Page 189 of Breathe Like Hell

The garage door opened, Micah and I both turning our heads to watch Mason entering the house.

“No,” I said, my gaze pulling back towards Micah as I sought his reassurance. “I don’t want to do it.”

“Please?” His eyebrows pulled together.

“Micah, I don’t want to,” I begged.

“I’m sure everything will be fine. It’ll be quick.”

Everything will be fine.

“Okay,” I whispered numbly.

I stood up, shuffling over towards Mason in my socks.

He was confused and agitated, holding a plastic bag in his fist. He angrily thrust it in my direction as he kicked his shoes off, causing irritation to bristle through me. As if this situation was my fucking fault, when he knew it wasn’t. The only people I was currently having sex with were in this room.

And they’d also apparently been fucking each other.

“Do you want me to go with you?” Micah questioned from behind me.

I snatched the bag from Mason’s hand, ignoring Micah, then went upstairs to Micah’s bathroom and slammed the door.

Once I was alone, I noticed how badly my hands were shaking.

I really didn’t want to do this. They hadn’t given me much warning, or time to prepare.

I could not have a baby.

I wouldn’t. No matter what.

This wasn’t possible, and still, my brain had convinced every inch of my subconscious that it’d already happened.

I just had to try and remember what both Mason and Micah told me. There needed to be a supernatural element in both parents, and there was no supernatural element in me. I would’ve known. I didn’t have any scars on my back, hadn’t been born in Heaven, didn’t have an angelic aspect or any powers.

There were two digital pregnancy tests in the bag, and I took them both out, then set them on the counter, sucking in big gulps of air in an attempt to calm myself down. Maybe I should’ve let Micah be here with me.

Stupid.

But this wasn’t possible, so it didn’t even fucking matter. I was being dramatic.

I slid my finger under the flap on the first box to open it, then took out the test and tore open the plastic with trembling fingers. Repeating the process with the second one, I grasped both of them in my hand as I sat on the toilet, a pit in my stomach and a buzzing in my thoughts.

I was alone in the bathroom, but I felt watched, felt some sort of presence in the back of my mind. There was something terrifyingly holy about the way the light fell on my bare thighs, like four archangels were watching from Heaven.

I hated it.

I wanted to disappear, to hide, to sink into the ground.

Whatever was happening to me was not something I wanted. I wished for Mary, not Michael and Gabriel and Raphael and Uriel. Since I’d never been particularly religious, I’d never put too much thought into what I’d learned about the real version of Heaven, but in this moment, I wished for the comfort of the virgin Mary. Of Jesus Christ. Something familiar to me.

Everything about Mason and Micah was foreign, went against everything I’d learned in all the years prior to meeting them. And for whatever reason, I was overwhelmed by it all now.

Tears slid silently down my cheeks in endless twin streams. I wished I could have a break from all of this, just for a little while. I’d been running for so fucking long, treading water while my mind deteriorated and my body weakened, always in over my head.

Running, hiding, fighting, trying to breathe, trying to keep myself from shattering in a way that couldn’t be fixed. But everything was always chasing me, always getting closer to finally catching me.

Because she’s prey, and so am I.