Page 57 of Breathe Like Hell

The first time he’d really held me under the water, in the ocean, I’d hated him the second I took my first breath afterwards. The only thing I’d wanted was to get the fuck away from him, to never let him touch me again. He was dangerous and sick in the head and was never going to grant me any boundaries.

But I didn’t feel that way this time.

I felt something a lot darker, a lot worse.

Attachment.

It was by design, and I knew that. Mason put me into a void where the only thing I could touch was him—do that enough times and eventually he’d be the only thing I craved. Somehow I’d forgotten he was the one to hurt me in the first place, because he was the one saving me. Giving me air. Giving me life.

I pushed back against those thoughts, willing myself back into the untethered state I’d been in.

How far can we take this before one of us ends up dead?

I don’t know. Not much farther.

What are the odds the person who dies is me?

Very, very high.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

DAKOTA

Quinn was already sitting at one of the round tables in the basement of Stanton when I arrived, her hair pulled back in a low bun and her hardhat sitting on the table with her safety glasses. She was wearing a purple long sleeve shirt with some club or group or event name printed across the chest, and it made me realize how little I knew about her.

It also served as a reminder that while I was sinking and letting life pass me by, my peers were out doing things. Building up their resumes. Making connections. Meeting other people.

I gave her a little wave and set down my bag before pivoting to go to my locker. My fingers spun the dial on the lock without much conscious input from my brain. The fact that this would be my last week of Unit Ops lab ever hadn’t really hit me until now.

It was extremely bittersweet.

Since this was a class split across two semesters, it took up more space in my brain. It would always be one of my main memories from my chemical engineering degree—whether or not Micah had ever been my professor. The structure was different. More interesting, more real than most other classes.

I breathed out a long exhale, then shut my locker and rejoined Quinn at the table as I took out my earbuds. I’d been listening to Natural Born Losers by Nicole Dollanganger, mostly because I wasn’t doing well mentally and that album made me nostalgic. My misery craved company. Mean was one of my most listened-to songs ever. That probably said something bad about me.

“Hey,” I said. “Last week of lab.”

“Yeah.” She gave a dry laugh and nodded. “It’s crazy. I never thought I would be sad about something from this hellish degree ending, but here I am.”

“It also sucks that we’re first in the rotation,” I added. Other groups would continue to have their turn in the lab over the coming weeks, but we’d be done after this one. “At least we still have Thursday.”

“Right. Thursday will be ten times rougher than today.” Quinn laughed again, and then we both faded into silence. There wasn’t much else to say. We sat next to each other without speaking until the boys arrived, at which point it was time to enter the lab space. Today was the first day of the Gas-Solid-Liquid Fluidization Column lab. Our TA for this one was named Anna, and she seemed nice as she started explaining the different parts of the column to us. The recycle stream line, the manometer bank, the glass beads sitting at the bottom of the water-filled column.

Quinn and I decided to do the porosity measurements for the beads while the boys started up the column with our TA.

“Did you want to do the dry method or the wet method?” Quinn asked, scrolling through the procedure file on her iPad.

“I thought the wet method made more sense to me—I don’t know where the bead density measurement for the dry method is,” I responded as I laid my printed packet down flat on the table, scanning the instructions. “It shouldn’t take us too long.”

“Agreed. We have to do it three times, right?”

“Yeah.”

Quinn and I worked to measure out some beads in a graduated cylinder, then took the mass before filling the cylinder with water up to the level of the beads and getting the mass again. That way we could figure out the volume of the void spaces between beads—which would be filled by the water. Then dividing the volume of the void space by the total volume gave us the porosity. We repeated the process three times and averaged our values, then rejoined Nate and Jackson back at the column.

Bubbles trickled up through the water in the column, making me think of…other things.

Even though I’d washed my hair twice, I swore I could still smell the chlorine.