Chapter 29
Me to me: you can be a little unhinged today, as a treat.
— Atlas’s secret thoughts
ATLAS
“ Yeah !” I laughed at the little boy who’d just jumped down from the SWAT truck. “ Good jump, kid.”
“ Thank you so much,” the mother of the boy said. “ He was so looking forward to this.”
“ Oh , yeah?” I asked. “ I’m glad y’all could make it out.”
The woman left with her child, and once again I started to scan the area for my girl.
She was nowhere to be found.
I frowned, glanced at my watch, and reached once again for my phone.
Again , like the last four times that I’d checked it, the phone showed no signal.
“ Goddammit , AT & T ,” I grumbled, shoving my phone back into my pocket.
Out of all the days for it to go out, it had to be when I was waiting for the love of my life to get here with my son.
I rubbed at my chest, an unfamiliar feeling take over me.
Something was wrong.
I just knew it.
“ She’s fine.” My mother laughed. “ You’re being extra, Atlas .”
I rubbed at my chest harder. “ I know she’s probably fine. I just have this really bad feeling.”
“ Like the kinds of feeling you get when you can’t ring the bell?” she asked, able to read me like a book she’d written.
“ Well ,” I hesitated as I thought about it. “ Yes .”
“ You know, I noticed something the last few weeks,” she said.
I crossed my arms over my chest.
She patted my arms. “ Put those down. You look unapproachable, and we want the kids to come visit you.”
I dropped my arms, but my mind was spinning.
“ I haven’t had to…”
“ You haven’t had to ring the bell since you started seeing her,” she agreed. “ You came over the other day, and I didn’t know you were there.”
My mouth opened and closed as I realized the implications. “ Do you think she fixed me?”
“ I think she gave you something else to focus on instead of your compulsions.” She shrugged. “ Fixed , probably not.”
“ Oh ,” I thought about the last time that I’d rang any bells or double-checked any doors.
It’d been… weeks.
A few very long weeks.
“ Hey , Mr . Officer .”
I looked down to see a young boy standing there with the curliest brown hair I’d ever seen.
“ Hey there,” I said to him.
“ Can I see?” he asked, pointing at the squad car.
I grinned but glanced up when I felt like the temperature in the exhibit center changed.
My mom was talking to the little boy’s mother.
She was fine.
Then what had…
A familiar figure was in the doorway of the exhibit center looking around.
I knew as soon as my gaze locked with Quincy’s across the room that something was very, very wrong.
He headed right for me, and I had to force myself to keep conversing with the excited little boy.
“ Hey ,” I said to the kid as Quincy’s face got clearer the closer he got. “ You can jump up there and check out the back all you want. I’ll be right back.”
The moment he was in the back, I all but charged toward Quincy .
“ Hey ,” I said. “ What’s wrong?”
Quincy looked at me, his face just... blank.
“ There was an accident.”
“ She didn’t remember who I was,” Shayne said as she paced. “ One second, she was talking to me, the next she was lost. Like the memories were never there.”
“ What happened?” I asked, sounding much calmer than I felt.
“ I saw her walking across the parking lot toward us,” Quaid said. “ I had Forest in my arms. I had just turned him and pointed her out when the car— Emory’s car—came out of the side street that runs along the west side of the building. The car struck her going at least thirty miles an hour.”
I closed my eyes as I imagined what happened.
“ She was hit on the left side,” Dad said quietly. “ She was thrown about fifteen feet in the air and landed on the curb. Her body bent unnaturally when she hit.”
“ She started crawling toward Forest ,” Shayne whispered. “ When he started crying.”
“ And then she stopped moving. Like something switched off,” Auden murmured. “ Her legs stopped moving. She was like deathly still on her lower half.”
“ That’s because she broke her spine.” A doctor’s voice filled the room.
We all turned toward the male’s voice.
Hollis , who I hadn’t seen until now, was hovering behind us, clenching and unclenching her hands, tears in her eyes.
“ What ?” I asked.
“ Her spine,” Hollis repeated. “ Atlas ,” she looked stricken. “ It’s very, very bad.”
I closed my eyes as my heart skipped a beat.
“ Will she live?” I asked, voice monotone.
“ She’s in surgery now,” the doctor admitted.
I noticed he didn’t answer.
“ We have the best surgeon in the world at this hospital who specializes in spinal injuries,” the doctor continued. “ He came in from New York last week for a conference. He stayed because he was asked to assist in another case. He’s agreed to take your fiancée’s case.”
I nodded, throat thick.
“ What about her head injury?” Shayne asked.
“ Concussion ,” he answered. “ She also has several other broken bones. A right femur. Left hip. A left ulna. Cheekbone . Orbital bone…”
He named more and more.
Overall , she ended up having seventeen broken bones.
Seventeen .
“ How long will the surgery last?” I asked.
Was that my voice?
“ No telling,” he said. “ Dr . Adaman is working on her spine. When he’s done, they’re going to reset her femur, then her ulna.”
So all I could do was wait.
I was asleep in the chair beside Pepper’s bed.
Forest was asleep on my chest and had been for the last two hours.
It was day five of Pepper not being awake.
They’d taken her off the medicine that was keeping her asleep three days ago, but she’d yet to wake up.
She …
“ Cute baby,” a raspy, sweet voice said.
I opened my eyes and stared.
God , how I’d missed those eyes.
“ Pepper .”
“ His name is Pepper ?” She looked adorably confused.
My stomach sank.
“ Um , no,” I said. “ Your name. It’s Pepper .”
“ Oh ,” she frowned. “ I didn’t know that.”
I patted Forest’s back when he started to squirm.
Inside , however, my stomach was churning.
“ What do you remember?” I asked carefully.
She tilted her head. “ I can’t move my toes.”
No . No , she couldn’t.
“ No ,” I agreed. “ You can’t.”
“ How do you know?” she asked.
“ Your doctor,” I said. “ He told me that the surgery, although a success, wasn’t an instant fix. That if you wanted to walk again, you’d have to put in the hard work.”
She looked toward the window. “ Oh .”
“ As for your memory,” I said, “the doctor also said that you had a concussion. That’s why you were kept in a coma for two days, to allow the pressure to go down. You have a drain in the side of your head.”
She reached up as if to feel it, but her arms slunk down to her sides, as if she didn’t have the energy to get them up there.
I stood up and walked toward her, my heart so full it felt like it was going to burst.
“ What’s his name?” she asked quietly.
I smoothed back a lock of hair from her bruised face. “ Forest .”
“ And yours?” she asked.
I grinned at her then. “ Atlas .”
She frowned. “ That doesn’t sound familiar.”
I traced the line of her nose, one of the only things on her face that wasn’t bruised. “ It will. And if it doesn’t, I’ll make you fall in love with me all over again.”
Her eyes went big. “ I love you?”
“ You adore me.”