Page 241 of Breathe Like Hell

I folded myself onto the ocean floor, allowing the pressure to settle over every aching inch of me, immense enough that it felt almost comforting. There was nothing else here. Just the endless weight of the sea bearing down on my body. All the air had been pushed out of my lungs, and I laid at the bottom of the ocean, where light didn’t reach me at all.

I could stay here.

It was the first time since Micah died that the world had been quiet enough for me to hear my own heart, beating slowly.

Maybe I stay here until it stops completely.

I wondered whether Micah had felt this alone.

That thought hollowed me out.

He’d died by himself while Dakota fought for her life in the sky, and I carried her up to Heaven. He’d burned his own body so I wouldn’t have to. I wished he hadn’t. I wished I’d gotten a chance to see him one last time, even in the form of a corpse.

In my head, I was counting. Counting the minutes and counting the seconds. Keeping track of how long I’d been down here. Maybe to keep myself on the safe side of my limit.

Maybe to push past it.

The first time I’d crashed into this ocean, I’d resurfaced right away, my muscles aching and my thoughts panicked. I’d needed to make sure he was okay.

This time, I wasn’t sure I was meant to resurface.

I’d let the ocean keep me this time.

Maybe that should’ve happened at the start. Then I would’ve never fucked all this up.

I kept counting minutes as the darkness swallowed whatever was left of me.

Five minutes turned to ten. Ten turned to fifteen.

And then twenty.

Twenty one minutes and fifty two seconds…

Fifty three…

Fifty four…

Fifty five…

I was far too deep to ever make it back to the surface before my time ran out.

For most of my life, I’d treated this number like scripture. The only certainty I’d ever been given inside a body that refused to tell me when it was dying, a body that craved my final moments.

This number, scribbled by Micah onto a scrap of paper long before either of us had known what we would become.

The seconds kept ticking on.

Twenty one minutes and fifty nine seconds…

CHAPTER FIFTY-NINE

DAKOTA

I stared at the door to Mason’s apartment, my heart breaking further and further. The frame was still all splintered from when I’d broken it down the day I came back to Earth, the day I learned the worst truth in the universe. Mason had no desire to fix it, and neither did I. I had no desires at all anymore.

And the door remained shut, no matter how long I stared at it.

Please come back.