Chapter 6 #2
His skin was rough, warm. He flinched, but he didn't pull away. He turned his hand over, lacing his fingers through mine.
"It's not just physical, is it?" I asked. The question terrified me.
He stared at our joined hands. "No. It's not."
My phone buzzed on the table, vibrating aggressively against the Formica. The spell broke.
Atlas pulled his hand back instantly.
I looked at the screen.
Mother.
My stomach dropped. The warm, fuzzy feeling evaporated, replaced by a cold knot of dread.
"You should answer that," Atlas said, his voice back to neutral. "Might be important."
I picked up the phone. "Hello, Mother."
"Aurelia." Her voice was like ice clinking in a glass. Sharp. Clear. "Why haven't you answered my emails?"
"I'm... studying. I'm at the cabin. The service is bad."
"Don't give me excuses. I saw the bank statement. You spent four hundred dollars at a liquor store in Burlington before you left. Are you drinking again?"
"No," I lied. "That was... for a party. Before."
"We have the Gala on Christmas Eve," she continued, ignoring my defense. "The press will be there. I need to know if you fit into the dress I sent. If you've gained weight, I need to have the seamstress fly up there."
I felt myself shrinking. I wasn't twenty years old anymore. I was five, standing in a dance studio, being poked and prodded with a measuring tape while my mother sighed in disappointment.
"I haven't gained weight," I whispered.
"You sound unsure. And your skin? Is it clear? The stress usually makes you break out."
"I'm fine, Mother."
"You're not fine, Aurelia. You're a mess. Your father is furious about the balcony video. Do you have any idea how much it cost to scrub that from the local news?"
"I didn't mean to..."
"You never mean to. You just do. You are careless. You are selfish. And quite frankly, you are becoming a liability to this family's reputation."
My eyes stung. I blinked rapidly, refusing to cry in a diner. Refusing to cry in front of Atlas.
"I have to go, Mother. I'm studying."
"Make sure you pass," she snapped. "We didn't pay for that building just for you to flunk out."
The line went dead.
I lowered the phone slowly. My hand was shaking.
I looked up.
Atlas was watching me. He wasn't eating. He wasn't looking at the door. He was watching me with an intensity that made me want to crawl under the table.
He had heard. I knew he had heard. My mother’s voice was shrill enough to bleed through the speaker.
"She seems nice," Atlas said dryly.
I let out a short, hysterical laugh. "She's charming. A real ray of sunshine."
"Does she always talk to you like that?"
"Only when she's awake."
I picked up my fork, trying to stab a piece of lettuce. My hand shook so badly the fork rattled against the plate. I dropped it.
"I'm not hungry," I said, my voice tight. "Can we go?"
Atlas didn't move. "Aurelia."
"Please, Atlas. I just want to go back."
He signaled the waitress for the check. He paid. He stood up.
But when we got to the truck, he didn't start the engine.
We sat in the cold cab. The silence was different now. It wasn't tense. It was heavy with something else.
"My dad used to hit us," Atlas said suddenly.
I froze. I turned to look at him. He was staring out the windshield, his profile stark against the gray light.
"He was a drunk," Atlas continued, his voice devoid of emotion. "When he was happy, he was loud. When he was mad, he threw things. Me. My mom. Whatever was close."
"Atlas..."
"He told me I was useless. Every day. Said I was just another mouth to feed. Said I’d end up in the gutter like him."
He turned to look at me. His eyes were soft. Sad.
"I know what it sounds like, Aurelia. To hear the person who made you tell you that you're a mistake."
Tears pricked my eyes again. Hot. Fast. Overflowing.
"She doesn't hit me," I whispered. "She just... she carves me. Tiny little slices. Until there's nothing left."
"I know," he said.
He reached across the console. He didn't grab my hand. He reached up and tucked a loose strand of hair behind my ear. His thumb grazed my cheekbone, wiping away a tear I hadn't realized had fallen.
"You're not a mistake," he said firmly. "And you're not a liability."
"Then what am I?" I asked, my voice breaking.
He looked at me for a long moment, his thumb tracing the line of my jaw.
"You're the toughest person I know," he said. "You take it. You take the pressure. You take the criticism. And you still get up on those skates and spin until the world disappears."
I leaned into his touch. I couldn't help it. I was starving, and he was the only food in the world.
"I'm tired of being tough, Atlas."
"I know," he murmured. "So let me be tough for you."
The air in the cab shifted. The sexual tension was still there, buzzing underneath, but this was different. This was intimacy. This was him seeing the ugly, broken parts of me and not looking away.
He leaned in. I thought he was going to kiss me. I wanted him to kiss me.
But he didn't.
He pressed his forehead against mine. A hard, grounding pressure. We sat there, breathing the same air, sharing the same silence.
"We should go back," he whispered eventually. "Before the storm hits."
"Yeah," I breathed.
He pulled away slowly. He started the truck.
As we drove back up the mountain, the snow began to fall again—thick, heavy flakes that erased the world behind us.
I looked at Atlas. He was driving with both hands on the wheel now, focused.
I realized then that I was in trouble. Big trouble.
I wasn't just lusting after the Captain of the Sentinels. I wasn't just sleeping with the employee.
I was falling in love with the only man who had ever looked at me and seen a person instead of a prize.
And that terrified me more than any balcony, any scandal, or any fall. Because if I fell for Atlas Thorne... I didn't think I would survive the impact when he inevitably left.