Page 102 of The Towering Sky
Elizabeth screamed. It was a raw, animal scream, and the sound of it struck a primeval terror deep into Avery’s marrow. She glanced at Atlas, then logged into the feeds with a sickening sense of dread.
Sure enough, there was the article that her dad must have found. It had only been posted thirty seconds earlier.Fuller Siblings: Too Close for Comfort, read the headline. It came complete with a picture of her and Atlas, tangled together in a kiss, from the elevator last night.
No one could mistake them. It was Atlas’s light-brown hair, Atlas’s patriotic pin gleaming on the breast of his tux, Atlas’shands wrapped firmly around her. And the blonde crouching among the ripples of her shimmering golden gown couldn’t have been anyone but Avery.
Avery felt a cold, detached sense of unreality. To think that after all this time—all the vast lengths she and Atlas had gone to, in order to keep their secret safe—the worst had actually happened, and the truth was out in the world.
“It’ll be okay. I love you,” Atlas whispered, and as he stood up, he let his hand brush gently against Avery’s back. A small, barely-there touch to remind her that they were in this together.
Avery’s heart crashed against her chest as her parents stormed into the living room. Her dad was holding out his tablet, which was frozen on theToo Close for Comfortarticle. He held it out at arm’s length, as if it might contaminate him. “Whatfilth! For someone to use my children like that, to make up such vile slander, just to undermine my administration....”
Oh god, ohgod. He thought it wasn’t real. Avery tried to catch Atlas’s eye, but he wasn’t looking at her. His eyes were fixed on their mom.
Elizabeth Fuller looked impeccable as always, in the short-sleeved knit dress and heels she’d worn to whatever breakfast the Fullers had attended this morning. She walked into the kitchen with spare, unadorned movements and poured herself a glass of water without drinking it. Avery knew that she just wanted something ordinary to do with her hands. But those hands were trembling.
Avery’s father was still yelling, using words likedefamationandappalling. He’d leaned one elbow on an antique console table, making little emphatic knocks on its painted ebony surface to punctuate his words. The whole scene had taken on the sticky, unrealistic quality of a dream. Avery willed herself to wake up.
She had imagined this conversation so many times, worryingherself sick that her parents might somehow learn the truth about her and Atlas. But never in all her imaginings did she predict that her parents would willfully ignore the truth, even when the truth stared them full in the face.
Pierson abruptly broke off from his monologue. His face was deep red, veins etching themselves along the breadth of his forehead. He glanced from Avery to Atlas and back again, and something subtle changed in his expression.
“You two are awfully quiet. I’d assumed you would feel more upset about your images being violated like this. Whoever edited that photo, it looks very real.” His voice grew dangerously calm. A beat of silence stretched through the room. “Unless, of course, the photo wasn’t manipulated.”
There it is, Avery thought as her mom gasped.
It would be so simple to lie, to say thatof coursethe images were doctored, that she and Atlas were nothing but normal adoptive siblings with a normal fraternal affection for each other. Avery had been telling that lie for most of her life—to herself, to the world. She knew the art of it better than anyone. She knew how to bury her true feelings so deep inside her that no one could ever begin to guess at them.
It was the lie her parents wanted so desperately to hear. But for the first time, Avery couldn’t bring herself to tell it.
Instead she reached out and took Atlas’s hand. The implications of her gesture were lost on no one present.
“Avery.” A threat lay there, low and coiled, in Pierson’s voice.
Atlas let his hand close over hers, running a thumb deliberately, shockingly, over her knuckles. The touch of his skin gave Avery the confidence she needed.
“I love Atlas,” she said simply and watched the dawning horror on both of her parents’ faces.
Atlas’s hand was laced tight in hers. “And I love Avery.”
It sounded to Avery as if an alarm had gone off, but it was just the silence echoing throughout the apartment.
“You don’t mean that,” Avery’s mom said weakly.
“Yes, we do. Avery and I have been in love for years. And the photo is real. A paparazzi zetta took it when we were together last night.”
“Mom—” Avery’s voice broke. She wanted to explain all the reasons that this wasn’t as bad as her parents thought: that she and Atlas weren’t physically, genetically related. That adoptive siblings could have relationships, could getmarried, in all fifty states; she had looked it up a long time ago. The law only prevented adoptive parents from marrying their own children.
More, though, she wished her parents could understand how perfect she and Atlas were together, that theirs was a love that could—and had—overcome anything in its way. That no matter how many times the world tried to destroy it, their love kept emerging again, battered and bruised but still stubbornly there.
This was her forever love. The kind of love that someone would have written a novel about, a century ago. It was her and Atlas against the world, no matter what; and Avery knew that if she couldn’t have Atlas then she would have no one, for all the days of her life.
From the revulsion on her parents’ faces, she knew none of those arguments would make a difference.
She started to take a step forward, but her mom recoiled, her features twisted into a mask of pain. Avery realized that her mom was silently crying. “Stop. Please, juststop!”
Avery felt tears slide down her own cheeks. “Itriedto stop, don’t you get it? Sometimes you can’t pick who you love. Sometimes love chooses you.” She bit her lip. “Don’t you remember what it felt like to fall in love and know this was the person you were meant to be with?”
For a half second, Avery saw a flicker on her mom’s face, aqueous and uncertain, and then just as quickly it was gone. “You don’t know half of what you’re saying. It’s a hormonal mistake; you’re stillchildren, for god’s sake—”
