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“Don’t cave to his tantrums,” Glen says, and he goes on, but I’m not listening. I head upstairs and knock on Atlas’s door.
No response. Big surprise.
I knock again. “Hey, A. It’s just me,” I say, as though it could be anyone else. Not like Glen was going to come up here to check on him.
“I just need a minute.”
I rattle the knob. “Come on. Let me in,” I plead. I figure he’ll tell me to fuck off, but I don’t want to leave him alone. Not after what happened downstairs.
There’s aclickbefore the knob turns, and Atlas opens up, then immediately walks away from the door.
I head inside, closing and locking the door behind me.
“A…”
“Save your breath, Troy. There’s nothing you can say that would make what he just said better.”
“I’m surprised you even stayed after that. If my mom had been that much of an ass, I would probably be halfway back to campus.”
He sits on the edge of his bed, balling his hands into fists. “I nearly did. Hell, you know I don’t even want to come here most weekends, but…”
He can’t seem to finish his thought. I approach his bed and sit beside him, resting my hand on his thigh, stroking my thumb across it.
“Come on. It’s just me, A. Talk to me.”
His gaze shifts to me. I know his face. That frown. The tension in his jaw. I see all the pain he’s trying to mask behind his rage at Glen.
“She would’ve wanted me to figure this out with him,” he confesses. “Which is so fucked up because if the situation were reversed, Glen wouldn’t have cared what I thought about Mom, but I know, even after everything he put her through, that’s what she would have wanted. After all these years, it’s hard to know why. Maybe she figured he was a piece of shit just to her and that he’d give a fuck about his son. I—” He stops himself, as though he knows he’s said too much already.
Maybe he did, since I’ve been his stepbrother for how long and he’s never talked to me about this before.
Talking has never been our thing. More often than not, if one of us was ever in a mood, the other would harass or pick a fight. Kind of our fucked-up way of dealing with shit.
Funny how we could go from having such wild encounters—tossing him around on the bed, getting jerked off in the bar—to having moments like these that are so different but so us. I’ve always thought Atlas was a messy map, but just like with all the fucking around we’ve been doing, I don’t mind being lost with him.
“Iknew,” Atlas whispers, his words sorrowful and full of guilt.
“Knew what?”
His hands twist in his lap. He’s nervous, on edge. Even as I asked the question, I feared I already knew the answer. No, no—I don’t want to believe he’s about to say what I think.
“About our parents.”
There it is. My stomach knots up with tension.
“I caught them together, saw them kissing.” His chin trembles. This isn’t the Atlas I’m used to seeing, always with his guard up, ready to take on the world all on his own. He’s letting me see past all that, and that’s something I can’t take for granted.
“I confronted him. Hit him. Christ, I wanted to fuckingkillhim, but I didn’t. I just…dropped it.”
He spits out his words with anger, at Glen, at himself, but there’s a tremble of emotion, his voice filled with grief. My muscles twitch as I struggle to keep from going downstairs and take on Glen myself. But Glen’s not my concern right now; Atlas is. I want to soothe him. Make him feel better. “A, it wasn’t your job—”
He raises his hand, silencing me. “I have to get this out, or I won’t. I’m not sure why I didn’t tell her. I fucking hated him, but…but I knew she loved him. And maybe I didn’t want to break up my family. Whatever the reason, I regret it more than anything. What if I told her earlier and somehow that changed things? What if hearing it from me would’ve been easier than hearing it from him? What is that thing called… The butterfly effect. One thing can change everything. What if me telling her earlier meant she wouldn’t die, and I could have stopped that, but I didn’t because… Hell, hard to even remember why. Because I’m the biggest piece of shit ever?”
Piece of shit?
Hearing him say that about himself is like a baseball bat to the gut. How can he think that?
Oh, my Atlas. My beautiful Atlas, carrying the weight of all this guilt that only belongs to Glen and Mom. It breaks my heart to hear what’s tortured his soul all these years, but I’m glad he’s sharing it with me. I want to see all of him, even the messiest parts. I want to see those things he wouldn’t ever share with another soul. “It’s not your fault, A. There’s no way you could have known what would happen. You didn’t tell her because you thought it was the right thing to do. The only people to blame here are my mom and Glen.”
