Page 217 of Drown Like Heaven
Making me suck his dick, getting mad at me over it, making me feel as if I was walking on eggshells. I hated keeping this secret from him, especially when I felt like he already knew and wasn’t confronting me for some reason.
And the worst part was, it was entirely fucking unfair of me to be upset with him over any of this, because I was the one beingunfaithful. As far as I knew, Micah hadn’t done a thing with anyone else since we got together the first time. I wished I could say the same about myself. It would come out at some point, and it would wreck everything. I just didn’t know when that was.
I’m a horrible person.I was letting him console me, letting him comfort me, even while I’d been going behind his back. Finding the strength to launch myself off his lap, I stumbled back into the kitchen, panic and anxiety rising in my brain, swallowing me. Smothering me. Burying me.
Everything was compounding, building, making every other thing worse. I couldn’t separate all my sadness. It was wrecking me.
Every time I thought of myself in high school, I thought of Anthony. Thought of all the things he’d done to me, all the time I’d spent with him, all the shame. He’d ruined every single memory of my teenage years. Fourteen wasn’t fourteen anymore. It was the year my life ended.
“Dakota—”
“I saw—I saw videos,” I choked out through pitiful sobs.I’m a mess. I’m a fucking mess. That’s all I’ll ever be.
“Videos of what?”
“Doesn’t matter.” I whirled around, feeling my sanity slipping. I couldn’t even articulate exactly what combination of things was making me so unstable right now, but my nervous system had been on edge for so long it didn’t matter. I was ripping apart at the seams. I shouldn’t have come here. I shouldn’t have done any of the things I’d ever done in my pitiful life.
In the future, when I think of myself in college, is this all I’ll remember?
“Of course it matters.”
“You’re not mad at me?” I questioned desperately, backing away from him, tears falling faster and faster. My entire brainwas flashing red, alarms blaring in my skull. It was like I wastryingto make him hate me by prompting these questions over and over. My obsessive reassurance-seeking would be my downfall.
There would never be enough reassurance. Nobody on Earth could fill this endless void of compulsions.
“I told you I’m not.”
My eyes flicked over to my side and I grabbed a knife from the butcher block on his counter, the blade sliding out of its casing with a metallic sound. I needed something to hold, something to be tethered to outside my skull. My fingers flexed on the cold metal handle.
“Are you fucking sure about that? Don’t lie to me.” I could barely see him I was crying so hard. And now I was holding a knife, as if that was going to fix any part of this situation. Maybe I could kill myself with it. Slit my wrists and bleed out on his kitchen floor, crimson blooming on the wood.
“I’m not lying.”
“You are,” I gasped.
“Quit doing that. Tell me what the fuck is going on so I canhelp you.”
Visuals of my wrists bleeding assaulted my brain until I really felt like I was going to do it, with or without my own permission. It was inevitable. My body would take over and kill itself any second. Kill me.
Has there been a single day in my entire life where I haven’t thought about my own death?
I screamed as loud as I could.
Not any words, just an agonized, hoarse, painful scream tearing out of my throat.
I am losing my fucking mind.
I can’t even imagine what Micah must think of me, watching this.
He must be disgusted by me. Horrified.
The scream shattered into loud sobs and I was choking on air, hardly able to get any into my lungs, my vision getting black on the edges. Micah crossed the room rapidly, standing in front of me half a second later, and I jerked the knife upwards, holding it between us, pointing it at him, my arm shaking violently. I couldn’t even kill him like this, or at all, probably.
I was so unspeakably afraid of all the things he could do to me.
I’d had nightmares about that nothingness, waking up with my heart pounding and my hands clenched into fists, my brain blind with fear until I realized it wasn’t real.
“Masters,” he said forcefully, grabbing my wrist to steady the knife. “Pull yourself together, or I’ll do it for you.”
