Page 228 of Drown Like Heaven
“But itdoesn’tmatter. Not now.”
Irritation bristled through me, but I knew he was right, in a way. Having this conversation now wouldn’t change the past. It wouldn’t change how I felt about him now. Wouldn’t give me back the years of darkness I’d suffered after him.
If Micah didn’t want to tell me something, I couldn’t make him.
We didn’t work. We never would. We’d tried for a long time, and talking about it again wouldn’t make a lick of difference. Our end was inevitable. It wasn’t the same as me and Dakota—it couldn’t be. She and I were destructive, but it wasn’t so cut and dry.
“Fine. I’ll kill Aamon, but you’re not keeping Dakota from me,” I said, turning and stalking toward the bedroom.
“I’m going to make her choose.”
I stopped dead in my tracks, dread making my heart sink to my feet. Rage and fear and panic and desperation crashed over my mind in a tidal wave. “No. You won’t.”
“Why wouldn’t I?”
“Because I will wreck your entire life before I let you take somethingI loveaway from me again,” I gritted out. I was practically shaking, vibrating with my fury.I love her. I loved him. He can’t do this to me again. “Your threats are empty, but mine are not. I don’t have a life to go back to—there’s zero reason for me to care about any collateral that falls on me. All I want is her. And I will destroy you if that’s what it takes.”
I lunged forward, slamming my palm over his heart and channeling just about as much electricity as I trusted myself with straight into him. Instantly, he stumbled backward, the breath knocked from his lungs as he suffered through what was essentially a heart attack, clutching his chest.
I didn’t stop my advance, though.
Grabbing his throat, I slammed his head backward into the wall hard enough to put a hole in the plaster. It felt good to touch him so roughly.
“I love her,” I growled. “And you don’t get to do that to me twice.”
“You think I don’t? You think I don’t love her as much as you do?” He shoved me off him, sending me tumbling backwards into the opposite wall, a picture frame crashing to the ground, glass shattering. Something in the air was changing, shifting, as we spoke words aloud we’d never admitted before.
We both loved the same girl.Dakota Masters.
Heat seared up my abdomen, curling under every inch of my skin.
“That’s exactly what I—”
“You’re wrong,” he bit out, muscles rippling in his forearms as he clenched his fists. He was gettingmadnow, slipping into the kind of possessive insanity that was my signature. Losing his composure.
“I’m not. You aren’t capable of love. Only manipulation. Only protection. It’s not the same thing—but you’ve never been good at telling the difference.”
I’d been trying to tamp down my emotions, to keep them as shallow and surface-level in my brain as possible, because I didn’t want to give Micah that much potential power over me. But when it came to Dakota, all I could do was drown in my obsession. The depth of emotion she made me feel rivaled the Pacific.
And each additional inch the strands of need for her gained in my brain, the further Micah could go. But he was losing the battle, too.
Tension in the air thickened, tightened.
“You’re going to tell me I’m not capable of love?” he spat, leaning towards me. “Do you even know how difficult it is to try and love someone like you? How much damage you caused me?”
“And yet, you’re the one who got towalk away whole.”
He shook his head, tongue pressed against the inside of his cheek, tension in his sharp jaw.
“Is that what you think?”
“Yes.”
I rolled out my neck, stiffness aching through my muscles. I was wound too taut, like a rubber band stretching tighter and tighter, bound to snap. The potential of more physical contact with Micah’s body was scattering sparks through my body.
Something violent.
I fought against the memories threatening to surface in my brain. Sometimes Micah would get turned on by nothing otherthan my recklessness. He’d get addicted to watching me like that. I was so opposite of him, and he couldn’t stay away.
