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My sister’s eyes were already growing heavy, but she managed to nod before we exited, retracing our steps back to the main floor.
“That was your father,” Atlas said.
I turned to him.
“Yeah,” I muttered. “Good old Eugene. Always did know how to ruin a good escape.”
Atlas turned in the opposite direction of the kitchen, and I had little choice but to follow after him. Not that I minded watching his firm ass in the pants that fit perfectly around the snug curve of his hips. I thought about how close I’d come to tasting what was inside there, and a gush of warmth flooded through me.
Atlas peered more closely at me, his hand extending to touch my swollen jaw. I winced and pulled back as fury colored his face.
“Who did that to you?” he hissed. “What happened to your face?”
I grimaced. “My father was trying to put me in my place, I guess,” I answered, trying to sound light-hearted, but a small sob escaped my throat instead.
“That fucking twat,” Atlas snarled. “I’ll show him a place.”
I shook my head quickly, not wanting to be reminded of my father. Abruptly, I shifted the subject back to Jesse and how we had gotten where we were.
“What did Jesse mean when he said you couldn’t take us?” I blurted out, forcing my eyes up when he turned abruptly to face me.
His face twisted in an indecipherable expression.
“Isn’t that what I’ve been telling you all along?” he answered, his tone just as confusing.
“Yes,” I agreed, sliding onto the cream-colored sofa, even though he remained standing, his arms extended over the length of the fireplace mantle. “But you did take us.”
He sighed. “Yes. I suppose I did, didn’t I?”
“And you did it without much effort,” I added. “Which makes me wonder why you didn’t do it sooner.”
His jaw twitched, and I knew him well enough already to know that it only did that when I was pushing him out of his comfort zone.
“I shouldn’t have taken you. I…” He stopped and exhaled audibly. “I’ve done nothing wrong,” he said aloud, causing me to tip my head.
“Who are you talking to?” I asked, genuinely perplexed.
He didn’t seem to be addressing me. His eyes shot back to me and then toward the fireplace again, which he began to fiddle with. In seconds, a flame started through the vents, and he began to pace along the muted suede throw on the floor.
“You, of course,” he fibbed. “Who else?”
“Why did you wait so long to come? Why did you change your mind? Why did you put me through all that if you were just going to—”
“There’s a curse,” he said, ending my tirade of questions.
My lips remained slack. “A curse?”
He stopped walking and looked at me. “It’s been upon me for generations now, ever since Gabriel was on his deathbed.”
My mind began to whirl, history lessons eluding me at the moment. I hadn’t been much of a student on account of all the running, but even before that…
“Gabriel. Jesse’s grandfather?”
“Great-grandfather,” Atlas corrected me. “He was an immortal like me. One of the originals, in fact.”
“He died, though,” I remembered, trying to scrape together what I could recall. “Of some unknown STD, right?”
“He was his own undoing,” Atlas chuckled mirthlessly. Slowly, he neared me and sat, the space between us respectful but painful. “He was my former business partner, and he had all the shrewdness of a businessman and the money to back him, but his whoring ways would eventually be his pitfall.”
