Page 218 of Drown Like Heaven
More tears squeezed out of my eyes as I shook my head over and over, not wanting him messing around in my brain again—but I was tempted. My muscles were going weak, my fight slipping away from me. It was so terrifying to trust him inside my head, but what choice did I have?
The relief was near-immediate when I felt him take some of my bigger emotions for me, and I didn’t care that he hadn’t waited for me to consent to it.
The knife clattered onto the counter and Micah wrapped me up in his arms, holding my head to his chest as I caught my breath. Calmness enveloped me like a blanket in the absence of everything else, soothing me. Micah couldn’t plant new emotions in my mind, nor could he alter them, but he couldtake themaway. And that was enough.
It was a strange sensation, though, knowing he was doing something inside my thoughts I had no control over. It would’ve made me panic had I been capable of it, but I wasn’t.
In some ways, it was good.
In other ways, it was bad. I knew that. I could recognize that somebody having this sort of power over the inside of my brain wasn’t good. Sometimes I was afraid he would erase me from my own mind, but I couldn’t care about that now. Maybe he was taking away my ability to care about it.
“Do you want me to take you to one of those rocks in the ocean?” he asked, tilting my chin. “I remember you saying you’d want to go sit on one if you ever grew wings.”
My lower lip wobbled. “I’m tired, Micah.”
“All you have to do is let me carry you.” He looked at me. “Let me hold this tonight.”
Let me take care of you.
My endless fight.
“How many times have you taken my emotions away?” I was afraid of the answer.
“Three times, including now.”
Some hidden anxiety settled in me with his response.
“It was when you told me you were an angel, wasn’t it? And when I wanted you to leave my place.”
He nodded.
I heard the lock of the front door turning, unlatching. Both Micah and I angled to look through the entrance of the kitchen to the door.
Mason walked in after a second and when our eyes met, I wanted to sob all over again. I wanted to run to him and let him wrap me up in his arms, let him hold me so close to his body I could hardly breathe. But I was already in Micah’s arms. Mason could probably tell how hard I’d just been crying, and I wished I could read his mind. What was he thinking? What did he assume I talked to Micah about?
“Hey,” Mason greeted, avoiding looking at me now. “Need to talk to you.” He nodded to Micah.
Micah turned his face towards mine again. “Change into comfortable clothes and rent a movie. We’ll come back in a few minutes to watch it with you. Yeah?”
I nodded.
We?
He was inviting Mason?
I shuffled upstairs to change, then went back over to the couch and grabbed the remote, plopping myself on the center cushion and tucking my feet up on the seat. My tears were still drying on my face and my chest still held lingering threads of tightness, but my mind was entirely calm. Numb, maybe. Empty. There wasn’t a good way to put into words how it felt to have my emotions physically taken from me.
Micah said I could rent a movie, so I assumed that meant he didn’t care if it was on his subscription streaming services—which he had many of. Despite literally never watching TV. I landed onThe Texas Chain Saw Massacre, pressing the button to rent it. His card was already inputted so it went through right away.
Such a simple thing that I’d never had the privilege to do. No more illegal streaming sites with a trillion pop-up windows.
I left the movie paused on the opening scene while I waited for Mason and Micah to be done talking about whatever they were talking about. Mysterious angel business that didn’t involve me. I constantly cycled between caring and not caring about the fact that Istillsomehow seemed to know nothing about either of them. How was that even possible?
Sometimes it felt like there was some deeper game that they were playing with each other, and I’d never been shown the rules. I was simply a piece to be shoved around on the board. Picked up and placed down to gain an advantage.
What was the endgame? How much time was left in the hourglass?
I wasn’t stupid enough to think that my current life was actually sustainable—I just didn’t know what it would look like once everything crumbled to dust. Micah would leave me, or Mason would kill me, or I’d have the sort of mental breakdown that my brain would never recover from. No matter what, I wasn’t walking away in one piece. Strangely, that notion didn’t bother me much.
