Chapter 16
F or a beat the world went noise-less.
The carriage rocked once beneath us. Hooves clicked. Somewhere a gull heckled the tide. None of it landed.
I wanted to ooze through the floorboards. I wanted to jump over the wheel and swim to Fort Sumter. I wanted to rewind thirty seconds and also not change a single thing.
Atticus didn’t hurry. He rolled his shoulders, then stretched his arm casually across the back of the bench the way a man might after finishing a plate of oysters he’d opened himself. No shame. No apology. He looked at Stephen like they were meeting at a hardware store.
“Evening,” he said.
Alicia’s mouth did something I couldn’t name. Not a smile. Not shock. A private acknowledgment. “Hi,” she managed, voice smoother than mine would ever be again.
Stephen blinked. Twice. “Sim?”
I remembered how to breathe. Barely. “Hi.”
His focus cut to my face, searching for panic or duress or the magic words he could deploy to make a problem disappear. He found none. That, somehow, startled him more than anything else.
“Are you—” He didn’t finish the question because its end was an insult. Are you okay? Am I okay? I was soaked in okay. I was drenched in exactly-what-I-chose. It felt like sin to admit it in front of my little brother.
“I’m fine,” I said, too quickly, then steadier. “I’m good.”
Atticus didn’t touch me, but the heat of him at my side steadied the part of me that wanted to hide under the bench. He tipped his chin, the smallest nod toward Alicia that somehow read as respect and warning.
Alicia recovered quickly. Of course, she did. “You look beautiful,” she said to me, and made it sound like solidarity instead of judgment.
“Thank you,” I said, grateful enough to hug her.
Stephen dragged a hand down his jaw. “This is—wow. Okay.” His gaze bounced from the horse to the harness to anywhere but the place where his friend’s mouth had just been. “Are you two … what is this?”
“Tonight,” Atticus said.
I had to swallow a laugh. Alicia slid her hand along Stephen’s forearm, a small anchor. “We were just getting gelato,” she offered. “Across from the pineapple fountain. They do the pistachio with real nuts. Want to join us?”
The world split into two choices: flee or walk toward the people who loved me like I had nothing to hide. The thing inside me that had been hiding since the full moon lifted her head.
Atticus looked at me. Not to ask permission. To let me own the decision. Lady, without saying it.
I pulled my dress into order and nodded. “Gelato sounds perfect.”
Atticus tapped the driver’s boot with a folded bill that could have fed the horse for a month. “Wait here,” he said.
The driver had already decided he was blind.
We stepped down. The cobblestones were warm. Atticus didn’t take my hand. He walked close enough to qualify as a shadow.
We fell into step with Stephen and Alicia, the four of us moving toward the fountain where tourists took photos like it was a shrine. The pineapple threw light and water in overlapping circles. A violinist stationed nearby saw us coming and slid into something soft and expensive.
“New dress?” Alicia asked, making her voice glide over the absurdity of the scene.
“Today,” I said. “King Street. He picked it.”
She didn’t hide her interest when she glanced at Atticus, and I didn’t hate her for it. “He has taste.”
“I’ve noticed,” I said, which earned me a look from Stephen that said please stop putting mental images in my brain .
We reached the small stand that had sprung up under a palmetto, all gleaming silver tubs and chalkboard scribbles. Alicia ordered pistachio and blood orange. Stephen went for chocolate.
Atticus didn’t order. He handed Alicia his card, which she tried to refuse on principle and then accepted. He took nothing for himself and then, when my cup arrived, stole the first bite with a small, insolent dip of the spoon.
“You don’t—” I started.
He lifted an eyebrow. “I do now.”
The spoon was still warm when I took it back. My knees threatened to do something stupid.
We found a bench with a view of the water and the eternal photo ops.
Families posed with toddlers who blinked under the spray.
A couple in matching pastel leaned into each other.
A group of students debated loudly whether ghosts were real while a tour guide tried to make them pay attention to colonial history.
The city breathed around us, indifferent and intimate at once.
Alicia perched like a ballerina. Stephen sprawled with false ease. Atticus occupied space like a verdict.
For a minute we did the small talk thing, because it was easy.
“How’s the shop?” Stephen asked, bless him for the lifeline he chose.
“Busy,” I said. “Full moon brought two babies in twenty-four hours.”
Alicia laughed. “You’re my idol.”
“I shouldn’t be,” I said. “I forgot to eat one day and cried over a protein bar in my car.”
Atticus’s thigh pressed lightly against mine. Barely there. Intention more than contact. I kept my face straight like it didn’t turn my bones to something unreliable.
Stephen shot him a look over the gelato, the silent message a wall of brother instincts holding back a flood. Atticus looked back with a calm that invited a fight and also promised to walk away from one if he had to, for me.
I didn’t know how I knew that. I just did.
“How’s work?” I lobbed at Stephen, mostly to give his body something to do with adrenaline besides puff his chest.
“Busy,” he said. “I’m catching up now that I’m back in town. Nothing pressing yet, just a dozen small fires to stomp.”
“Romance,” Alicia said.
“The sexiest,” he deadpanned.
I let the chatter wash for a minute, the safe domesticity of siblings and significant others doing what people did at night in this city—eat sugar, breathe salt, pretend time was gentle.
Under it all, the ache rang a clean note.
What had just happened in that carriage was still loud in my body.
What might happen when we went wherever we were going next pulsed like a drum under the bench.
I finished my gelato because Atticus had told me earlier to eat everything on the plate and I was now trained to listen.
The spoon scraped the bottom of the cup.
He glanced down at the sound and then met my eyes.
The look said good girl without saying a word.
Heat climbed my throat in a rush I could have been mad at.
If it hadn’t made me feel like I’d caught fire, in a good way.
Alicia set her cup aside. “So, you two,” she said, light like she was discussing weather, curious like she was about to ask a smart question in a meeting. “This is new. Or not?” She cut me a playful look that took some of the sting out of doing this in public.
“It’s … today,” I said, and heard how stupid and honest it sounded.
“Today,” Atticus echoed, a confirmation and a warning wrapped together.
Stephen’s jaw flexed. “How does this work?”
Atticus held his gaze. “Like adults.”
“Adults who tell my mother?” Stephen shot back, then scrubbed a hand over his face. “Sorry. That came out wrong. I’m not trying to—” He blew out a breath. “You know how I get.”
“Like a golden retriever who thinks the mailman is a threat,” Alicia said, soothing and sly.
He nudged her with his shoulder, grateful.
“I’m not hiding,” I said. “I just—” My eyes found the water. The dark shine of it. “It’s complicated. And simple.”
Alicia looked between us. “Complicated in the way that big things are, or complicated in the way that men make them?”
“Both,” I said.
Stephen turned his cup in his hands. “You’re sure?” He looked at me, not at Atticus. “I’ll back off if you are. I’ll go feral if you aren’t.”
“I’m sure,” I said, and I felt the weight of it settle into my ribs. The certainty wasn’t tidy. It was louder than fear.
Atticus didn’t nod like he’d won. He sat very still like I’d given him a piece of glass he didn’t intend to drop.
We fell into lighter talk, because you can only sit so close to the edge of a cliff for so long.
Alicia mentioned a book she’d recently read.
Stephen told an absurd story about the twins trying to borrow my blender for “a science project” that would have cost the security deposit on their apartment. We laughed. It helped.
Under the table, Atticus’s hand found my knee. He didn’t move it. He didn’t stroke. He set it there like he was anchoring me to the bench so I wouldn’t float off from wanting. The contact was a quiet claim.
Not a show. Not for them. For me.
Alicia watched me watch him and then, with the grace of a woman who understood more than she said, switched the subject to herself so I could not answer any questions with my face. “I tried that barre class Stephen said you like,” she told me. “I discovered new muscles and new hate.”
“You’ll love it in two weeks,” I said. “You’ll hate it again in three months. Then you’ll quit and go back. It’s a cycle.”
“Like the moon,” she said, and I choked on a laugh.
Stephen checked his watch. “We should—” He stopped. The pause lengthened, attention sharpening in his eyes. I saw the trail of his thoughts like footprints.
His gaze cut to Atticus. “Wait. Is this that thing?” His voice didn’t rise. It thinned. “The—” He didn’t say the name. He didn’t have to. “Is that what you’re doing with my sister?”
Alicia’s hand closed around his wrist. “Stephen,” she said, warning and plea together.
Atticus didn’t flinch. He didn’t lean back. He didn’t puff up. He looked at my brother like he’d been preparing for this exact line of query since he was born. “I’m with her,” he said. “Not with a ‘thing.’”
“That’s not an answer,” Stephen shot back.
“It’s the only one you get from me,” Atticus said, mild as an open palm and somehow harder than a fist. “From her, you’ll get everything she wants you to know and nothing she doesn’t. That’s how it works.”
Alicia squeezed Stephen’s wrist again, harder this time. “Breathe.”
He did, because he’s a good man when reminded. He stared at me. “Sim?”
I could tell him the truth in a dozen configurations. None of them would satisfy the part of him that wanted to wrap me in bubble wrap. I picked the one that was both honest and kind.
“I wrote a letter,” I said. “It found the person it was supposed to. I’m where I want to be.”
Stephen’s jaw flexed. “And he’s your?—”
“My choice,” I said.
The words landed. I watched them hit him, watched the understanding and the jealousy and the protectiveness jostle for space. He rubbed his thumb along the edge of the paper cup like it could sand the feeling down.
“Do you trust him?” he asked, eyes on me, not on Atticus.
“Yes,” I said, the answer simple even if nothing else was. “And I trust myself.”
Something in him loosened a notch. “And if it goes sideways?”
“I’ll tell you before the smoke clears.” A promise I could keep.
He looked at Atticus one beat longer. “If she texts me and I don’t like the words, I won’t call first.”
“Understood,” Atticus said. No flinch. No bravado. Just fact.
Stephen nodded once, a rough treaty. “Okay.”
Alicia exhaled the breath she’d been holding for both of us and stood, dusting sugar from her hands. “I’m going to put this cup in the bin before a seagull grabs it.”
Stephen rose with her, still conflicted and trying not to be messy about it.
He leaned toward me, pressed a quick kiss to my hair like we were in a kitchen and not out here under a sky full of people.
“Text me when you’re home,” he said, then made a face, self-aware and still a brother. “Or when you’re done not being home.”
“Love you,” I said, because the kindest thing you can do to a man trying to be good is remind him he already is.
“Love you, too,” he muttered, and let Alicia pull him toward the walkway, his protective field trailing after them like a cape.
We sat for a second, the bench reclaiming our weight, the fountain shushing like a grandmother telling the evening to behave. The violinist drifted into something melancholy and rich. Children squealed, tourists posed, the city pretended this was another random day.
Atticus watched Stephen and Alicia until they disappeared behind a group of laughing bridesmaids. Only then did he turn back to me, the line of his mouth easing a degree.
“You held your line,” he said.
“So did you,” I said, and meant it. “Thank you for not … performing.”
“I don’t audition,” he said. “And I don’t argue with brothers in public.”
“Wise,” I said, breathier than the joke deserved.
He let his hand fall to my knee again, the same quiet weight as before, the same not-for-show claim. My body answered with humiliating gratitude.
“Ready?” he asked.
“For what?”
“For the part you wrote,” he said, standing, offering his hand like a formality that also meant surrender.
I took it. The city breathed. The pineapple threw diamonds. The night gathered its hem and stepped out of our way.
We walked back toward the carriage, the driver still practicing advanced blindness, the horse patient as a saint. Atticus handed the man another folded bill, low and discreet. “Private route back,” he said again, and the words slid over me like a hand down my spine.
I climbed in. He followed. The wheels grumbled, then smoothed. Charleston unspooled—ironwork and shadow, magnolia and hush.
Behind us, somewhere beyond the circle of our making, I knew Stephen was replaying that minute until it lost all oxygen. I knew Alicia was rubbing his shoulder, telling him what I would have told him, if my hands weren’t busy holding on to the edge of the night.
Ahead of us, the route bent darker and quieter, like the city had reserved a corner for what came next.
I set my palms on the bench and straightened.
“Text your brother,” Atticus said, not looking away from the water beyond the street, as the horse found its rhythm.
I thumbed two words into my phone: I’m safe .
The dots appeared. Disappeared. Then: I know .
I put the phone away.
“Good,” Atticus murmured, and the word wrapped around my ribs like a band that held and did not constrict.
The carriage turned, the hooves’ cadence slowing as we slipped into a lane draped with live oaks. The lamps were sparser here; the night pressed close, thick and fragrant. The rest of the city fell away.
“Now,” he said, voice low enough that only the dark heard it. “Where were we?”
The horse snorted. The leather settled. The bench creaked under the weight of what I’d asked for.
I swallowed, felt my pulse stutter, and met the night head-on. “Exactly where you left me,” I said. “Wanting more.”
The corner of his mouth lifted, a promise sharpened to a point. “Then let’s finish building.”