Page 19 of Guarded By Atlas

Atlas tears out of the parking lot, and fifteen minutes later, we’re arriving outside my building. I find I appreciate the speed. It normally takes me half an hour or so to get home when I have to take public transit. A little less if I order a ride, but nowhere near as fast as Atlas’s bike got us here.

I find myself already missing the clubhouse. There is something about staying there that feels like an entirely different world, and leaving kind of snaps a person away from it. I find myself desperate to keep some parts of what I had there, turning to Atlas and hoping he’ll follow me up to my apartment, but he doesn’t climb off the bike when I do. I try to hide my disappointment when I speak, but it seeps through to my voice. “You’re not coming up?”

“Not tonight,” he says, those green eyes unreadable when they meet mine. “I figure you are tired after everything that’s happened this week. You’ll need to rest.”

We can rest together, is what my breaking heart wants to say, but I push it down. “Okay,” I say instead, passing him the helmet and trying to keep a cheerful air, but I fail. There is a sense of finality in this moment that makes my heart clench painfully.

“You don’t have to worry about your safety here,” he says, staring up at the brick and glass that is the place I consider home—or used to. “We got the men who kidnapped you. Ransom is keeping an eye on the building’s surveillance, but we’re confident you’re safe.”

“Sure, thanks for the ride.”

Feeling rejected and unwilling to let him see the effect it has on me, I turn around and walk to the entrance without once glancing back at him. I embrace the anger, but it lasts only until I get to the bank of elevators before my mood sinks into depression. This morning, I was convinced that he wanted me.

It seems I was wrong.

My head hangs low and swirls so wildly with thoughts of the man who turned away from me that I don’t notice the one standing outside my door until I’m only a few steps away from him. I notice the bright glint of the knife first before my wide eyes look up and lock with a familiar face. The knife is pressed against my throat before I can open up my mouth to scream. “Open the fucking door!” the man hisses, his voice fierce.

So much for being safe. As I reach into my purse for my keys, my heart cracks at the thought of this being the end. It bleeds for my parents who might lose their only daughter, my big brother who’ll not have a little sister to spoil anymore, and my patients who need me.

I let the tears fall as the biggest ache comes from regret. Deep crushing regret that Atlas will never know just how much I love him.

Chapter Eight

Atlas

The old lady’s words still buzz in my ears, a relentless echo in my head. No, it’s not the words she spoke but how she said them that got to me. There was sadness and longing, something so heart-wrenching it shook me to the core.

I saw myself in her.

I had a vision of myself seated in the clubhouse as I reminisced about memories of a girl I had fallen in love with. Someone whose life was too far removed from mine. She is over a decade younger than me, has a whole life ahead of her to explore her options, date other people, travel the world and do a shit ton of things.

What will become of me when I fall so deep that I can’t pull myself out? What happens when she becomes the most important person in my life, but to her, I am merely the obsessive fucker that won’t leave her alone?

I haven’t been able to shake the thoughts all day, letting them fester until I had myself convinced that I am no good for Marie. It’s tempting to go after her, tie her to me forever, and never let her go, but such thoughts would probably scare her.

I twist the throttle, the engine roaring to life as I pull away from the apartment building. The familiar vibration of the bike often brings me peace, but today it only intensifies the headache brewing. The road stretches ahead of me, and I push forward just to get home.

Home.

One that does not have Marie in it. An apartment I will no longer walk into to find the woman I’ve allowed myself to fall for lying on the couch cuddled with Rusty as they watch some boring film, a beautiful smile playing on her lips and hand extended for me to join her. We’d fallen into a routine over the past week, and I don’t know how to go back to my life before Marie.

Goddamnit!

With a sharp jerk, I initiate a U-turn, the bike’s rear end fishtailing slightly as I fight for control and almost losing it as I recklessly make the illegal turn. A car honks at me, but I don’t look back as I fly back toward her apartment. The city lights blur into streaks of color and the scent of exhaust fumes fills my nostrils, but the image of her face, the hurt in her eyes, flashes before me. And it’s the only thing that has me pushing down my earlier thoughts and fears.

She’s mine, goddamnit.

If this doesn’t work, then she’ll have to be the one to put an end to it. At some point in the future, if she decides she doesn’t want me anymore, then… No, I’ll spend the rest of my life making sure there isn’t a day she doubts the fact that she’s the most important person in my life.

The ride back seems long somehow, and it feels like forever before I am parking outside her building. The bike screeches to a halt, the engine sputtering as I kill the ignition. Myboots hit the pavement, and I’m already moving. The need to get to her and fix whatever I broke is insistent.

I luck out as I reach the locked entrance and catch the door just as someone comes out. I look around to get my bearings in the lobby, scanning the mailboxes for her name and apartment number before heading to the elevator.

I’m just stepping out of the car onto her floor when I hear it. A scream, a raw piercing sound that tears through the quiet of the hallway. I recognize that voice. My heart leaps into my throat, every muscle tensing up, but only for a moment.

Suddenly I’m a man possessed, like a beast recognizing its mate’s cry of distress and intent on tearing apart anything that would cause it. My vision tunnels, world narrowing to a single purpose.

To get to her.

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