Page 211 of Drown Like Heaven
Somehow, keeping her outside my wall felt like the right choice. Because I would die if she saw everything, saw all the worst parts of me, and left because of them. As if I didn’t fucking hate myself for it every single day.
I was aware of how that kind of pressure would ruin a relationship. The pressure to keep me alive by…not leaving me. Fuck.
Micah wanted to know why I still hadn’t killed Aamon, but I couldn’t explain it to him. Getting it done would require someeffort, and I didn’t even know exactly where he was half the time, but that wasn’t the main reason.
I was scared.
Scared that Dakota would finally choose him, and if I didn’t have this connection, I would never get to see her again. He would hide her away at his place, lock her up in his darkness and I’d lose her. But if he stillneededme, if I still served some purpose in their new life together…
Everything was about her. My solar system revolved around a different sun. One with sad green eyes and a soft voice.
I’d accidentally seen the shark tooth on his nightstand and it’d ripped my fucking guts out. Did she go to this beach with him too?
My blood surged, electricity skittering along my skin under the water.
I forced myself above the surface, sucking in large breaths of air, my skin starting to faintly glow with each inhale as my neon levels rapidly climbed up from near-zero.
Ultraneon.
When my skin glowed like this, it was called ultraneon.
In Heaven, it was essentially constant, but not on Earth. The only way I could get it was by artificially lowering and raising the concentration of neon in my blood.
Micah had told me I needed to be at his house today, and I hadn’t questioned it. I never questioned it anymore, because firstly, he wouldn’t tell me, and secondly, I’d long since given up trying to decipher whatever pattern existed in his requests. Especially since he’d been pissed at me last time I’d shown up. It wasn’t about Aamon anymore. It was likely about Dakota, but he was so goddamn strange about her I didn’t know why he would want me around.
He was protective, but his protection wasn’t safety for her. He was dangerous in a way much more silent than me.
Since ultraneon was constant in Heaven, you could visually see when an angel used their powers through the slight lessening of their glow as they consumed neon. That wasn’t the case on Earth, and Dakota wasn’t experienced enough with him to know the full scope of what he could do. Half of it was so fucking subtle you’d never suspect a thing until you were years down the road and didn’t recognize your own mind anymore.
I hated her for wanting him. Even more so for letting him have her. I hated her so deeply, my blood vibrated with it. Hated everything she made me feel, hated how goddamn insane she made me, hated how she’d never fully bemine. No matter how badly I wanted it, I’d never own all of her.
But my hatred for Dakota paled in the face of what I felt towards Micah.
A+K FUCK
God, I could’ve ripped apart the world for the way the two of them made me feel together. It was the cruelest torture, the sickest torment, the most perversely disgusting game I could’ve played with myself, with her.
Theykilledme in ways I’d never be able to fully verbalize. Shredded all the most vital parts of my mind, my soul.
I loved fucking Dakota. She was beautiful and soft and small and perfect and good.
But sometimes I missed Micah’s dick. The hardness and largeness of his body. I didn’t have tolikehim to want that.Fuck.I need to not think about this.
I swam towards the shore, waves crashing over my head and shoulders, foam frothing around my body. Cold wind whipped over the dark surface of the ocean, carrying needle-like drops of saltwater. I trudged onto the sand with water pouring off me.
My SUV was parked at the top of the cliff, and I changed into dry clothes inside it, then drove to Micah’s with wet hairand tightness in my muscles. My veins ached with the slight accumulation of akrasia, but that discomfort was easily ignored.
Micah was sitting in his armchair on his laptop when I walked in, looking studious. I fought not to roll my eyes as I sat on the couch.
“Do you use a condom when you fuck her?” Micah asked in the absence of a greeting. He looked up from his screen, locking his eyes onto mine. His body was perfectly still, his expression indecipherable.
My heart stopped.
“What?”
“When you fuck her,” Micah said slowly, purposefully, “do you use a condom?”
I stared at him, trying to decipher anything in his gaze. But I couldn’t. He shut the laptop, set it on the coffee table.
