Page 194 of Drown Like Heaven
“What, you can read mythoughtsnow? I liked you better when I thought you were just my engineering professor.” Every word was tipped with venom, dripping with painful vulnerability I wanted to hide. If I’d hated the darkness inside my skull beforehand, if I’d been afraid of being swallowed by it on my own…what I felt now was a thousand times more powerful. A thousand times worse.
Because now Micah was there, too.
He’s carving his own labyrinth into my brain. He’s erasing me.
“I can’t read your thoughts.”
“How do I know you’re telling the truth?”
“Because I have no idea why you didn’t come to class today. I don’t know why you drank half a bottle of vodka on your own. I won’t know unless you tell me.”
“Or unless youforceme to tell you. Take away all my resistance.”
He just shook his head, clearly frustrated with my attitude.
“Punish me again. Wear me down.Hurt me. Make me tell you.” I couldn’t stop more tears from pouring down my face, hot and slick. Maybe some part of me meant the words I was saying, a small part that secretly wanted to confide in Micah about my brother—but thinking about that terrified me all the same.
“I’m not going to do that. Come sleep with me at my house.”
I leaned forward, shoving my face into my mattress, wanting to scream until my voice broke. My head was swimming and my body was heavy.I can’t fucking do this. I can’t keep up with him.
“Dakota.”
Dizziness was building in my brain, rolling over and over, stirring sickness in my stomach. Everything felt suddenly toohot, too much. Cold sweat trickled down the back of my neck, my jaw slack.I drank way too much. Why did I do this? I’m such a fucking mess.
“Dakota,” Micah repeated.
No.
I launched myself off my bed, choking on saliva, gasping, clamoring towards my bathroom on my hands and knees.Nothing will ever be okay.But I didn’t make it to the toilet before my stomach was heaving and my body was convulsing, bile searing up my throat. Micah swept all my hair back, gathering it in his fist as I vomited onto the ground in the hallway.
Violent sobs tore through my chest and tears made my vision blurry, saliva dripping off my chin, my arms shaking so hard I almost couldn’t hold myself up. I couldn’t tell if I was crying because of him, or because he wasn’t leaving—no matter how disgusting I was now.
“Please go,” I wailed, spitting onto the ground, hardly able to breathe through my humiliation and despair.
“I’m not leaving you.”
I hung my head, feeling snot run onto my upper lip, my chest aching.
“When I said I wanted to take care of you, I meant that shit.” He stretched out his arm and grabbed his shirt from the ground, then wiped my face with it. I was too weak to resist him, heaviness blanketing my mind.
My eyes stared blankly at the ground, my sobs quieting.
“You’re doing a good job at letting me help you tonight. You just have to keep letting me a little more. Alright, Masters? Can you do that?”
I could hear my own breathing in my ears, puffing in and out through my open mouth.
A string of saliva snapped off my lower lip. My throat burned with acid.
The dim light from the kitchen showed my bare legs sprawled on the ground, my bruised shins and blue veins, sticking out from the wrinkled t-shirt dwarfing my tired body. Micah’s longer legs were crouched next to mine.
A few pieces of hair were clinging to my sticky cheeks.
My spine was slouched forward like it couldn’t support my weight anymore. My fingers were wet with spit and vomit, trembling, pressing against the thin carpet that was spotted with years of faint stains I’d worked so hard to scrub out when I first moved in.
I thought of myself then, on hands and knees, crawling around with a bucket and my dollar-store cleaning products, so excited to have my own place. A place where Anthony had never been, because this aunt was my mother’s sister—unrelated to him. Even though the trailer was a piece of shit and I still didn’t have a car and I was drowning in chemical engineering assignments, I’d been excited.
I’d wanted this place to be scrubbed clean, untouched by him.
