Page 125 of Drown Like Heaven
Even if she hated me now.
Even if all I could think of was going back inside and reminding Micah how sick I was in the head. He might consider himself the bigger predator because of his immovable control, his cool exterior, but he was forgetting that I was—and always had been—stronger than him.
And my morals were nonexistent.
I didn’t have a life to lose.
He’d just shown me he was willing to cross lines that’d been sacred to us years ago. Unspoken boundaries of respect. As the midnight air drifted around my overheated body, something like excitement thrashed in my gut.
If he was willing to do what he’d just done…
To abuse his power, to use itagainstme…
Micah was someone I knew I’d be able to hit harder than anyone else. He could actually withstand it from me. That knowledge, thatthrill, was heady. And he’d just granted me permission to fight him for real.
Chapter 33
Dakota
Mila skipped over to the table with a plate of fresh syrniki, setting it down then heading back to the fridge to grab sour cream and a blueberry sauce which she’d made earlier.
She plopped herself down at the chair next to me, spooning out a dollop of sour cream onto one of her little pancakes, then drizzling blueberry sauce on top. I chose to pass on the sour cream—Mila was Russian; she put that shit on everything—and dripped a spoonful of blueberry sauce on top.
Work today had been uneventful, as was the norm. I chatted with Eric; I destroyed my body with yet another cherry slush; I fed Bug on my lunch break, giving her lots of little scratches on her furry black head. The normalcy of it almost felt stark in a way, when contrasted with the rest of my life.
Dr. Killshaw’s lab, for example, was work that could never be uneventful.
This weekend, I was planning a full day run with him—meaning twelve or so hours of being locked in a small basement room together.
Mila and I polished off the rest of the syrniki sitting criss-cross on our chairs before Ivan arrived back at the apartment with his girlfriend, Ekaterina.
“Privet, Katya,” Mila called, grinning.
“Kak dela?” Ekaterina came into the kitchen as Ivan hung up their coats. “Chto ty prigotovila?”
“Syrniki. We ate it all, though.”
“Shtoh?” Ivan asked, walking into the kitchen. “And I’m the greedy one?”
Mila rolled her eyes, dumping the plate in the sink then running a stream of water over the ceramic. I pulled my sweatshirt sleeves over my palms, inspecting my freshly-painted black nails, ignoring the feeling of my phone buzzing in my pocket. I didn’t have to check the notification to know it was Mason.
I still hadn’t responded to him, but that didn’t seem to be a deterrent.
He wasn’t beingpushy, he was just…always there.
I thought back to him crushing my hand, hurting me for real, the way he’d used my pain to get his answer, and the same question came rushing back.Why?
He knew that all I’d wanted to do was help him, to take out whatever was lacerating the inside of his mind, to be there for him in whatever way he needed. And still, he chose to deflect every ounce of my concern for him, in favor of forcing another pointless answer out of me. I’d considered blocking his number more than once, but I didn’twantto, even if it was the best choice.
Every second with him ruined me, but I’d rather be ruined thanempty.
Mila grabbed my wrist and towed me along behind her into her bedroom, shutting and locking the door behind us, then flopping on her bed. She snatched a leopard-print throw blanket from its place wedged against the wall, and bundled herself up in it.
“Do you think it’s cold in here?” she asked, her face surrounded by faux-fur.
“It’s a little cold, I guess.”
“Vanya keeps the temperature so low. I hate it.”
