There is so much hope in my voice that it’s kind of pathetic. But it’s beenyearssince he didn’t hate me, and I miss him. I miss himso much. All of my plans to ditch him, to give up, are evaporating right between us.
“Yes,” he murmurs into my skin, pressing a kiss to my forehead. “I forgive you.”
“Oh, god.” I almost come on the spot. “Y-you believe me? That I wasn’t… I didn’t…”
“That you weren’t trying to hurt me?” Atticus fills in the blanks. “Yeah, I believe you. I understand now. You didn’t wantherto have me, so you took the only ammunition you had and tried to turn her away, isn’t that right?”
I nod, relief flooding through me. I feel soseen, so understood, that I fear I might be dreaming.
But then I bounce back, shaking my head.
“But it’s not ammunition!” I insist, tilting my head back to see him. “All of those things I said about you are the parts I like the most. The things I crave.”
Atticus smiles, all tender and sweet. “I know, baby, I get it now.”
“You get it now,” I repeat, resting my forehead on his shoulder. “You aren’t mad at me.”
“Not anymore, no,” he confirms.
I settle into him, breathing in the spicy scent of his skin greedily. This has to be the happiest day of my life. When I showed up here today, it was because I saw Cassie’s car driving in this direction and instinctively followed. I didn’t even intend for him to see me.
I guess all that begging and pleading and swallowing my pride that I did played in my favor after all.
My palms slide up Atticus’s back, feeling the coiled muscles and his sweat soaking through his shirt. As his body expands with each breath he pulls in, I fall deeper and deeper into a trance-like peace.
I love him. I’ve loved him for so long, missed him so desperately that this genuinely feels like heaven.
“And now you’re mine,” I say—a manifestation, a request, a fact.
Atticus tenses beneath my hands, his breath stuttering briefly. And where his cheek leans against my head, and his hands cradle my hips, I can feel my last moment of happiness seep into his skin—his to steal, to devour.
A horrible premonition comes over me, and it comes in the form of every instance in which Atticus has touched me, wherethe noise has calmed, almost as if to remind me of what is about to be torn from my clinging fingers.
“I’m not… I can’t belong to you,” Atticus whispers into my hair, and he seems hurt by this. Like he isn’t the one pulling the trigger.
My hands tighten, clutching his shirt as desperately as I would a life raft.
“Don’t tell me that,” I reply just as softly, just as miserably. “Please, Atticus. Don’t do this.”
“Sweetheart,” he sighs, “there are things you don’t understand. Things I’ve done since you last had me that make me inaccessible.”
“But Ilove you,” I borderline shriek into his shoulder, feeling his hands grip me just as tightly as I’m holding him. “I surrender! Do you not love me?”
It comes out shattered, splintered, and desperate.
Say yes, say you love me,I silently beg.
“Irrelevant,” Atticus pushes out.
“Irrelevant?”I gasp. “Loving me is… irrelevant?”
I’m not sure when I started crying—I never used to cry like this. Until loving him, I was a stone pillar against a cosmic pain. And now, he’s given me a safe place to fall apart, and I can’t seem to stop.
“No,” he says firmly. “No,Cameron. That’s not what I mean.” His hand lifts and wraps around the back of my neck, holding me to him as the tears fall and I shudder pathetically. “I just meant… Ishouldn’tlove you now.”
As my knees give out, giving my body over to the pain of this, Atticus crumbles with me, sitting on his heels as he holds me.
Water soaks into our pants, cold and biting, but I can’t seem to register it fully. Not against this onslaught of emotion.
