual, as if he was trying to hold himself together.
My stomach twisted in a knot, any sharp response stolen from my tongue.
I stood there in silence, the lump in my throat trying to kill me.
I have to admit it almost happened to me again.
I’d somehow misunderstood this fight.
He wasn’t refusing to blame me because he was still instinctively protecting me.
He was refusing because blaming me meant changing the story he’d been telling himself for two decades. It meant admitting that what had almost happened belonged in the same category as that other terrible wound. The old wound he’d spent a lifetime pretending hadn’t changed him.
“Micah—”
“No. It’s not the same. Understand?” His throat constricted with a rough swallow. “I was raped one time, and it wasn’t by you.”
His response stole every ounce of air from my lungs, ripped out all my internal organs, crushed my heart into something unrecognizable, because in all the time I’d known him, in all those fifty two years we’d been together and in every year since, I’d never once heard him use that word.
I knew it’d happened, knew all the ways it affected him, but to hear him state it so plainly and openly felt for the first time like being flayed alive for more reasons than I could count.
“I’m so fucking sorry.”
“I don’t want you to be,” Micah said, his eyes lingering on some point just over my shoulder, never daring to touch my face again.
“I am. And I don’t want you to carry this by yourself anymore.”
“Mason.” He shook his head, lips in a tight line.
“Kill,” I pleaded, wanting to touch him, but keeping my hands away.
“You’re asking me to become someone I don’t know how to be. Just leave it.”
“Fine,” I relented. Don’t shut me out.
“Dakota will probably want you at my house,” he said, then pushed past me to the door.
“Do you?” I questioned, staring at the back of his head. He stopped walking, his hand frozen on the doorknob.
“Do I what?”
“Do you want me there?”
He was quiet, his face turned just enough that I could see part of his profile. “I want what she wants.”
Then he left.