Chapter 36 Atlas
Atlas
I told myself I was only standing there to make sure she was safe. Even though I knew that was a lie. I knew with everything in me that the tarot reader was possibly the one true friend Neve had, and she would never do anything to hurt her.
I pressed against the outside of her bedroom door like a sinner begging at a confessional, my jaw clenched so hard my teeth ached. I should have walked away. I should have let her have her moment with her friend.
But the second she squealed—squealed—and ran into that woman’s arms, something in me knotted tight and refused to let go. She had sounded alive. Happy. Untouched by fear for the first time since I’d found her. And it wrecked me in a way a bullet never could.
I shifted my weight when I heard the bed creak beneath them. My fingertips brushed the doorframe. I shouldn’t have listened. But the moment Zelda shuffled the cards, something in my blood went still.
Tarot. Fate. A crossroads. A door begging to be opened.
I didn’t give a damn about superstitions, but the second she pulled the first card, her voice carried clear.
“The Tower.”
Destruction. Trauma.
Yeah. That one was mine. My chest tightened, and a sour heat climbed my throat. She was talking about Neve—about the destruction that had found her, almost ending her.
I should have left. But I didn’t.
A card slid. Paper rustled.
“The Emperor.”
A man, she told me. A powerful one.
The temperature in the hallway dropped. I knew what that card meant. I knew exactly the type of man she was describing.
My hands curled into fists at my sides.
Then the next card hit the bed.
“The Devil.”
I almost choked.
Obsession. Possession. Something wrong, but inevitable.
My heartbeat hammered under my ribs like it was trying to break out. There was a thick, dark coil in my gut—something primal, something territorial—that surged up and sank its teeth into my sanity.
Because she flustered. I could hear it in her voice, soft and shaky, like the truth was peeling out of her piece by piece. And her friend… her friend got bolder.
“Is there a man here I don’t know about?”
Neve stammered out a denial so weak it made my jaw twitch.
The heat between us—door or not—crackled.
I breathed in through my nose and exhaled slow. If I didn’t, I would have opened the damn door and dragged her into my arms just to hear her heartbeat instead of her lies.
Another card. Another verdict.
“The Knight of Swords.”
A warrior. He saved you.
My pulse stuttered.
Saved was a generous word for what I’d done. For what I was still willing to do. But then… then she flipped the last card.
“The Lovers.”
Something in my chest stopped. Then restarted. Harder. Rougher. Meaner. Like my heart was trying to beat its way out and into her hands. The air thickened. I could barely breathe around it.
Zelda’s voice turned soft. Serious.
“There’s a bond here… a real one. It’s already in motion.”
My head dropped forward until it rested against the wood. I closed my eyes.
Because I knew. I already fucking knew.
The second I’d seen her standing in my home—dark hair, bruises blooming like violets on her throat, eyes too wide and too brave—I’d known there was no world where I would let her go.
And now her cards were saying the same thing I’d been fighting not to say out loud.
She was mine.
Not because I’d asked for her or because I deserved her. But because fate—or chaos—had shoved her into my life and now I couldn’t look at a single door without imagining her behind it.
Zelda’s voice broke through the haze.
“Just be sure this man deserves you.”
I gritted my teeth until pain sparked up my jaw. Because I was not a man who deserved anything that beautiful. But I would burn alive before I let anything touch her.
Her laugh drifted through the door—small, nervous, trying to pretend nothing had changed.
Yet everything had. She didn’t know that her cards had just tied a rope around my throat and pulled on it.
I stood there, breathing like a starving animal, fighting the urge to rip the door open and tell her exactly what the universe already knew: that there was a reason we kept crossing paths.
The moment I heard Zelda’s cards slide back into their pouch, I pushed away from the door. I didn’t want to be caught listening, and I didn’t want Neve to see me like this, with my jaw locked, breath uneven, my pulse punching through my skin, begging for release.
The door opened.
Neve stepped into the hall, her eyes searching for me before anything else.
And when she found me? Christ. It hit like a blow.
Her face was still flushed from the reading, her lips parted, her hair a little messy.
She looked warm. Alive. And every damn card Zelda had pulled was still echoing in my skull like a prophecy.
The Emperor.
The Devil.
The Lovers.
Zelda appeared behind her, slinging her bag over her shoulder. “Alright, big man,” she chirped, “walk me out before your hallway eats me.”
Neve snorted a laugh. It was small but nervous. She had no idea I was seconds from tearing the universe apart for her.
I nodded, because if I stayed there with Neve while she was looking at me like that, I would do something I couldn’t undo.
I guided Zelda down the hall. She chattered, but I barely heard her. All I could think of were those damn tarot cards, and the way she had hinted at a possessive man in her life.
Outside, Alessio was waiting by the black SUV, leaning on the hood with that shit-eating grin he saved for annoying his boss.
“Got your girl,” I told him bluntly.
Zelda cooed, “Oh! A chaperone. How cute.”
Alessio’s eyebrows shot up before he laughed and bowed. “I’m just the cab driver today, my queen.”
She waved to me and slid into the car.
Alessio caught my eye before he shut her door. He saw it. The storm in my expression. He didn’t make a joke or even smirk. He just nodded once. And drove away.
The apartment felt too small when I stepped back inside. I walked down the hall, trying to contain the violence brimming inside me.
Neve stood in the living room, her hands clasped in front of her like she was holding herself together. The light from the window painted her in gold, and I hated it. I hated how breakable she looked. I hated how much I wanted to drag her into my arms and never let her go.
I stopped three feet from her. Any closer and I would lose control.
“You okay?” I asked, though my voice came out lower than I intended. Rougher. Like it hurt to actually speak.
She nodded. “Thank you… for bringing her.”
“I thought you could use the company.”
Her breath caught. She tried to hide it, but I saw everything. Felt everything. The way her pulse kicked in her throat. The way her knees subtly shifted like she was grounding herself.
“You were standing outside the room.”
“Yes.” I replied without hesitation, because I would never lie to her. “I was.”
Silence stirred between us—thick, jagged, spiraling into something dangerous.
Her eyes flickered to my jaw, my chest, then back up. “You heard the reading.”
It wasn’t a question.
“Enough of it,” I admitted. “Probably more than I should have.”
She stepped toward me once. Just once. But it was enough to break the last thread holding me steady. My hands fisted at my sides.
“I’m trying. I’m really trying.”
“Trying to what?” Her voice was soft. Barely a whisper.
“To stay away from you.”
Her lips parted. Her fingers twitched toward me like her body moved before her mind could.
“And if you stop trying?” she asked.
I took a steady step toward her. Then another. Until her breath hit my chest.
My hand lifted—slow, shaking—then cupped her jaw, my thumb brushing her cheek like it was the first touch I’d allowed myself in decades.
Her eyes fluttered. “Atlas…”
I bowed my forehead to hers. And something inside me snapped.
“I won’t stop,” I breathed, my voice thick, dangerous. “Not unless you tell me to.”
She didn’t. Her breath ran out in a trembling exhale, and in it I heard permission. I felt her need and her surrender.
My other hand slid to the back of her neck, drawing her closer. I felt her hands rise to my chest, her fingers curling over my shirt like she was anchoring herself to the storm.
Our lips hovered. Barely touching. Barely surviving the distance.
“Tell me to walk away,” I whispered against her mouth.
She didn’t move.
“Tell me to let you go.”
Her fingers fisted in my shirt.
“Neve—”
“Don’t,” she breathed, desperate. “Don’t go.”
That was all it took. I crushed my mouth to hers, hungry, furious, relieved, like I’d been starving for the taste of her and somehow had known she’d be the only thing that could break me open.
She gasped, and I caught it with my lips. She leaned in, and I held her tighter. She trembled, and I steadied her. Because I was done pretending I could stand in a room and act like she wasn’t already under my skin.
I wasn’t gentle or polite. It was a collision—two storms meeting in the center and deciding to burn the world down together.
And for the first time since the day I’d found her bruised and terrified in that club, I felt alive.