Chapter 21
A tticus rolled onto his back and pulled me with him.
I went, unworried, my leg thrown over his hip, my cheek on his chest. His hand found the base of my skull. He liked me there. I liked being there, which was a revolution I hadn’t known I was marching toward.
He didn’t let me drift far. He checked in with the smallest touches. The press of his palm. The sweep of fingers along my back. My body answered with small aftershocks, pleasure turning into a kind of peace that felt like a lake after storms.
“Water,” he said, after a while.
I made a noise that meant I didn’t want to move ever again.
I didn’t.
“It’s not a request.”
He eased me up and went to the bathroom and came back with a glass.
He kept one hand on me while I drank like he was keeping me from falling off the Earth.
He set the glass down and came back with a warm cloth.
He didn’t make a performance of it. He cleaned me with a care that had nothing to prove.
It stole my breath more than anything else.
“Thank you,” I said, small and raw.
“You’re welcome,” he said in the tone of a man who prefers actions to speeches. He folded the cloth and set it aside. He rested his chin on the top of my head.
We watched the city darken from the horizontal. There’s a particular color water takes when the last of day lets go. He let me see it. He didn’t make me move until I wanted to again.
“Say something true,” he said finally, voice quiet.
“I didn’t know my body could feel like this,” I said. “Not just the heat. The quiet after. The part where I don’t come back smaller.”
He exhaled in a way that told me my words had landed. “Good.”
“Your turn,” I said.
He was silent long enough I thought he might dodge. He didn’t. “I don’t sleep much,” he said. “Not really. Not full. The last time I did, it was on a boat that shouldn’t have been where it was. I was a kid. That ended the day the water took something I couldn’t get back.”
I lifted my head. I looked at his face. The scar near his mouth changed shape when he said certain words. I touched the edge of it, gentle.
“You slept last night,” I said. “Some.”
“With you on my chest,” he said. “My mind shut up. I didn’t know it could.”
The words slid into me and found a spot that had been waiting. I knew what it meant to have a mind that wouldn’t stop talking. I knew the sacredness of quiet.
“Where do you live?” I asked, because the question had been circling.
He looked at the ceiling like there was an answer written there in tiny script. “I have a few places. One downtown, with a view I almost ignore. One by the river, above a warehouse, where no one looks up if I come in late. A little place on James Island that smells like pluff mud and old wood.”
“Which one is home?”
He turned his head, thinking. He didn’t answer fast. “The one where I leave my watch on the counter and forget it,” he said finally. “That changes.”
“Who are you?” I asked, softer. “Really?”
He propped himself on an elbow. He used the other hand to keep me close. He took his time again, and I felt the shape of the words before he gave them to me.
“I move things that need moving,” he said. “Sometimes it’s paper. Sometimes it’s steel. Sometimes it’s people who don’t fit in anyone else’s plan. I keep routes clean. I close doors that shouldn’t be open. I open doors that should never have been closed.”
“And if someone tries to keep a door open that you want shut?”
“Then I show up,” he said. He didn’t change tone. That was the part that made the truth dark. “I remind them why the door closes.”
That was all vague as hell. Same as the last time we’d talked about it.
“Does this make you dangerous?” The question came out like a breath I had been holding.
“Only to people who forget the rules they agreed to,” he said.
“And what are your rules?” I asked. “For me.”
“Tell me the truth,” he said. “Eat. Sleep. Keep saying yes on purpose. Don’t run when you want to hide. Don’t hide when you want to be seen. If you need a leash, you ask for it, and you tell me when to take it off.”
Heat rolled through me again.
“What are your rules for me?” he asked back.
“Don’t move pieces in my life without telling me first,” I said. “If you spend money on my world, you let me see the numbers. If I say stop, you stop. And if Stephen gets loud, you don’t bare your teeth at him.”
“I didn’t,” he said, amused. “And I’ve known him for years. I can handle his bark.”
“Good. You don’t have to like him every minute,” I said. “I respect that you’re his friend. You respect that he’s my brother. I love him.”
He nodded once. Agreement. Not performance.
We fell quiet. I watched the boat lights stitch across the water. He smoothed my hair, gentle, then tugged it once the way he knew would make my breath catch. The simplicity of the move did more to my chest than the hunger did. It meant he remembered. He paid attention.
“Tell me about your mother,” he said.
“You met her. Briefly. At Stephen’s party,” I said, and his mouth tipped like he remembered. “Francine Rogers will like you while telling me you make her nervous. She’ll bring you pie and stare at your hands like they can fix her dryer and the state of the world. She’ll turn you into a parable.”
“I don’t audition for mothers,” he said.
“You already did,” I said. “You just didn’t know it.”
My eyes flicked to the side of his neck, the one that caught light when he turned just so. The cleaver inked there often disappeared into shadow, but once you noticed it, you couldn’t unsee it. Some people missed it. My mother wouldn’t. She’d spot it from a mile away and call it what it was—scary.
He groaned and rolled onto his back. I followed.
I had the sudden urge to sprawl across him like a cat who had claimed a sunspot. I did. He took it as his due.
After a while, he slid out from under me and stood, all long lines and quiet strength.
He padded to the kitchen and came back with more water and a peach cut with the same precision he brought to everything.
He fed me a slice. The juice dripped on his fingers and I took that, too, a slow suck that made his jaw flex and my stomach flip.
His eyes went darker. He let me finish the peach in small pieces, controlling the pace with his gaze.
“Shower again,” he said at last. “Then we keep going.”
“I can’t,” I said, though I wanted to. “Not yet. My legs are on strike.”
He laughed under his breath. “Good,” he said. “Learn to ask for ten minutes.”
“I’ll ask for twenty,” I said.
“You get fifteen.”
We bargained without malice. It felt like flirting and a life skill.
In the shower, I leaned my head against the tile and let the water beat the last of the adrenaline out of places the night had stored it.
I watched steam write soft messages on the glass and thought of how I had written a letter for one night and ended up with a man who bought my shop a net and then laid me down like I was made of something he had never broken and didn’t intend to start.
Was I incredibly fortunate, or what?
When I came out, he was at the window again, one hand on the glass. He turned when he heard me. The look he gave me was a second wave. My legs didn’t care what I had promised. They went soft again.
“You keep asking what I do,” he said as I crossed to him. “Here is part of the answer. I hold the line. I set the pace. I take the hit so the people who are mine don’t have to.”
We were making progress, little by little.
“I’m not cargo,” I said.
He looked offended. “I didn’t say you were. You’re a partner. I don’t put partners in boxes. I put them where they can see the board.”
“Show me the board,” I said, bold because he had just ruined and remade me.
“I will,” he said. “Piece by piece.”
“And your home?” I asked, circling back because I wanted something solid. “Which address will I be given when I want to send you soup?”
“The river,” he said. “The one above the warehouse. No one watches my door there.”
“I’ll watch it,” I said.
He smiled. “Good.”
He reached for me again, and I went. He turned me toward the glass because it was our ritual now, but it was different this time. Softer. His mouth in my hair and on my temple. His hands firm and sure and patient. We moved together like we had learned a language and could finally stop translating.
Later, when the sky had shifted and the bridge had put its diamonds back on, I lay on my stomach with my face turned toward him. He rested on his side, propped on an elbow, tracing my shoulder with idle fingers.
“You look alive,” he said.
I smiled, then nodded.
“Atticus,” I said, because I liked saying his name. “What happens next?”
“We keep today alive tomorrow,” he said. “We don’t pretend this should be small. We don’t make this harder than it needs to be, and we don’t make it easy when it should be hard.”
“That’s sort of a lot,” I said.
“You like rules,” he said. “You like finding the right ones.”
“Say Lady,” I said, because the word did something to me.
He dipped his head. The sound lived in his chest before it lived in his mouth. “Lady.”
I closed my eyes, not to hide, but to hold it.
When I opened them, he was watching me like he had all night. Like he would learn me every day and never be bored. I reached up and touched his mouth. He kissed my fingertips. He took my wrist and kissed the inside.
He said nothing else. He didn’t need to.