Page 210 of Drown Like Heaven
Mason’s jaw flexed and he hung his head for a second. “Dakota,youhate me sometimes. They’re not all terrible people. I’m hard to deal with.”
“But you can’t explain it more to me?”
“No,” he breathed, shaking his head.
I wish I could help you. I wish you would let me.
I was grateful he’d told me at all, but his walls were still up, and they were all too tall to climb. I was too tired to keep trying.
“What do we do when this isn’t enough anymore?” I asked. How much closer to death could I actually get without crossing the line? How would we continue to escalate this? What would happen when mimicking started to get boring? There were so many reasons Mason and I weren’t sustainable.
“You’ll always be enough for me.”
“You’ll get bored of me. Once you’ve done everything to me, there won’t be any reason for you to want me anymore.”
“If you think that’s true, you don’t know me at all.”
I shook my head, hating him for saying it, because Iwantedto know him.
“Dakota,” Mason murmured, holding my face. “Please don’t hate me. I need you.”
“Why?Whydo you need me?”
“Because—fuck. You do something to my brain. You’re in my head and I won’t survive if you leave it.”
“Something to do with being Thrausian? What does fracturing feel like? How do you stop it?”
“I can’t tell you. I can’t tell you any of this, baby. Please don’t hate me for that. You are the only good thing in my life right now and I don’t want to ruin this withwhat I am.”
But I was so dissociated at this point that his words meant nothing to me. I couldn’t hold another feeling without shattering. Silent tears slid down my cheeks and I didn’t bother to wipe them. I just stared at him, heart aching, thoughts numb. Something deep inside me would always reach for him, no matter what I did, no matter what he did—ordidn’tdo. I hated that.
“I’m sorry,” he said, low and agonized, as he pressed his mouth to mine. I let him kiss me, my body responding to his touch against my will.
It was an endless cycle between painful desperation for him and terrified rejection of him. Back and forth, back and forth, until all that existed wasthis. Bleeding, crying, needing, hating, breaking, slipping away into a void.
If I knew now what I knew then, I still don’t think I could stop myself from doing it all over again.
Mason kissed me deeper. I wished I knew what he was hiding from me. He was almost a hundred years old.What lives have you lived? Who have you loved? What is it like inside your brain, and why won’t you show me? Did somebody break you, too? I don’t know anything about you. It’s been months and I don’t know a single thing.
My brain was fighting, struggling to come to terms with the very real thing I’d just done without an instant of hesitation. I could’vedied. How did Mason keep putting me in these situations, and how had I started to accept them as normal?
It was horrifying thinking about how far I’d come since the day I met him.
I hardly recognized myself anymore—or, I recognized myself more than ever before. All my bad thoughts, all my depraved darkness, the worst parts of me, those were the things controlling my actions now. Like an unstoppable train barreling down the tracks, brakes screeching but never slowing, metal grinding on metal, a broken bridge fast approaching, the promise of oblivion racing ever-closer. All I could do was watch it happen, watch the end of the tracks getting nearer, stare into the void beyond.
My body arched up into Mason’s, the rain still falling around us, pattering on his wings, wetting the black feathers. He was so warm, so strong.
And I would’ve done anything he asked, just to know him.
Chapter 56
Mason
The ocean was dark on all sides of me, currents twisting around my body beneath the waves. There was no burn in my lungs, no panic in my brain, just darkness surrounding my vision and strength building in my veins.
I didn’t deserve Dakota; that much was agonizingly clear to me. She’d sacrificed her own life in an attempt to make me open up to her—and I still couldn’t do it. If she knew the way I needed her, the way I clung to her inside my own pathetic mind…if she could feel how desperately I was trying not to make her hate me the way I’d made Micah hate me…
I wasn’t sure I would be able to survive that same wound again.
