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“I will,” I vow. I’ll tell her everything. As soon as I get rid of Ed. As soon as I figure out how to get rid of someone whose fucking face is on the news every goddamn day.
“If I fill in the blanks for you, it’s not good, Rowan.”
I stare at her for a long moment. The curl of her hair is soft against her cheek, and I force myself to stay seated and not climb into her bed with her.
“I can only assume Edward Sinclare sent you to me...”
I swallow slowly.
“There are men who want to hurt you,” I whisper in a low voice, trying hard not to scare her. “After what happened with your mother–”
“Did you know he sent me there too?”
My gaze flicks up to hers instantly, and there’s a vacancy in her gaze that stabs through my chest with every breath I take.
When I was a kid, I thought Atlas was lucky Ed left her before she was ever born. He abandoned their family to terrorize mine. But as I got older, I realized he still managed to hurt them in other ways.
“For days, I don’t even know how many. They had me there. I was in a juvenile wing where kids are kept. My mom was kept in a part of the institute that doesn’t allow visitors. I haven’t seen her or spoken to her in five years.” Her voice is steady, but her dark eyes glisten in the moonlight. “I’ve tried to visit and tried to call, but they never let me even speak with her. They tell me she’s too upset for visitors...”
I can’t imagine how hard it was for her to walk back into that place after the scars it left on her. My teeth clamp together hard to obtain the rage that wants to spill out. I can’t interrupt her though. She’s letting me in. I want in so fucking bad.
She shifts on the bed a fraction and takes in a breath. “When they kept me there, everything felt sterile and wrong all at the same time. I think my father thought the kid’s wing would be safer. But that didn’t stop them from holding me down and force-feeding me medicine every night. I can still feel their hands on me.” She trembles just slightly. “They told me it would help. That it would heal my mind. I felt my own mind slip away then. I felt my whole fucking life slip away.” Her words choke on an unsteady breath, but she keeps going. “Then one day, he showed up and signed me out. I thought he was my savior then.” Her arms wrap around herself, and it’s so fucking hard not to go to her. But I know she’s not done. She needs to say her piece. “He wasn’t my savior. I was just a stupid kid still clinging to the only thing I had left:Hope. My father threw a gym bag at me that had a few of my clothes inside. None of my notebooks and none of my pictures from home. Just some shirts, jeans, my mom’s old rosary, and two thousand dollars.” A dry laugh hums over her lips. “I thought that was a lot of money then. I quickly found out it wasn’t. But he gave me the clothes and the money, and then he grabbed me by the back of my neck and swore if he ever saw my face again, he’d send me back to those people. And then he got in his little black town car, and I never saw him again.”
My heart wants to beat right out of my chest. The longer the silence slips by, the more the anger inside me simmers into uncontrollable rage. I focus on my breathing for several seconds, and I have to speak. I have to tell her.
“He signed you out because of me,” I finally manage.
Her lips part but no words come out. The way Ed screamed at me then echoes through my thoughts. He swore he’d let her die in that facility. He had the connections to do it. But I had the proof that Atlas Ortega was his daughter, and the woman he locked away in the institution was his maid once upon a time. Politicians have the darkest secrets. Because they never take accountability. He fired his maid, the mother of his child. He tried to send her away.
It worked for a while. For seventeen years. When deportation didn’t work to shut her up, he did the cruelest thing he could think of that would. That’s when it all came crashing down on him. And Atlas Ortega was just a high school kid who nearly lost her entire life because of that motherfucker’s secrets.
“I blackmailed him. And in return, he said you’d become my fucking problem. And I’ve kept you as my fucking problem for five years, Little Bird.”
“And you're the one behind all the gifts?” There isn’t a smile that comes along with that question, but the tears in her eyes waver against the quiet happiness there.
“I had to help you. In every way I possibly could.”
A sob breaks through her, but her smile is soft against her lips. She watches me in the moonlight. Our gazes lock, and I feel her attention burn through me. She doesn’t question the strangeness of it all. Nothing about us is normal. Normal is bullshit anyway. What matters here is trust, and she does trust me.
Even as her lashes close and the quietest breaths slip from her lips. And then she sleeps.
Fifteen
Atlas
I wake to an empty apartment. The only evidence that Rowan was ever even here at all lies in the faint scent of his that still lingers in the bathroom. Not to mention the broken cuff attached to my headboard.
The fact that he left without a word shouldn’t hurt as much as it does. He is my stalker, after all. He’s someone Ed sent to find me. Someone I should be afraid of.
But disappointment threads through me instead, and I force myself to shove it aside as I get ready for class.
I don’t feel like I have enough brain juice to focus on anything right now, but I know I need the distraction. At least so I can temporarily forget about everything Rowan said. I need to wrap my brain around everything, come to terms with what it is I truly feel. Sometimes, reactions aren’t always knee-jerk. Sometimes they come slow, our minds and bodies processing things over a longer lapse of time.
I definitely need time.
Using the supplies and products that I now know Rowan bought for me shifts my perspective. It was easy to accept everything when it came from a faceless benefactor. Now that I know he’s behind it, I wonder if he’ll expect something in exchange.
He says he did it to take care of me, but can I even trust his word when he was sent by Ed? I mean, he has protected me all this time. He got me out of that place. If what he said is to be believed.
