Page 245 of Breathe Like Hell

“Please just tell me how long,” I begged.

A pause.

His voice was strained. “Fifty two years.”

The words burrowed in my chest, stabbing through my heart.

“Fifty two years? Together?”

My ribs ached and I couldn’t remember how to breathe correctly, because I could hardly conceptualize a number like that, could hardly comprehend how it would feel to lose something that’d lasted more than double the number of years I’d been alive. Fifty two years. That was more than love. That was a lifetime.

More tears dripped down my cold face, my heart breaking for everything that came before me. Even as sea-soaked air wrapped around me, my lungs took on nothing.

“And then we broke up. He’s the one who left me. It’d been twenty two years since I’d seen him before you.”

Right before I was born, they broke apart.

There was no girlfriend causing Mason’s fear of abandonment. It was Micah.

My eyes squeezed shut, my lungs gasping for a breath as the lump in my throat grew.

I didn’t need anyone to explain what had caused them to break up, because I already knew. I’d been in a relationship with both of them. I’d loved both of them. I’d felt their flaws separately.

I could see how perfectly they would’ve fit together, and how perfectly they would’ve torn each other apart. I knew where Micah retreated, where Mason pushed, and how neither of them knew how to stop until everything had been decimated.

“You’re A, from his truck,” I whispered. “Ashborn.”

Mason swiped under his eyes quickly, his throat constricting when he swallowed. “Ash,” he corrected. “Ash and Kill.”

A + K FUCK

Ash and Kill.

For fifty two years.

I had no words for him now. There didn’t exist a combination of sentiments I could string together to convey the sorrow I felt for him, to articulate just how deeply this knowledge was pierced through my heart. I’d expected something more meaningful than they’d been letting on, but this was an unthinkable level of connection that’d been lost.

Not just once, but twice.

Two times, Mason had lost Micah.

One of those was because of me.

I wanted to throw up.

Mason stood up without warning, walking to the rocks and up towards his parked car. I followed him, carrying my boots.

“Can we go to the diner and get food?” I asked quietly once we were both sitting in his car. He hadn’t gotten a towel or a change of clothes from the backseat. Maybe he’d run out of those things.

“I don’t want to go there.”

“Okay,” I whispered, my chest tight with heartache and anxiety.

“I’m going to take you back to your place.”

“Will you stay?”

“No. Not today.”