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“Victoria—”
“Save it.” I shove my chair back. “I don’t want to be a part of this. Thank you for fixing my house. If you require repayment, send me the invoices, and I’ll find a way to pay them, even if I have to sell the house. If you don’t, then please consider my thank you as genuine and heartfelt, and this…” I flip my middle finger up. “…as an equally genuine goodbye.” I walk two paces away from the table before I whirl back around to grab the plate with my slice of pie on it. “I’m taking this to go. And don’t worry about your secrets. I don’t want any bad guys showing up at my door, so I’ll never say anything. I might want to be a writer, but I was an avid reader first, so I know all about the many ways a person can disappear. Dark romance is actually a favorite genre of mine, so I know all about the bad. Please don’t think that because I was naïve about this, it means I’m going to be stupid moving forward. I won’t.”
“By all means, feel free to grab some plastic wrap for the pie from the kitchen,” Atlas’s granny states calmly as if nothing just happened. “Or you can bring the plate back when you cool down. I know you’re mad right now, but this isn’t the end. You’re going to cool off, Atlas is going to apologize and grovel yet again, and you’re going to realize he’s your destiny because it probably wasn’t love at first sight—I don’t believe in that nonsense—but it was the start of something neither of you could deny or get away from, and that’s that.
“He’s going to be yours, and you’re going to be his, and being angry and hurt right now isn’t going to change that. Yes, he could have done better, but he didn’t. And yes, he’s also a great person with a huge heart, and if you let him, he’ll spend the rest of his life loving and protecting you because you’re his sun, and his whole world will shift to revolve around you in the very sweet, slightly obnoxious way that lovers do. You’ll start to fall in love with him, and then you’ll get all the way there, falling in so deep that you’ll have the kind of love you always dreamed about and wanted to write about. So, if you’re taking the pie to go, take my words to go as well and think about it. You won’t be sorry that you did.”
I want to snap something about being sorry that I ever met Atlas or this family or any of it, but I’m just…I don’t know…freaking frozen in place. I have a plate of pie in my hand, and I’m pretty sure my jaw is hovering somewhere around chest level, a few inches away from the sweet, flaky, crusty surface, and I can’t move. I can’t do anything.
Everyone is staring at me.
Everyone but Atlas because he’s studying the table. Then, he slowly moves his head up like a robot, and he looks wrecked. Just. Totally. Wrecked. Like my light went out in the middle of the storm, and I wasn’t there to guide him, so he crashed and washed up on the rocks, and that was it for his vessel—his lovely, larger-than-life, unsinkable vessel.
“Fuck,” I breathe, exhaling loudly.
And just like that, I’m unfrozen. My limbs are suddenly not deadweight anymore, and I can function. I should take my bottom right out the door and never come back to this madhouse. I did just say I was smart, after all. But ha. Apparently not. Because I’m setting my plate of pie down on the table, and then I’m sinking down in front of it. I’m parking it and reaching for Atlas’ hand, which is cold and limp on the table, and I’m covering it with my own.
“I’m so sorry, Victoria.” He blinks at me like he’s haunted. His crashed-up ship, broken and devoid of all hope.
I’m no lighthouse. I’m no beacon. I’m no siren even. I never meant to lure Atlas to me, and I’m a shit guide because I feel completely lost. But the one thing I can do? I can sit here, and I can listen. I can put my hand over his and transfuse some of the hope from my aching heart into him, and maybe that will breathe life back into his flat, dead, pain-filled eyes. Eyes that used to sparkle and shine.
I used to worry about ghosts—the ghost of my great-aunt. I truly believed she was haunting her old house, but now that the house is mine, I know the only ghost that is going to haunt me is the ghost of this man.
He’ll haunt me. Haunt me, haunt me, haunt me.
