Page 199 of Breathe Like Hell

I almost wished she wouldn’t wake up, that she’d keep sleeping for a while longer, keep her peace. I wasn’t ready to watch her realize what’d happened.

“Where’s Micah?” she asked in her sleepy, sad voice.

“He’s coming back,” I lied. I had no idea how long Micah would be gone.

Dakota winced, a little sob crawling up her throat as she pressed a palm flat to her lower abdomen, eyes squeezing shut tight again. She probably knew what was happening. I kept holding her hand as I lightly stroked her upper arm with my fingers.

In some terrible way, I wondered if her body had already known what was coming before her brain realized it. If she somehow knew she’d need us both in the morning, and that was why she’d asked us both to sleep in his bed.

“I think something’s wrong,” she whimpered, a few tears slipping out from under her dark lashes, rolling down her cheeks.

I cupped her face, swiping my thumb over her tear stained cheek, then leaned down to kiss her forehead. She grabbed my forearms and started crying harder, her body trembling.

“I’m going to help you, baby,” I murmured.

“No.” Dakota shook her head. “I’m okay,” she tried to say, the end of her response getting cut off by a gasp of pain. She hadn’t moved, hadn’t looked at the stain, and I felt it was on purpose. “Mason.”

“Baby,” I whispered.

“What happened?” She sucked in a harsh breath, shaking worse now, still refusing to turn her head.

“I don’t know for sure.”

Dakota slowly twisted her body, staring down at her bloody shorts and the stain below her on the bed. A sob punched out of her chest as she rolled back to hide her face in Micah’s pillow.

“I don’t want to do this,” she cried, muffled. “I can’t do this. Go get Micah.”

“You can do this. And Micah isn’t here. He’s not in the house at all. I’m going to help you.”

“Well, I want him to come back.” Her hands clenched into fists as she pressed her face against the pillow, body straining through another deep cramp. “You said he was coming back.”

“He left you,” I gritted out, chest aching. “He already knows what happened.”

The second I said it, I regretted it. Because that didn’t convey what he’d actually done.

Dakota turned her head, peering up at me with one glassy eye. “I hate you. All you ever do is try to make me sad,” she said, injecting as much anger into her voice as she could. “And you didn’t want this baby in the first place, so I don’t know why you’re even here. Go away.” Her voice wobbled and broke on the last word. “I want to be alone.”

Rage I wished I could control was trickling through my blood.

“I’m not leaving you right now.”

“Get out!” she screamed, scrambling to push me off of her as she tumbled out of bed towards Micah’s bathroom. She grabbed her phone off the nightstand and crawled into the bathroom, dialing Micah.

We both heard his phone buzzing from where it sat on the dresser.

Dakota stared up at me, tears pouring down her cheeks, an angry expression on her face. She swiped away the tears.

“So what happened?” she demanded. “Did I lose the baby? Is that what this means?” Her breathing got heavier, her voice breaking. “I’m not—I don’t fucking know anything about being pregnant. I’ve never⁠—”

Micah would’ve been the one able to confirm it, because he could feel the presence of live Sigeians, not dead ones. But he’d already confirmed that with me.

“Dakota—”

“What am I supposed to do?” Her chin wobbled. “Is it going to come out of me? Do we go to the hospital?”

“We can’t go to the hospital. You can sit on the toilet and wait for some of the…some blood to come out.” I swallowed, my own eyes stinging. I felt vastly unprepared for this and pissed at Micah for leaving her. At first, I’d understood the pain in his eyes, the devastating loss he had to run from, but seeing her like this made me understand nothing.

Dakota kicked her bloody shorts off and sat on the toilet. I took the shorts away, quickly putting them in the wash, then went into the bathroom and sat on the floor near her.