Page 36 of When Love Found Us
I stare straight ahead, refusing to meet his gaze.
“Nothing’s going on,” I lie. “I just want to go . . .” I want to say home, but I don’t have one. It’s just some apartment this man so graciously is giving me because, apparently, he decided to save me.
“You don’t have to do this, you know,” I mumble. “It’s just easier if you just let me get my things and drive me to a bus station. Maybe I can go to Canada.”
He doesn’t move. Doesn’t turn the key in the ignition.
“You don’t have a home,” he says evenly. “That’s the problem, isn’t it?”
I flinch. His words hit too close, cut too deep.
My fingers tighten around the sleeves of my hoodie, knuckles turning white. He’s right. I don’t have a home. I could find places to hide, places to pass through, places where I could pretend are safe until I have to run again.
But I don’t say that. Instead, I latch onto the only thing I can control. “I can handle myself.”
Atlas exhales through his nose. “That right?” His voice is rough. “Because from where I’m sitting, you look like you’re about to pass out.”
I bristle. “I’m fine.”
“Fuck, I’m getting tired of this whole ‘I’m fine,’” Atlas snaps, his voice cutting through the thick silence between us. His knuckles go white around the steering wheel. “You’re not fine. You’re running from a monster. You’re pregnant and alone. You need a family.” His voice dips, rough and certain. “I can’t give you that. But I can give you shelter.”
A bitter laugh catches in my throat. “Well, when I leave, you’ll get to rest.”
His hands flex on the wheel. “Is that what you want?”
I whip my head toward him, my pulse surging, something desperate clawing its way up my chest. “What do you want me to say, Atlas?” My voice shakes, but I can’t stop. “That I’m scared? That I don’t know what the hell I’m supposed to do now? That I still have no fucking clue how I’m going to get out of this alive?” The words tear out of me, raw and broken. “That I don’t know if I can love his child? A child who was conceived . . .” My throat tightens, and I look away, staring out into the horizon. “Believe me when I tell you Winston was never gentle. He never asked permission. He just took because he thought I belonged to him.”
Atlas stills.
Then his entire body coils, something dark snapping in his expression.
“Fuck,” he breathes, his voice low and lethal. “I’m going to kill him.”
A humorless laugh slips past my lips. “He has a bodyguard who’d die for him. Good luck with that.” I shrug like it’s nothing like it doesn’t scrape at something raw inside me. “That’s not the point. The point is . . . this moment made everything real, and now—” My breath shudders. “What am I supposed to do?”
Atlas shifts in his seat, turning toward me, eyes locked onto mine. “What do you want to do?” His voice isn’t demanding. It isn’t harsh. It’s something else—something that makes my chest ache in a way I can’t afford.
I shake my head. “I don’t know.”
“Talk to me, Blythe.”
I whip my head toward him again, anger flaring, burning at the edges of everything. “What do you want me to say, Atlas? That I’m too fucking scared? That I don’t know how to fix this? That I still have no clue how to escape? Would that make you feel better?” My voice cracks, my breath coming fast, too fast. “I’m trapped. I’m fucking trapped and . . . tired. I probably escaped because I was so close to begging him to kill me, to just let me die because I couldn’t take it anymore.”
The moment the words leave my mouth, it’s like everything caves in.
Atlas grips the wheel so hard I hear the leather groan beneath his fingers. His jaw locks, his entire body wound so tight it looks like it hurts. Then, with measured precision, he unbuckles his seatbelt, shifts toward me, and does something I don’t expect.
He softens.
Not in a way that makes him fragile. Not in a way that erases the storm in his eyes. But in a way that makes it clear—he’s not my enemy.
“You’re not trapped,” he says, voice lower now, rougher. “Not with me.”
I swallow hard, looking away. “You don’t understand?—”
“I understand more than you think.” His voice dips, something raw bleeding into his words. “You think I don’t know what it’s like to feel powerless? To grow up in a house where survival comes first?”
I look at him then. Really look. And for the first time, I see it.
