Page 206 of Drown Like Heaven
A death wish.
I don’t care.
There was some reason Mason wasn’t speaking, but I couldn’t figure it out, and I didn’t really care to.
Maybe he was right—maybe I didn’t want to live through this. Maybe I’d stopped caring about my own life a very long time ago.
The wind teased my hair, strands lifting around my shoulders as mist wet my face. I licked the salt from my lips as the clouds rolled and rolled, thunder settling into the landscape in deep vibrations. Darkness swept over the waves, over the white peaks and shadowed dips, over that endless violence.
Mason was standing next to me now, looking out at the ocean like I was. His eyes lifted to the tumultuous churn of the clouds as a bolt of lightning cracked across the sky, flashing white overhis features. My clothes were getting damp and clinging to me, an involuntary shiver working its way through my muscles.
I stared at him. If death was the only language he understood…
My heart beat harder, a relentless pounding on my fractured ribs. I needed to break through his walls, and I would do whatever it took to achieve that. If he wouldn’t give me the truth, I’d rip it out of him,forceit out of him, over my own corpse. I’d been sitting in his rejection for days, letting it hurt me, feeling smaller and smaller.No more.
Another step towards the edge.
Mason looked over at me, his chest heaving, a flicker of emotion in his face shoving urgency into my movements. He could sense something was off. Maybe he’d finally realized he had underestimated me.
You want me to show you why people like us shouldn’t be together?
“Dakota,” he said harshly. “Step back.”
My gaze drifted down to the rocks at the base of the cliff. Surrounded by swirling seawater and fog, stained with salt, sharp, solid, unforgiving. A pebble fell over the edge, kicked off by the sole of my boot. The cold air tasted like knives, andGod, I wanted to breathe it deeper. He’d already made me believe I was going to die once, what was one more brush with death?
Your turn to be afraid.
“Dakota.”
Exhilaration urged me forward, my need guiding me past my terror of falling.
“Get the fuck away from there,” Mason snapped, frozen in my periphery, as if he was afraid to spook me, to make me do it.
My entire life balanced on a razor’s edge.
I would rather risk death than let you stay hidden from me.
I don’t care what happens to my body, my safety, my sanity, as long as you can’t shut me out.
Self-destructive intimacy. Suicidal closeness.
I jumped.
The weightless lurch of my body leaving solid ground was a sickening sort of freedom.
Wind tunneled through my clothes and hair, rippling the fabric and whipping my hair behind me, roaring in my ears, tearing down my throat. My stomach flipped inside out, like it was being ripped from my spine.
I was in complete freefall. And I was fallingfast.
The sharp rocks were a blurry mirage, looming closer and closer, making me dizzy. The smell of the ocean swelled up, hitting me in the face, flooding my lungs. I could hardly hear my own scream over the wind, and every hair on my body prickled with anticipation.
I squeezed my eyes shut.
Catch me.
Any second.
It’s too late. I’m already gone.
