Page 298 of Breathe Like Hell

Wind raced up the cliffside, ruffling Mason’s clothes and hair. He was aware of my presence probably the moment I stepped foot on the trail, but he had yet to turn and face me. Pale moonlight filtered down on both of us, casting shadows that made this moment feel like it was already a memory.

I’d purposefully tracked him down…again.

This had become a constant for us. This chasing, finding, needing more but never knowing how to verbalize it. Being too afraid to verbalize it, like when we sat across from each other at the diner yesterday.

But the cliff provided a distraction, the same way it had with Dakota. It was often easier to be truthful when surrounded by unavoidable forces of nature. A tangled forest, a two-hundred foot drop, the strong scent of the ocean rising on the breeze and soaking my lungs. I approached where he sat, keeping my distance, keeping my silence, but at least I hadn’t rehearsed an escape plan this time.

The cliffs fell away into nothing but darkness, the ocean only revealing itself whenever a wave broke white against the rocks below. Clouds drifted slowly across the stars, swallowing them for a while before letting them reappear somewhere else.

“Couldn’t sleep?” Mason finally asked.

The simplicity of the question filled me with relief.

I was standing a few yards to the side of where he sat, his feet dangling off the edge. A few clumps of dirt and rock crumbled off behind his heels, cascading down to join the ocean. He looked just as lost as I felt.

“Yeah,” I answered, even though that wasn’t the truth of why I’d come here. It was more complicated than some mild insomnia. Mason knew that without me telling him.

Honestly, I wasn’t sure whether I was here to forgive him, apologize, or finally admit what I wanted.

But there were only so many ways to postpone the inevitable. Every silence was another decision, another moment where I purposefully kept my walls up and my words vague.

“Dakota’s asleep?”

“At her place.” I pretended not to know why she sometimes claimed to need space, but I wasn’t stupid. She wanted me and Mason to talk. And I’d been avoiding it for long enough. It felt like every time I tried, every time we touched any real topic, I froze. But I really didn’t want to keep fucking doing that. Not with him.

Ash.

He knows me.

“Do you think this could actually work?” Mason asked as I sat down—not right next to him, but slightly closer. The pine trees behind us whispered whenever the wind changed direction, the ocean always answering with its rushing waves.

“With Dakota?” My heart had started beating harder, and I couldn’t control it.

“No.”

I could feel him looking at me, but I kept staring at the ocean, my inhales becoming uneven.

When I didn’t reply, he continued, clarifying, “With us. You don’t think it would ever work again, do you?”

With us.

There weren’t any safe or easy answers to a question like that.

It felt like everything would be revealed in whatever words I strung together. And if I finally said everything—if we finally said everything—there would be nowhere left to hide.

I rolled my shoulder, trying to stretch out some of the tension in my muscles, pressing my tongue against the inside of my cheek.

We’d spent decades speaking around our shadows. Around our fears. Around our love. Around every truth that might’ve changed us if only we’d said it sooner.

I was especially guilty of this.

I flattened my palms to the Earth, feeling the dirt and pine needles beneath my hands, the solidness of the cliff. The same cliff I’d launched my broken body off of just to get to Mason. Rain pouring down my face, over my freshly-dark wings, pain radiating through my bones.

How many more decades of silence could I survive?

Did I even want to do that anymore?

“What answer are you hoping I’ll give?” I finally said, the wind rushing in the fill the space after my question. It smelled like rain was coming, the earliest hints of it lacing the breeze. A storm, maybe.