Page 121 of Drown Like Heaven
“You okay?” he asked. I liked the way he looked a little amused, interested. I wanted to interest him.
“Yes. I’m going to go home now.”
“You go do that. I’ll see you in lecture.”
“Bye, Dr. Killshaw.”
He pressed his lips together, gave a quick nod, then shut the door.
Chapter 32
Mason
Dakota was haunting me. Her face, her voice, the way she looked genuinely terrified of me, like she was seeing me in a new light for the first time. In a way, shewasseeing a different side of me, because I’d never been that close to losing control around her. And then there was what she’d said.Killshaw.
She knew him. She’d seen him, likely a lot of times.
They’d interacted, maybe even one-on-one. He probably knew her name.
My reflection shattered, shards of my anger crashing to the floor around my bloodstained fist.
I stalked out of the bathroom, leaving the broken mirror a mess all over the tile, gold-threaded blood dripping down between my fingers as I walked into the kitchen. My muscles were wound so tightly they ached. I neededmore.
Maybe if I could find those other Thrausians who lived nearby I could convince them to let me fight again, but the odds of that were slim. Even if I could prove I’d purged the akrasia from my blood, they’d still learned I fractured easier than most, that my control wasn’t nearly as strong as it should’ve been. Even among my own kind, I was an outsider.
Deciding just to go hunt, I slipped my xiphos in my pocket and left my apartment.
There weren’t an infinite amount of demons on Earth, and it wasn’t uncommon for me to completely hunt out an entire area, but there was usually something I could do—even if I had to go farther away. Tonight, the travel would be worth it. I needed something to help keep me from losing my grip.
The air was cold and crisp outside my apartment, the stars poking tiny pinholes through the dark sky. I climbed into my car and started the engine, gripping the steering wheel hard, my fingers wrapping around the smooth leather.Micah knows Dakota.
The thought made me feel like I couldn’t breathe, like ten tons of concrete were sitting on my chest.
I pulled out onto the road too fast, gravel spinning under my tires as I took off. It wasn’t typical of me to take my car when I went out to do this, but I had a feeling I’d need to travel further than usual, and I didn’t exactly feel like flying. Getting high enough above the clouds so as not to be seen was difficult, and the clouds were sparse tonight.
There wasn’t any particular direction I was going in, either. My hands itched to turn the wheel, drive myself down the path that would get me to Dakota’s trailer, but I resisted.
I’dhurther.
She’d been so confused and sad and scared, and I didn’t know how to explain any of what I’d been feeling in that moment to her. She didn’t have any frame of reference for just how unstable and impulsive and reckless I could be. It wasn’t the same as it was for humans. And I didn’t want to tell her how I knew her professor—or that I knew him at all, for that matter.
I rolled all the windows down in the car, cool air violently rushing in. It felt good on my hot skin, and I needed to keep myself breathing, keep myself in control.
She would come back to me. Everything would be fine.
This isn’t sustainable. We aren’t sustainable.
I wanted to crash my car, wrap it around a tree in a fiery blaze of crushed metal. The desire sparked fast in my chest, my hands gripping the wheel tighter, my spine pressing into the seat. It wouldn’t kill me, of course. But it would stillhurt.
Suppressing the urge, I pulled off the road and got out of the car, sucking in fresh air.
I hated living like this.
Everything was always a fraction of an inch from pushing me over the edge. The only reason I’d survived this long was because of Micah, and he didn’t give a shit about me anymore. Being Sigeian, he was able to lessen emotions of other people. He didn’t have an infinite well of control to pull from, but it was pretty damn deep. Deep enough to give me a tether.
And I’d pulled on that tether like my life depended on it. Because it did.
The feeling of him dampening my instability was one that I’d been missing every second after him. He was so certain, such a strong force in opposition of me. Nothing would ever be able to swallow me completely, but I had a feeling that wasn’t even what he wanted. On some level, he liked the way I’d been born, despite me and everyone else hating it.
