Chapter 18 #2
He stands and lifts me off the ground. I don't fight it. I don't have anything left to fight with. He picks me up the way he picked me up on the dock—arms under my back and knees, my head against his chest—and carries me to the car.
Atlas opens the back door. Bane slides in with me still in his arms, pulling me onto his lap, my legs across the seat, my face tucked into his neck.
He doesn't rearrange. Doesn't shift me to a more practical position.
He keeps me exactly where I am—pressed against his chest, no space between us, not a single inch—and his arms tighten like he's daring the universe to try and take me again.
Atlas gets behind the wheel. I feel his bond pulse once—steady, deliberate. The Atlas version of I'm here.
He drives.
I feel the estate leaving more than I see it. The turns I've memorized—the bend past the gardens, the dip near the tree line, the long straight stretch toward the main road. Each one pulling me further from the place that was never really mine but held everything I love.
"Bane," I whisper low enough that I know only he can hear me.
"Mm."
"I love you." Into the crook of his neck. My mouth against his pulse. "I love you. I'm sorry about the library. I'm sorry I ran. I should have said it then."
His hand tightens in my hair. His chest hitches once—one sharp inhale that he swallows before it becomes anything else.
"Say it again," he says. Rough. Barely there.
"I love you."
"Again."
"I love you, Bane."
His mouth presses against the top of my head.
He holds it there. I can feel him shaking—the fine tremor running through his whole body, the tremor he's been hiding all night because Bane doesn't shake, Bane is the steady one, Bane is the floor.
But the floor is shaking right now and I'm lying on it and I don't mind. Let it shake. I'm not going anywhere.
The drive is short. Fifteen minutes. Atlas parks in the underground lot and Bane carries me to the elevator and the elevator takes us up and the doors open and it's the Ellsworth.
Same hallway. Same carpet. Same specific hotel smell of clean linen and recirculated air that I don't remember but my body does—I feel something twitch in my chest, a muscle memory from one of the worst nights of my life landing in the softest place I'd ever been.
Atlas opens the suite door. Bane sets me on the couch. Wraps a blanket around my shoulders. Goes to the kitchen and comes back with ice wrapped in a hand towel. Presses it gently to my cheekbone.
"Hold this."
I hold it. The cold stings and then numbs and then stings again.
Atlas sits beside me. Not touching—just there. Present. His elbows on his knees, his hands laced together. He hasn't said much since the fountain. He doesn't need to. The bond between us is doing the talking—steady, open, the quietest it's been in weeks.
We wait for Zero.
He takes thirty-two minutes. I count because counting is the only thing keeping me from truly falling apart from all the emotions, and I need to wait until he's here to do that. I need all three of them in the room. I need the bonds to be close, not pulling, not stretching across distance.
Close. Here.
The door opens.
Zero comes in carrying two duffel bags, my notebook under his arm, and a grocery bag that clanks when he sets it down.
"Grabbed some things from the kitchen," he says. "And some of Bane's coffee because the stuff here is shit."
"Did you see—" Atlas starts.
"Richard was in his office. Door closed. Didn't come out." Zero drops the bags by the couch. Sets my notebook on the coffee table. Looks at me. "Margot's car is still gone."
I nod. I knew it would be. She’s probably worried sick about me.
Zero sits on the floor in front of the couch. His back against my shins, his head tipped back against my knees. He's wearing a shirt—one of mine, I realize. Too small on him. He must have grabbed it from my room and put it on without thinking.
He's wearing my shirt.
The thing inside me that I've been holding—the wall, the dam, the whatever-it-is that has kept me upright since this morning, since the foyer, since everything—cracks.
I break.
Not gracefully. Not quietly. The sob comes up from somewhere underneath my lungs and it tears through me on the way out and then there's another one behind it and another and I'm crying the way I haven't cried since the facility.
The full-body kind. The kind that uses everything—chest, throat, stomach, every muscle in my face.
It hurts to cry this hard and I don't care.
Zero turns around. Gets up on his knees, facing me. His hands on my thighs.
Bane pulls me in from the side. His chest against my shoulder, his arm around me, his mouth in my hair.
Atlas moves closer. His hand on the back of my neck. Thumb at my pulse point. Steady. Anchoring.
"I was so scared," I manage. Between sobs.
Between breaths that won't come right. "I was so scared the whole time.
At the station—I sat in that chair and I told them everything and the whole time I kept thinking…
what if I never see them again. What if Margot takes me to Wisconsin and I never—what if Richard—what if you—"
"We're here," Bane says. "We're right here."
"I know. I know you're here. I can feel you." I press my hand against my sternum. The bonds—all three of them—humming so loud I can feel it in my teeth. "I can always feel you. Even at the station. Even when I couldn't hear anything through the ringing. You were right here the whole time."
I look at Zero. His face is close. His eyes are wet again.
"I love you," I tell him. "I love you so much it makes me stupid. You make me stupid, Zero. You and your big dumb hands and your forty-five-minute negotiations and the way you carried me to the pond. Even when you hurt me, I love you."
He doesn't say anything. He drops his forehead against my knee and holds on.
I look at Bane. His glasses are fogged from being pressed against my hair.
"I love you. I think I loved you from the moment you walked into the facility to be with me. I’ve never felt more seen by anyone before, Bane. I'm never running again."
Bane's hand tightens in my hair. He nods. Once. Can't speak.
I look at Atlas. He's watching me with the wet eyes and the broken mask and his hand still on my neck.
"I love you. You gave me structure when I didn't have any. You gave me a tie and a restaurant and a hotel room and every single one of those things was you saying you're worth this and I didn't believe you at first but I believe you now. I believe you."
Atlas leans forward. Presses his forehead against mine. Skin against skin. The same gesture from the pond, except this time I'm the one saying how I feel.
We stay like that for a long time. The four of us on a hotel couch, tangled together, crying or trying not to cry or done crying and just breathing. The bonds wide open and steady. No pulling. No stretching. Just here.
Eventually the tears slow. The breathing evens. Zero's head is in my lap. Bane is beside me with his hand still in my hair. Atlas is on my other side, his shoulder against mine, his hand still on my neck.
I breathe in deep and sit up a little straighter. "I… need to call Margot."
Bane reaches into his pocket. Hands me his phone without a word.
I dial her number. I know it by heart—she made me memorize it the week she adopted me, before I had a phone of my own. In case of emergency, sweetheart. You call this number and I will come get you.
It rings four times. Voicemail. Her recorded voice—bright, steady, the Margot from before last night—asking me to leave a message.
"Mom. It's me. I'm safe. I'm—" My voice wavers. I press my hand against my thigh. "I'm safe. Call me back. I'm on Bane's phone."
I hang up. Set the phone on my knee.
It rings eleven seconds later.
I pick up.
"Max?" Her voice is wrecked. Hoarse. She's been crying for hours. She must have seen Bane's number flash across her screen a dozen times tonight and sent every one to voicemail—but this message was my voice, not his. "Max, oh God. Where are you? Are you safe? I've been—"
"I left my phone at the house. I'm safe. I'm at a hotel with the boys."
The silence that follows is a different kind. The kind that has edges.
"With them..."
"With them, Mom. That's what I need to talk to you about."
I can hear her breathing. Unsteady. The shaky inhale of someone bracing for something they don't want to hear.
"They didn't hurt me," I say. Steady. Clear. There’s no more room for misunderstandings. I won’t let there be.
"I need you to hear that. What you saw last night—what Richard saw—it isn't what you think.
They didn't take advantage of me. They didn't manipulate me. I'm not a victim, Mom. Not of them."
"Max—"
"I know what it looks like. I know how it sounds. Three older brothers and a younger omega under the same roof—I know the story you're telling yourself right now because it's the same story Richard told himself in the foyer and it's wrong. It's wrong, Mom."
Her breathing catches. I keep going.
"I love them. All three of them. I've loved them for months. It started because of the bond but it stayed because of who they are. Who I am when I'm with them. They didn't make me smaller. They made me brave enough to be the size I actually am."
I can hear her crying. Quiet. Trying not to let me hear it.
"Mom, there's something else. Something I need to tell you that's going to be hard to hear."
Her breathing changes. Bracing.
"A few months ago—while I was living in the house, while you were there—I was taken. By an organization that traffics omegas." I close my eyes. Bane's hand tightens in my hair. "They had me in a facility. A cell. They were going to sell me."
"What?" The word is barely a sound. "Max—when? Wnen you were—you said you were staying with a friend on campus—"