"I'm okay, Bane."
He nods. Squeezes my shoulders through the blanket. Steps back.
Zero hasn't moved. He's still at the end of the dock where he was sitting when I went over, his legs pulled up now, arms braced on his knees, jaw working. When I'm wrapped and breathing he finally looks at me. His face does the thing it does when he's feeling something he didn't give permission for—the small crack under the surface, the quick repair. Except this time the repair doesn't hold.
"Max—"
"Don't, Zero."
"I didn't—"
"Iknowyou didn't. It was an accident. Zero. Look at me." I wait until his eyes come up. "It wasn't your fault."
He doesn't believe me. I can feel it in the bond—a dark knot of something that's going to sit in him for days if I let it.
"I'm fine," I say. "I'm right here. I'm fine."
He swallows once. Nods. The jaw sets again, harder, and he looks away at the dark like he's furious with it for existing.
We stay on the dock.
Atlas pulls me across his lap—sideways, my legs over one of his thighs, my head against his chest. The blanket is aroundboth of us now, damp where it touches his soaked shirt, warm where it doesn't. Bane settles behind me, one hand moving slow up and down my spine through the fabric. He doesn't say anything. Neither does Atlas. They just hold me between them on the rough boards with the water underneath us and the flickering light doing its thing overhead, and I let them.
My breathing evens out. My hands stop shaking. The chattering slows, then stops, then starts once more and stops for good. The bond hums—low, steady, three threads pulled tight and holding.
Zero is a dark shape at the end of the dock. He hasn't come closer. He's sitting with his back to us, looking out at the water, and I know he's listening to every breath I take because the thread between us is raw and open and full of something he doesn't have a name for yet.
After a while—ten minutes, maybe more—Atlas shifts under me.
"Inside?" Bane asks, quiet.
"Not yet," I say. My voice is rough. Scraped. "The grass. Can we just—the grass."
We move to the bank. Slowly. Bane keeps a hand at my back down the dock. Atlas carries the blanket after I shimmy out of it. We settle on the grass where we started—blanket under me, Bane on my left, Zero hanging back a few feet, Atlas soaking wet with his shirt clinging to him and not caring even a little, sitting beside me with our shoulders touching.
The pond is still. The moon is still on it.
After a while Bane and Zero drift. Not far—Bane to the tree line to wring out his shirt, Zero back toward the house to grab something, probably another beer. Atlas and I are alone.
His hand finds mine on the grass. Laces through. His fingers are cold from the water and so are mine and neither of us lets go.
"I'm sorry," I say. "About the water. I didn't know that was going to happen."
"You don't apologize for that. Ever."
"Atlas—"
"Ever, Max."
I close my mouth. My throat aches.
He's quiet for a while. His thumb moves slow across the back of my hand. I can feel him in the bond—the tight dark thread loosening, softening, going from the Atlas who walked through the door two hours ago to the one who held me in the pond, the one who lets me see the underneath.
"Thirteen days," he says. Quiet. Into the dark. "Thirteen days away from you. And the whole time—every meeting, every call, every night in a hotel room that smelled like nothing—the only thing I could think about was getting back here."
"Atlas—"
"Not the work. Not any of it.You." His thumb stops. Presses. "I'd be in the middle of something and I'd feel the bond go tight in my chest and I'd think: he's awake. Or: he's laughing at something. Or: he's in Bane's bed right now and I should be there. I need to be there. I need—"
