Page 276 of Breathe Like Hell

Dakota took my hand and pulled me with her down the wrecked hallway to my bedroom, then crawled onto the bed. I joined her.

“We can survive this,” she said. “We will fix it.”

“We almost broke apart entirely,” I reasoned, anger slipping into my tone.

“No.” She shook her head. “We almost collapsed into each other. Like dying stars turning into black holes, colliding because our gravity is so strong that we’ll always be pulled together. Not apart. Never apart. Gravity doesn’t work like that.”

I wanted to believe her, but it was difficult.

Then again, everything had always been difficult for us.

She reached over and clicked off the lamp on my nightstand.

It’ll be easier in the dark.

Her lips found mine, soft as flower petals, her pulse fluttering at the base of her throat. Butterfly wings.

I kissed her harder.

It wasn’t long before our clothes were off and I was inside her and it felt different than it had it months. It felt almost the way it used to. Inevitable and intoxicating and like I’d found someone who didn’t flinch at the worst parts of me. Like him. The universe had given me two people like that.

Dakota held my wrist and laid my palm over her face, covering her mouth and nose so she couldn’t take in any air. Her expressive eyes flicked back and forth between mine, her ribs frozen beneath me.

The only way an angel can die is by asphyxiation.

Even now, as an unbreakable creature, she still wanted me to push her to the edge of her life. Things had changed, we had changed, but our cores remained the same.

I thought of my hand over her mouth in the back seat of my car. Her terrified eyes. The way her pussy clenched around my fingers as her consciousness faded. Her blade against my neck.

Her hand extending through dark waters, reaching for me, a stranger. Blue lips coming out of the ocean. Shivering.

Again, her hand extending through dark waters, reaching for me, no longer a stranger. Glowing skin coming out of the ocean. Swimming.

I fucked her until she came, then I came, and it was the first time in so many months where I felt any amount of normalcy between us. Where I could ever even consider imagining a future that involved both of us together. I laid down on top of her warm body, breathing hard, clinging to her.

“I love you,” I panted. “I don’t know what to do.”

“Go talk to him.”

I stiffened, my eyes slamming shut tight. “No, baby. He doesn’t want that.”

“The Mason I love would never willingly let someone slip away from him again. Don’t let Micah slip away from you. Please.”

“He was never mine to begin with. He’s not slipping away.”

“Don’t lie to me,” Dakota said, her lips brushing my temple. “Not right now. Please.”

I lifted my head up to look her in the eye but didn’t respond.

“We were given a second chance, Mason. And I’m not going to let you fuck it up.”

CHAPTER SIXTY-NINE

MICAH

Dakota hadn’t come back when Mason came back. When she’d left me here alone earlier, I had a feeling it would end up like this, with her finding an excuse to stay away while sending Mason to me by himself. She knew things now. About us. About me.

I stared down at the back of my hands as I sat in the leather armchair, hearing Mason enter through my front door. My fingers trembled slightly, the fading black veins twitching below my skin.