24. now
now
Iwake on top of Atlas’s chest. One of my legs is draped over his waist—and his arousal. Sun streams in through the thin fabric of his curtains, and Atlas’s hand gently brushes up and down my spine. He’s awake, but I allow myself a moment to enjoy this without him knowing I am too.
I close my eyes and lose myself to the sensation of being his again, even if it’s only temporary. The rhythm of his heartbeat. The warmth of his body. The soothing touch of his fingers.
“Good morning,” he says, while I’m still lying motionless over him.
I lift my head, scowling.
“How did you know I was awake?”
He only smiles in response, his hand continuing its lazy pattern over my back. When I start to pull myself off him, he tugs me closer, shifting until I’m fully laying on top of him.
“Five more minutes.” His voice is raspy with sleep, but his eyes are intense as he looks over me. “Give me five more minutes before you break my heart.”
I don’t ask what he means. I only bury myself against his neck, peppering kisses against his clavicle and freckled shoulder.
Before long, his erection is impossible to ignore.
Atlas holds my hips as I straddle his waist and lower onto his cock.
As we fuck, he looks at me like he did last night.
Full of wonder and lust, but now there’s a shadow of torment beneath it all.
When we’re done, I slip back into my pajamas and pull my hair into a ponytail. Atlas watches from bed, naked, the beige comforter draped across his waist.
“Last night,” I start, only to leave the sentence unfinished.
Atlas stares at me, jaw clenched so tight it looks like it might break.
I’m gearing up to tell him this was a one-time thing, that we can never do it again.
Not while my sister is missing. Not while it’s his fault.
Instead, I surprise us both by asking, “What did you mean? When you said you hadn’t been, uh, practicing? ”
Haven’t built up endurance?
That would require practice.
“You know what I meant.” Atlas’s tone is gentle, careful, like he’s trying not to upset me. He tips his chin slightly. “I’ve only been with you, Violet.”
“Ever?”
“Ever.”
“But it’s been five years.” There’s a desperation in my voice I don’t recognize, and my throat physically aches with it.
Atlas’s eyes are so full of emotions I can’t read them all.
I can hardly stand to look at him. When I finally continue, when I finally confess, my words crack with shame.
“I wasn’t lying, Atlas. When I said I’ve slept with other people, I wasn’t lying. ”
“I know.” His brow wrinkles, like he doesn’t understand why I’m bringing this up. As if him being abstinent and me not doesn’t matter.
“That doesn’t bother you?”
He’s quiet for a long moment, watching me with an unreadable expression. He gets out of bed and throws on the basketball shorts he’d been wearing last night. All the while, his gaze keeps returning to me, as I shift anxiously near the door. When he reaches me, I’m so stiff I can barely breathe.
“No, it doesn’t bother me.” His words should comfort me, but instead they make me feel worse. I don’t realize I’ve started to cry until his hands are on my face, thumbs brushing the tears. “Why are you crying, Vi?”
“I don’t know.” It’s the truth, but it’s also not. Atlas waited all this time, and meanwhile, I was sleeping with other people, desperate to forget we ever happened.
“We weren’t together,” he says, his voice low and comforting and terrible. “I assumed you had moved on.”
“Then why didn’t you?” It comes out sharp, like an accusation. And maybe it is one.
“Because I was in love with you.” He says this like he’s stating a scientific fact, not something as unreliable as emotions. “You hating me didn’t make me stop loving you.”
“Atlas.” That's all I say. His name, a confession and a warning, all at once. He may have proclaimed love in the past tense, but he’s looking at me like he loves me now. Like he never stopped.
“Violet,” he whispers back.
“We were perfect.” That terrible knot in my throat tightens again, and tears burn my eyes. “But that was us before, Atlas. Before everything happened. We’re too broken now, too far gone. There’s nothing left of us anymore.”
“That’s not true.” Atlas reaches for me, but I shake my head, stepping back, forcing distance. Even as he lowers his hand, his eyes don’t leave mine. “Violet, you know that’s not true.”
I close my eyes. This room suddenly feels too small. There’s not enough oxygen in here for the both of us. Everything is spinning and my insides hurt and there are a million thoughts racing through my head, all competing for space at once.
“I need to go.” When I open my eyes, I don’t look at Atlas but the door. “Space. I-I need…”
I shove past him and out of his room, running, just like I always do.
I don’t hear from Atlas for several hours. Only after I’ve hidden through lunch does my phone vibrate with a text from him.
Let’s go to the beach. It’s our last day here. I promise not to confess anything else. We can hunt for crabs and build sandcastles and eat your nasty pickle chips.
They’re not nasty.
Did you actually buy more?
Meet me on the porch. Seven minutes.
Atlas is true to his word and keeps conversation light for the rest of the trip.
By the time we return to Aberlena, the tension between us has all but dissipated.
At least on the surface. Now that he’s dropped me off, I’m left to dwell in silence and all the emotion stirs back to life.
It’s a sharp pain, throbbing and insistent, demanding to be dealt with.
So, like any healthy person, I pour a hefty glass of cheap wine and put on re-runs of The Office. Even with the volume cranked too high, it’s not enough to quiet my spiraling thoughts.
Because I was in love with you…You hating me didn’t make me stop loving you.
I’m playing the words over in my head when Hayden returns home from her shift at the diner.
She’s wearing the silly uniform they all wear at the retro family-owned joint: a red pin-striped dress with a white apron sewed to the front.
She’s partway through stripping out of it, undeterred by the open curtains.
“Well?” she asks as she kicks out of her shoes. “Did you two totally fuck?”
She waggles her eyebrows, and if I was normal, I’d laugh and admit yes, Atlas and I did totally fuck. I’d tell her it was great, a one time thing, obviously. The two of us would gush about how attractive he is, and then we’d make plans to go out on Friday.
Instead, all the emotions of this weekend compound into a solitary knot in my chest. I can hardly breathe, let alone speak. It takes all my conscious effort to respond, and when I do, it’s not about Atlas or our complicated relationship or this past weekend.
“My dad was really abusive.” It’s a blurted confession, one that stops Hayden in her tracks. Her eyes widen as she stares at me, partway undressed in our kitchen. “He, uh, beat my mom pretty regularly. My sister too. Never me, really. I don’t know why.”
Hayden only blinks. She’s hunched over, hand frozen at her foot, halfway through taking off her sock.
“He’s in prison now.” I swallow. Without permission, my gaze drifts from Hayden to the window. It’s easier to talk when I’m not looking at her. “Not for the abuse. He was caught embezzling. An anonymous caller busted him. For years, I thought it might’ve been Nat.”
I risk a glance back at Hayden. She’s upright now, perfectly still as she watches me.
“Anyway, he’s a real piece of shit.” I tuck my knees against my chest.
“Yeah, sounds like it.”
“Sometimes…” I trail off. Gaze back to the window.
“Sometimes I recognize him in myself and I hate it. I just get so angry, and it’ll blot everything else.
I won’t be able to think straight. And when it matters the most, I don’t know how to apologize.
I don’t know how to admit when I was wrong.
When I was the one who ruined everything. ”
The first tear falls and I squeeze my eyes shut, willing it to stop.
“What happened, Vi?” Hayden crosses the room and sits next to me. Her arms wrap around me, tugging me against her side. “Did Atlas say something? If he was mean, I’ll kick his ass.”
I huff out a laugh.
“Atlas couldn’t be mean to me if he tried.” Another tear slips through my closed eyes, followed immediately by another. “He’s perfect, Hayden. He’s always been perfect. All this time…”
I trail off, searching for the right way to explain.
But the more I search for it, the more impossible it feels.
All I can think about is the fact I ruined everything.
That I’ve been punishing Atlas for doing the right thing for years.
The longer I sit in this quiet, the more my thoughts race, until my tears run in a steady stream down my cheeks.
“I’m a monster.” My words are barely intelligible, but I think Hayden’s heard them because she hugs me tighter. She’s squeezing so hard it’s crushing my ribcage. “I’m just like him.”
“You’re not,” she says fiercely against my ear. “Not even a little.”
“Atlas loves me.” I’m full-on blubbering now, but I don’t know how to stop. “He’s loved me this whole time, and I’ve been awful. Blaming him for something that was my fault all along. Who does that?”
“Shhh.” Hayden’s started swaying back and forth, like I’m an overgrown baby. “Breathe, Violet.”
I can’t. I don’t remember how. My breaths have been reduced to pathetic gasps, intermixed with hideous, wet sobs.
“It’s my fault.” This time, I’m confident she can’t understand me. “It was me. I knew it, and I didn’t want to accept it. So I’ve hated him, and he’s just let me hate him. And I—I—”
“Breathe, Violet.”
I shove away from her. Monsters don’t deserve to be coddled, and they don’t deserve the patient, pitiful gaze Hayden is giving me right now.
“It was me.” The words are caught on a loop, and I don’t fight the panic. I let it grip me until I’ve lost any semblance of control. Until I dissolve into sobs and eventually fall asleep, right there on the couch, with Hayden leaned firmly against me.
When I wake, I’m being carried. I know it’s him without opening my eyes. I don’t want to think about what he’s doing here—or what Hayden must have said when she called. I just bury my head against his chest and pretend to sleep as he deposits me into my bed.
Atlas crawls into the space behind me, tucking me against his chest.
“Sleep, baby,” he whispers. Because of course he knows I’m awake.
There isn’t a single part of me that Atlas doesn’t know better than I know myself. His arm drapes over my middle, and I cling to it, pulling his hand to rest just above my heart. As much as I know I don’t deserve his kindness, I let it surround me, until I once again drift to sleep.