Page 242 of Breathe Like Hell

He wasn’t coming back.

I knew I couldn’t fix him. I’d known that when I was still a human. I’d known it from the moment he put his hand over my mouth until I lost consciousness in his backseat, known there was a darkness in his brain which could never be carved out. I wasn’t trying to carve it out.

I just couldn’t lose him, too.

I wasn’t going to give up on trying to save him because then what would I have left?

Absolutely nothing.

After a few more minutes of waiting for him to come back, knowing he wouldn’t, and wrestling with my thoughts about that, I decided to go find him. There were two places I thought he could be. Micah’s house or the beach.

Before leaving, I went into his bedroom and grabbed a long sleeve shirt, then tore a slit down the back before swapping into it. I hadn’t truly considered how inconvenient having wings would be before I’d been given them. While I could technically forgo a shirt, I didn’t want to do that.

I exited his apartment, focused on making myself invisible long enough to get mostly into the clouds, then allowed my wings to carry me towards the ocean. Learning everything about being Sigeian without Micah’s help was difficult, and isolating in a way. Mason didn’t have much interest in explaining things to me, and when he tried, it wasn’t especially helpful because he didn’t know how to do any of this himself.

The winter wind rippled sharply against my shirt, pushing the cotton to my skin in the front and billowing it open in the back, my hair catching on invisible gusts. My shoulder muscles were sore with use, my wings holding steady on either side of me.

In all honesty, I hadn’t processed the fact of me being an angel now.

I couldn’t even start to process it.

My brain was incapable of coming to terms with another massive life-changing event right now, so I did my best to pretend it’d always been this way. It wasn’t abnormal. This was just what was always going to happen to me.

I’d barely spoken to Mila in the past month, and I knew she was worried, but I had no idea what to say to her. The man I love died? The man you’ll never be able to remember? The man I never actually told you about because of how complicated everything was—and still is?

I’m grieving a person I thought I would never grieve in this way?

I blinked fast a few times, trying to dry my tears before they slipped out onto my cold, wind-reddened cheeks. It was pointless.

As I approached the beach, I saw his car through the clouds, which relieved some of the tension in my chest.

If I was more skilled, I would’ve tried for more invisibility on my descent, but I didn’t see any other cars, and I wasn’t skilled. I landed hard on my feet next to his car, looking in the windows but not finding him. The gray sky reflected on the glass, clouds swirling and mixing, obscuring the sun. I made my way over to the rocks and climbed down to the dark sand, waves rolling up and down the beach, crashing on rocks along the far edge.

He wasn’t here. Not that I could see.

But I smelled him.

In the same way that I could pick Micah’s kapnos out from the scent of the forest while I was a human, I could easily separate Mason’s kapnos from the ocean air. Layered and twisted darkness, the storm and the shadow echoing across landscapes. I did not have kapnos. It was only for male angels; females were only supposed to smell it and be affected. Since I’d been affected as a human, it wasn’t incredibly different now. I could smell it better, but that was all.

The sand looked the same as always, unchanged by my fall a month ago. Nothing marked the Earth where I’d landed.

Just dark rocks and black sand and shark teeth.

I walked further up the beach, smelling Mason in the air. If I focused my mind, I could feel him, somewhere. Hurting. When I really tried to smell him, to feel for him, I knew where he was. My wings swept out of my back without delay, and I was soaring over the ocean until I got deep enough to where I dove in.

The water was freezing, but it didn’t touch the core of me. I had my own warmth now, just like Mason did.

I kicked harder, pushing myself deeper and deeper. Down into the darkest depths, the place where sunlight didn’t reach, the place where I’d always find him.

How far am I willing to go for this? For him?

As far as he needs me to go.

Until the end of my life. Until the end of the Earth.

Currents swirled through my hair, catching the hem of my shirt, pressing into me. I didn’t stop going deeper, darker, until I could see the blurry shape of him lying on the sand, his agony clouding his mind.

I had my arm outstretched, reaching for him.