Chapter 7
Atlas
I've been pacing for nine minutes.
Not visibly. I'm in the front parlor with the day's mail and a glass of water I haven't touched, doing a passable impression of a man who isn't waiting on a staircase. My brothers, neither of whom I asked for, are flanking me like I'm about to walk into a board meeting.
"You look fine," Bane says.
"I know I look fine."
"He's nervous," Zero mocks.
"I am not nervous."
Zero's draped across the arm of the couch in the t-shirt with the hole at the collar he won't replace. He's drinking Bane's beer that he stole on his way through the kitchen.
"You picked his tie out," he says.
"Yes."
"You picked his shoes out."
"Yes."
"You wrote him a note?"
"It said eight o'clock. It’s 8:03."
"Maybe he’s just making sure he looks hot for one of his boyfriends."
Bane is laughing into his beer. The traitor.
"Is the wine in the car?" I ask, tightening my tie.
"The wine's in the car," Bane confirms. "It's the one you texted me about three times. You're welcome."
"Thank you."
"Where are you taking him?"
"None of your business."
"Bertelli's?"
"No."
"The little place on—"
"Bane."
A floorboard creaks above us.
The third board from the banister. I know which board it is because I tracked which boards complained when, in the months Max was tiptoeing through this house at night trying to be invisible. The board creaks because he just stepped on it. He's on the landing.
He's about to come down.
I take in a deep inhale, my lungs filling with the air in this house that always holds a little bit of his scent.
I don't mean to. My body just does it.
Zero takes another unbothered sip of Bane's beer and watches me like he’s trying to diagnose me.
"Yeah," he says. "Yeah. You've lost it."
I think I have. I step into the foyer anyways.
Max is on the stairs.
Charcoal suit. White shirt, top button open and I can see the hollow where his collarbones meet. The tie I chose is in his hand. He's hesitating on the third stair and I realize he probably doesn’t know how to tie the tie.
He looks up.
He sees me.
His mouth parts on a soft smile and my heart lurches in my chest. He looks so fucking handsome it almost hurts.
His scent reaches me a second later. Vanilla. Honey. Something darker tonight—warm, like sugar at the edge of burning. The bond between his sternum and mine flares.
Mine.
The thought lands the way it always lands. Hard. Possessive. Total.
All fucking consuming.
"Hi," he says, on the stairs.
"Hi."
"I—I can't do the tie."
"Come here."
He comes. Three more stairs. He stops on the bottom one so we're roughly the same height, which puts his face a hand-span from mine, which is, possibly, deliberate. He looks at me through his lashes and lifts the tie like an offering.
"I tried."
"I know."
"I YouTubed it. Twice."
"Mm."
I take the tie out of his hand. Flip up his collar with two fingers. Feed the silk underneath. Start to knot it. Slow.
He's watching my hands.
He's watching my mouth.
He's not breathing.
The tie goes into a half-Windsor that'll hold all night. I run my thumb over the dimple to set it. My knuckles brush his throat and his pulse jumps under my skin.
Christ.
"There."
"...thank you."
"Mm."
I don't step back. He doesn't either. The bond between us has been pulsing steady-bright since he came down the stairs and now it's gone soft and warm in a way I haven't felt from him before.
He's pleased.
He's pleased and he isn't hiding it and he's letting me feel it.
I have, factually, never met this Max.
Bane clears his throat behind me.
"Atlas."
"Mm."
"Step aside."
I look at him over my shoulder.
He's in the parlor doorway with his arms crossed. Zero's pushed off the couch and come up beside him. Hands in his pockets. Head tipped the same angle as Bane's.
"He's not yours yet," Zero says. "The night's yours. Right now he's still ours."
The old reflex goes up in me.
Mine. Step off.
I let it pass.
I look at Max—pink at the throat, eyes flicking between his brothers and me, the bond between us going hot and pleased—and I step to the side of the foyer and lean against the wall.
"Be quick."
"We will be very fucking slow," Zero says, already moving past me.
Bane goes first.
He walks straight to Max. Cups his jaw with both hands. Looks at him for a long moment, the way Bane looks at things he's making sure are real.
"You look beautiful."
"Bane—"
"I want you to hear it. Beautiful. Say it."
"I'm not going to—"
"Say it."
"Bane, oh my god—"
"Say it."
Max rolls his eyes and I have to hide my smile.
"...I look beautiful."
"Better."
Bane smooths the lapel of the suit jacket I bought. Tucks the pocket square deeper into the breast pocket. Kisses his temple.
"Have fun, Maxie. Order the dessert."
"How did you—"
"Atlas is going to leave dessert up to you. He always orders the wine. Order the dessert."
"...okay."
"Promise."
"I promise."
Bane kisses his temple one more time. Steps back. Looks at Max with the small soft face he wears only around Max now.
Zero is already moving.
He doesn't go to Max gently.
He plants a hand flat on the wall beside Max's head and crowds in until their faces are an inch apart. His other hand finds the bond mark at the side of Max's throat with the unerring accuracy of a man who's memorized its location. His thumb settles there. His weight is a wall.
"I changed my mind."
"Zero—" I feel my nerves going haywire.
"I'm not letting you go."
"Zero—"
"Atlas can take himself to dinner. He's a grown man. You're staying with me."
"You—"
"I'll feed you. I'll put on music. I'll do unspeakable things to you on the staircase. You won't miss the duck."
Max is laughing, his hands fisted in the front of Zero's t-shirt and probably ripping that stupid hole bigger. Zero's looking down at him like he's genuinely considering kidnapping him on the spot.
For just a second I get the urge to get violent. To drag Zero away by the scruff of his neck and launch him off Max just for breathing the same air. But the feeling soothes almost as fast as it occurred.
I'm watching my brother flirt with my omega in my father's foyer ten feet from me, and I'm—
Happy.
Quietly. Privately. Wholly.
Ours. The new thought. The one I'm still learning the shape of.
I let it go through me.
I let it stay.
"Tell me to let you go," Zero says, into Max's mouth.
"...let me go."
"Mm. No."
"Zero."
"Fine."
Then Zero, lower, his voice gone to the place it goes when he means something he hates that he means: "You look devastating, baby. Don't have too good a time. I'll get jealous."
"I'll come home."
"You'd better."
He kisses Max—once, on the mouth, brief, dark, possessive—and steps back. Hands up. The showman's bow.
"He's all yours, Atlas."
Max is laughing still. Color in his cheeks. The bond between us is humming so loud I can feel it in my back teeth.
I push off the wall, cross the foyer. I take his hand and lead Max to the car.
I open his door for him like a real gentleman should. He folds himself into the passenger seat without comment. I close the door. Walk around to my side. Slide in.
The bond is still humming.
I don't say anything for the first few minutes of the drive. Neither does he. The road unspools under the headlights and I let myself sit in what just happened. The shape of it. My brothers loving on him in the foyer. The fact that I let them. The fact that I liked it.
The restaurant is forty minutes outside the city.
Not a place anyone I do business with would go.
Small. Old. A converted carriage house with eight tables and a wine list four pages thick and a ma?tre d' named Henrik who has known me since I was twenty-three and asks no questions when I make reservations under names that aren't mine.
He keeps a private dining room on the second floor.
I called Tuesday. He said yes before I finished the sentence.
Max stays quiet in the passenger seat. Then looks at me at a stoplight.
"You're not going to tell me where we're going?"
"Henrik's."
"...what's Henrik's?"
"Dinner."
He smiles and my heart melts. "Atlas…"
"Mm?"
"That isn't an answer."
I let the corner of my mouth move.
"Dinner. With you. In a room with a door I can close. Acceptable?"
He's silent for a beat.
"...yeah," he says. Soft. "Acceptable."
The light turns. We drive.
His hand drifts across the center console.
I take it.
His fingers are cool. Slim. He laces them through mine and squeezes once, and I feel the squeeze in places I have no business feeling a hand-hold.
Henrik meets us at the door. He kisses Max on both cheeks like Max is something he's been waiting his whole career to put hands on.
Calls him young sir. Max blushes like he's never been called sir in his life.
Henrik walks us up the back stairs to the second floor without saying a word to me about the wine bag in my hand or the hour or anything else.
The room is exactly as I asked.
One table. Two chairs. The garden lit gold through the window. Candles already lit. The wine I sent over Tuesday already breathing in a decanter on the sideboard.
Max stops in the doorway.
"...Atlas."
"Hm?"
"You—"
"Sit down, sweetheart."
He sits down.
Henrik pours. Henrik leaves. The door shuts behind him with the muffled click of a man who knows when to disappear.
We're alone.
Max picks up the wine glass with both hands. "This is the kind of place," he says, "I would not have let myself want, six months ago."
"I know."
"You knew that when you booked it, didn’t you?"
"Yes."
A beat.
"...thank you for planning it all."
I lift my wine glass and tip it to him. He takes a sip to hide a grin.
"You walked Margot down the aisle in a suit a size too big," I say.
His brows knit.