"I’m an opportunist. I'm in the kitchen, you walk past, that's an opportunity. You bend over to tie your shoe, that's an opportunity. The hallway outside Atlas's office, that's—"
"Bane. Oh my god. Bane."
"—an opportunity."
"You are all terrible."
"We're yours," Atlas says. Quiet. Final.
The four of us lie there. The blanket is sandy. The wine is half gone. The moon is at its highest. Zero's head ends up on my stomach at some point. Bane's hand finds mine. Atlas's chin settles on the top of my head.
I look up at the moon.
I don't say anything. I don't need to. They feel it in the bonds—I know they do, because Bane's hand tightens on mine and Zero's mouth presses absent-minded against my hipbone and Atlas's thumb strokes once across my collarbone like an answer.
I am going to remember this, I think.Exactly this. The salt and the dark and the four of us. I am going to remember this when I am old. I am going to remember this when I have nothing else.
I kiss Atlas's jaw.
Far out, the tide turns. Comes in slow.
But none of us dare move.
Chapter 4
We turn into the drive a little before five.
I am in the back seat with my head against the window, watching the gravel roll past, and I am thinking about the first time I came up this drive.
The first time I arrived at the Graves Estate.
By myself. All my stuff in two duffel bags. A full prescription bottle in my pocket. And a head so loud with worst-case scenarios I had stopped trying to sort them—what if Margot has changed her mind, what if Richard finds me embarrassing, what if his sons hate me, what if I make it three weeks and Margot is having to rent me another place to stay because I can’t stay here and–.
My mind was scrambled with all the terrible things that could have happened.
And look what did.
Same drive. Same gravel.
But my feelings about this place have completely changed.
I used to catalog every detail of this place as evidence I didn't belong in it. The boxwoods clipped within an inch of their lives. The three flagstones at the front entrance worn smooth from a hundred years of feet that weren't mine. The size ofthe front door. The size of the windows. The size of everything. Months and months of telling myself this house was a hotel I was staying at on borrowed time.
The hedges roll past. The fountain comes into view—stone, lichened, water running.
I look at it now and can imagine: Bane sitting on the lip of that fountain telling me to stop apologizing for breathing.
"Home, baby." Margot, soft, from the front passenger seat. "Doesn't it feel good?"
I don't answer right away. I am trying to decide if the word is true.
Itfeelstrue. Even if the place doesn’t feel quite right without my three guys.
"Yeah," I say. "Yeah, Mom. It does."
She turns and her eyes go a little glassy. Richard, at the wheel, doesn't say anything, but his eyes flick to mine in the rearview and stay there a beat. The corner of his mouth softens.
He pulls up to the front entrance and kills the engine.
