Page 129 of Breathe Like Hell

But I knew I wouldn’t fall.

Not with Micah here.

He was so insanely beautiful I could hardly describe it. Especially like this.

Surrounded by sky and forest and full of power. Kneeling over me, holding me, controlling whether I lived or died, keeping me safe while pinning me to the edge of my life. It was different with him than with Mason.

Mason forced me to that edge.

Micah stopped me from going all the way when I ran there myself.

If Mason liked to put my body in danger, Micah liked to put my mind in danger.

The words were right there, on the tip of my tongue, but I bit down hard to keep them inside.

I love you.

Was it so wrong for me to love more than one person? My heart was too big for my body, too big for one person to hold all of. I loved them both. I needed them both.

And I had no idea how I could ever choose, how I could ever go without one half of my whole soul. If that made me a terrible person, then I was a terrible person. I knew that.

For now, all I could do was secretly pray that they would stop hating each other one day. That they’d care about my happiness more than their own hatred. It was a selfish, stupid prayer. Unrealistic. Something I never should’ve expected from two other people, so I never spoke it aloud. I kept it locked up tight in my brain.

But I’d missed Micah so much and he felt so good and he was above me looking like a god and I could barely keep my lips shut. The eye contact was killing me. Slaughtering me. Massacring me. Annihilating every piece of me he owned.

I loved him, and I wanted to tell him that.

Still, there was something in the back of my head convincing me not to say it.

It was the part of me that remembered how he reacted when I showed my interest in him. When I told him I wanted to know him, or that I was as obsessed with him as he was with me, he didn’t like it. He put his walls up, even taller than before. He pushed me all the way back out to arm’s length.

If he needed more time, I could handle that.

He’d given me enough today.

He was groaning viciously against my mouth, thrusting inexorably into me, his whole body one continuous working line of muscle above mine. I raked my fingers through his hair, crossing my ankles behind his back, trying to get him as deep as possible. Deep enough that he was fucking my soul rather than just my body, deep enough to touch my oldest wounds.

Mason understood me in one way. He understood the way my brain was wired; he felt it in himself, too. We were twisted reflections of each other. An inevitable collision.

But Micah understood me differently. He saw the quieter parts of me. The weaker parts that’d never learned how to fight, the soft parts that’d been with me my entire life. My fragile heart and my longing for someone to tuck me into bed. My deepest insecurities and my desire to be truly cared for.

I hoped he knew how much he’d changed me in the months since I’d met him. His persistence, his constant reassurance in the lab, his constant faith in my abilities. It wasn’t the shallow type of reassurance, either. It wasn’t pretty words and compliments. It was deeper than that. Statements aimed at the parts of my brain that’d been built wrong, the parts that attacked me endlessly.

You are worth spending time on.

Micah tightened his grip on my throat, pushing my head further over the edge, restricting the blood flow to my brain just enough to make my thoughts swim and my eyes roll back. I could feel the fragility of my life much more like this. My limbs were shaking, the air around me suddenly infinite and irrefutably lethal.

Violent wind tangled deep in my lungs, spiraling around me and Micah, ruffling our clothes and hair, whispering its secret promises into my willing ears.

If he lets go, you will fall.

I believed that promise with every drop of blood in my body, believed those ropes of air wrapping around my neck like an invisible noose.

My balance had tipped just enough that I couldn’t save myself. I would plummet right over the edge, hurtling towards the rocks and the saltwater rushing over them, streaming down their ridges in rivulets of white foam. And if Micah didn’t catch me, the drop would kill me.

Dead on the rocks, blood washing away with the water, my body limp and cold and claimed by nature.

There was no way to fake the sort of fear those thoughts dripped into my veins.