Page 206 of Breathe Like Hell

I’d tried, really fucking tried, to make it work.

But it didn’t. It wouldn’t. Not forever.

Forever is a really long fucking time.

A long time with him.

An even longer time without him.

Immortality was a goddamn curse I couldn’t withstand the weight of like this.

Just like his rain-slick hand slipping from mine when we fell, I lost him. But I no longer had the strength to find him in the aftermath, to try and build back what we’d broken. I was weak and scared and running, praying he wouldn’t come after me.

Dakota was my new purpose.

My new reason for living.

The ultimate meaning of my too-long life.

“I don’t want to hurt you,” I finally responded. “Not the way I know I am now.”

But do I know how to stop?

CHAPTER FORTY-NINE

DAKOTA

Micah’s words hung between us like suspended frost, a sharpness in the air. He didn’t want to hurt me in this way, but he was, and neither of us were certain he’d ever be able to stop. I wanted to fucking fight him because of it. Scream at him. Hit him.

It was so much simpler for me to accept my death at Mason’s hands than my death at Micah’s.

But I didn’t shout or hit.

I just cried harder.

I thought about the emptiness of my womb, and how the possibility of my baby had disappeared almost as quickly as it’d arrived. Maybe that was a kindness. I’d never had enough time to build a future around it, never had enough time to imagine Micah as a father—but I was imagining it now, so it hardly mattered how short-lived the knowledge of my pregnancy had been.

I imagined his blue eyes and his strong hands and his soothing voice.

A tiny baby sleeping on his chest.

A peace on his face I so rarely saw now.

My eyes squeezed shut, a sob lodging in my throat, more tears streaming warm down my temples to bury themselves in my hair. Micah held the side of my face and leaned down, pressing his lips to my hairline.

“I love you,” he whispered. “I’m so sorry.”

I’d known in my heart that I didn’t really want a child. Probably. Maybe.

But I’d realized now that believing I didn’t want one wasn’t the same as wanting to lose one. Maybe that was why it hurt so strangely. I’d felt so uncertain and scared for those few days, unsure of what to choose. And then the universe chose for me.

It had been such a brief, strange, fragile thing.

Endless tears leaked out of the corners of my eyes, my voice tight when I spoke. “I wish I could’ve given you a baby. You know, if⁠—”

“Dakota,” Micah said, framing my face with both hands, shaking his head. “Baby girl. You never fucking apologize to me for that. Never.”

“But I feel like you wanted it,” I cried.