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Haunt me like those scary antique toys that have seen their day and are still magically sticking around because they just won’t die, and they’re just so over-the-top creepy that they’re almost cute. You know, those ones. Think monkeys. Or clowns. Shudder. Clowns.
I look around the table at the somber faces, and then my eyes stop on Atlas’ granny. She’s smiling at me—not a smile of triumph or a gloating smile, but a soft, happy welcome to the family; we love you already smile. My hand flexes on Atlas’, and suddenly, his isn’t so still and lifeless below mine. His fingers are curling up, flexing under mine, grasping for me, and seeking my warmth and reassurance, the strength I didn’t know I had. I flex mine, too, curling them around his as he shifts. It’s not long before we’re making a fist, both of us together, holding tight to each other like we’re both the ones getting lashed in the storm, though we’ll see each other through to the end.
Honestly, it’s moments like this where you don’t need to know someone for years to know you can’t let them go. That the regret of it would be so monumental, it would change everything, and you’d never be whole again because all the gruesome parts and pieces of you would be left behind, scattered to the four freaking winds, and that would be that. Hmm, maybe I should think about switching from writing romances to writing murder mysteries or thrillers.
“I don’t understand any of this,” I choke out, stumbling over each word like they’re hurdles, and god knows I sucked at track and field. I look at each person around the table again, and then my eyes stop at Atlas and linger on his beautiful face. I even manage the tiniest of smiles as I pick up my fork with my other hand that isn’t clinging to his and stab it into my pie. “So, will you please start from the beginning and explain to me exactly what it is I’m getting myself into?”
CHAPTER 19
Atlas
After the hearty dose of tough love at dinner, I’m worried Victoria will think my Granny is someone she isn’t. After we finished our pie, Granny caught us before we headed downstairs to talk. She pulled Victoria into her arms for a tight hug, and after a second, I noticed how Victoria hugged her back, and it was not the reluctant, oh god, if I have to kind of hug either.
The basement has been set up like a rec room, with the two bedrooms—mine and Orion’s—in the back. I’m certainly not going to take Victoria back there, so I plop down on the company leather couch and wait for her to do the same. She keeps some distance between me, one couch cushion, to be exact. Then, she picks her feet up and hugs her knees to her chest. I wait until her eyes meet my face as a signal to start talking about the hundred thousand things I need to say. I feel like a mixed-up bottle of emotions, like an overshaken soda about to blow. I guess this is the uncapping, and it’s probably going to be messy. I might like reading, and I might even write the occasional secret poem or paragraph about what’s going on in my head, but that doesn’t mean I can be eloquent when it counts, especially not when my brain is a scrambled egg mess in my skull, and my heart is pretty much the same in my chest.
“It’s kind of like the den of infamy down here,” Victoria whispers right as I’m about to drop some serious stuff on her.
And that just makes me want to laugh. “Actually, that’s upstairs. Lennox and Cass got the bedroom down the hall from Granny so they couldn’t drive the rest of us out of this place, although I’m sure Granny sleeps with noise-canceling headphones on.”
“Oh my god. You all live together? I just thought that…I don’t know what I thought. I don’t know what to think about anything, actually.”
I clear my throat because I need this to come out right. “I know Granny gave some tough love up there. We usually, um, break things to people gently, not the way she did. I don’t want you to think she’s a hardass. She might work hard, and she might take what we do very seriously, but she loves just as hard, and she’d protect us with her life. All of us. Including you.”
“Me?” Victoria points at herself, just to clarify.
“Yes.”
“But she just met me.”
“It doesn’t matter. You’re a part of the family now. I mean, if you want to be. But even if you don’t want to be, she’ll make sure you’re safe.”
Victoria saws her bottom lip and clutches her knees even tighter to her chest. “I…does that mean that if I say no, you’ll leave? That I won’t ever see you again? I think it’s already a foregone conclusion that I’m joining up in some way or another. Maybe not to do those things she was talking about, but I want to sign up to be in your life. That’s why I couldn’t walk out the door. You might have lied to me and acted like a complete nincompoop, and I might actually doubt my own sanity right now, but I feel it. What it is, I’m not sure. It was just that when she said I’d be haunted by you, I knew she was right.”
