Page 217 of Breathe Like Hell

His eyes stayed fixed on the road, one hand resting loosely on the steering wheel, the other unmoving in his lap. Not touching me.

I stole glances at him every few minutes, waiting for some sign that he would eventually look back. He never did. I kept wondering if I’d done something wrong, mentally retracing our last interaction for some invisible mistake I’d missed. With Micah, there always seemed to be one.

But how could that be possible now?

He’d been the one to fuck up. Not me.

I forgave him. I went looking for him. I told him I loved him.

Was he so terrified of honesty that he was back to being incapable of accepting my love? I wasn’t forcing anything on him, would still obey anything he told me to do, was still willing to try. But he clearly wasn’t.

“Please pick up Mason, too,” I reminded him.

His grip tightened on the steering wheel until his knuckles were white, a muscle in his jaw twitching. “No,” he said.

“Yes.”

“No, Dakota. I’m not picking him up.”

“Then tell me why,” I demanded.

He glared at me. “Are we really going to do this shit right now? You’re going to start demanding explanations from me again? Have you considered I don’t want to give them to you?”

“Have I considered it?” I stared at him in disbelief. With him, my ribs were always pried wide open, my heart completely available for him to slice and stab and cut, to do whatever he wanted to. And while I’d been content to bleed out on his desk with his belt hitting my thighs, I wasn’t content to do it now with him sitting so far from me. “I don’t need to consider it, Micah. I already know you don’t want to tell me anything. Unfortunately for you, that’s not going to stop me from asking right now.”

“You don’t trust me.”

“Of course I fucking trust you.”

“Then what is this? Why are you pushing?”

I crossed my arms, turning away from him. I didn’t have any pretty words to say about that other than his silence was slowly killing me, like the air in the truck had been stripped of oxygen.

“Pick up Mason,” I said angrily.

“I’m not doing that.”

“Yes you are!” I screamed, head whipping around, stomach turning with my anger. “Yes you are! Or drop me off at his apartment, then! I don’t want to be with you alone right now!”

“Am I not enough for you?”

“When did I fucking say that?”

Micah didn’t respond, and every passing second stretched the distance between us a little farther. I would’ve rather heard something cruel than nothing at all. Cruelty could be argued with. Silence only left room for abandonment.

“I can’t fucking do this.” I said finally, shaking my head, tears welling in my eyes faster than I could blink them away. “I can’t keep making myself smaller and smaller and smaller, terrified that you’re going to shut me out if I say the wrong thing. Do you know how that feels to me?”

It feels like Anthony.

It feels like I have to be perfect or else I’ll lose you.

That realization slammed into my gut like a fist. I hated him. Hated every lie he’d ever told me. Hated how easily he disappeared behind another wall whenever I reached for something real. Why should I keep believing someone who admitted he was lying to me? Why should I trust a man who treated the truth like a weapon I was trying to use against him?

And I already knew my screaming now wouldn’t fix anything. It never did. He would only retreat farther into himself, locking every door I’d almost managed to pry open. He could build walls around me so high that nothing in the world could reach me, could protect me.

But I should’ve realized sooner he was even better at building those walls around himself.

He knew how to make me feel safe from everything except him. Every time I reached for the parts of him he refused to share, he felt my love like a threat.