It Starts With Us (It Ends with Us #2) (14 page)

It’s challenging being the florist for a wedding
and
a guest. I’ve been running all day to make sure the flowers at the venue were set up the way Lucy wanted them. And on top of that, we’re closing early for the wedding, so Serena needed help getting all the deliveries completed and onto the truck.

By the time Atlas makes it to my apartment to pick me up, I’m not even close to being ready. I just received a text from him asking if he should come up. I’m sure he’s cautious because everything is so new with us, and he doesn’t know who might be here if he were to knock on the door, and if I’d want them to know Atlas is my date to the wedding.

I was hesitant to invite him to the wedding for that very reason, but I’m confident no one at Lucy’s wedding would even know Ryle. We run in different circles. And on the off chance they do know Ryle, and it might get back to him that I was with someone, the risk is worth the reward. I’ve been looking forward to this night since Atlas agreed to come with me.

Come up, I’m still getting ready.

Atlas knocks at my door moments later. When I open the door to let him in, my eyes feel like they might double in size like they do in the cartoons. “Wow.” I’m staring at him all dressed up in his black designer suit. He stands in
the hallway for longer than I’d normally make someone wait before inviting them in because I forget basic things like hospitality when I’m in his presence.

He’s holding a bouquet, but it isn’t flowers. It’s
cookies
.

He hands them to me. “Figured you get enough flowers,” he says. He leans in and kisses my cheek, and I want to tilt my face just enough so that his lips land on mine, but hopefully I won’t have to be patient for much longer.

“These are perfect,” I say, motioning for him to enter. “Come in. I need, like, fifteen minutes to get dressed.”

I’ve been so busy today, I haven’t even had a chance to eat. I open one of the cookies and bite into it. Then, with a mouthful, I say, “I’m sorry if this is tacky. I’m starving.” I point toward my bedroom. “You can wait in my room with me while I get ready; it won’t take me long.”

Atlas is looking around, taking everything in as he follows me to my bedroom.

My dress is laid out on the bed, so I pick it up and walk to my bathroom. I leave the door cracked a bit so that I can talk to him while I change. “Where’s Josh?”

“You remember Brad from that poker night?”

“I do, actually.”

“His son, Theo, is at my house with Josh. They go to school together.”

“How’s he liking school?”

I can’t see Atlas, but he’s closer to the bathroom when he says, “Fine, I guess.” It sounds like he’s right next to the door. I slip the dress over my head and open the door farther. I chose a merlot-colored fitted dress with spaghetti straps. It has a matching shawl, but it’s still hanging in the closet.

Atlas looks me over when I appear in the doorway. His eyes journey up the length of me, but I don’t give him time to compliment me.

“Can you zip me up?” I give him my back and lift my hair, but I can feel him hesitate. Or maybe he’s soaking in the moment.

A couple of seconds later, I feel his fingers press against my back as he raises the zipper. It sends chills rolling over my skin. When he’s finished, I drop my hair and turn and face him. “I need to put on makeup.” I start to back into the bathroom, but Atlas grips my waist.

“Come here,” he says, pulling me until I smush against him. He admires my face for a couple of seconds, smiling appreciatively. Seductively. Like he’s about to kiss me. “Thank you for inviting me.”

I return the smile. “Thank you for coming. I know you’ve had a busy week.”

Atlas’s eyes look tired. The usual glimmer has dulled a little, like he’s been stressed and could use a night of relaxation. I can’t help but touch his cheek when I say, “We can Uber there if you want. You seem like you could use a drink.”

Atlas touches my hand that’s cupping his cheek. He tilts his face so that he can kiss the inside of my palm. Then he pulls my hand away and threads his fingers through it. He opens his mouth to say something else, but I see it the second his eyes get a glimpse of my tattoo.

Atlas has never seen the heart tattoo on my shoulder—the one I got because he always used to kiss me there. He touches it softly with his fingers, tracing the shape of it. His eyes flicker up to mine. “When did you get this?”

My voice catches, and I’m forced to clear my throat. “In college.” I’ve thought about this moment a lot—what he would say if he ever saw it, how it would make him feel.

He quietly regards me and then looks at the tattoo again. He’s so close, I can feel his breath trickling across my collarbone. “Why’d you get it?”

I got it for so many reasons, but I choose to say the most obvious one. “Because. I missed you.”

I wait for him to lower his head and press a kiss there like he’s done so many times before. I wait for him to kiss
me
. To press his mouth to mine in a silent thank-you.

Atlas doesn’t do any of those things. He continues staring at the tattoo for a beat, but then he releases his hold on me and turns away. His voice is detached when he says, “You should probably finish getting ready or we’ll be late.” He takes a couple of steps toward my bedroom door, and then, without looking back, he says, “I’ll wait in the living room.”

I feel like I just got the breath knocked out of me.

His entire demeanor changed. It wasn’t at all what I expected from him. I stand frozen in place for a few depressing seconds, but then I force myself to finish getting ready. Maybe I’m misreading his reaction and it wasn’t a negative one. Maybe he liked it so much, he needed alone time to process.

Whatever the reason is for his unexpected reaction, I fight back the sting of tears the entire time I’m trying to do my makeup. I can’t help it. I think my feelings might be hurt, and that’s not something I expected to happen tonight at all.

I go to my closet and find my shoes and grab my shawl, and I half expect Atlas to be gone when I walk out of my
bedroom, but he’s still here. He’s standing by the wall in the hallway looking at pictures of Emmy. When he hears me exit the bedroom, he looks in my direction, and then full-on turns to face me.

“Wow.” He looks genuinely pleased when I’m back in his presence, so the whiplash is a little confusing. “You’re beautiful, Lily.”

I appreciate his compliment, but I can’t move past what just happened. And if there’s one thing I’ve learned from the relationship I was in before and the relationship I witnessed between my parents, it’s that I refuse to be someone who brushes everything under a rug. I don’t even want there to
be
a rug.

“Why did my tattoo upset you?”

My question catches him off guard. He fidgets with his tie, and seems to be looking for an excuse, but nothing comes to him, and the hallway remains silent, other than a ragged, slow breath he pulls in. “It wasn’t the tattoo.”

“What is it? Why are you mad at me?”

“I’m not mad at you, Lily.” He says that convincingly, but he’s not the same after seeing the tattoo, and I don’t want us to start out with lies. Apparently, he doesn’t, either, because I can see him working through what to say to me next. He looks uncomfortable, like he doesn’t want to have this conversation, or at least he doesn’t want to have it right now.

He shoves his hands in the pockets of his pants and sighs. “That night I took you to the emergency room… they bandaged up your shoulder while we were there.” His voice sounds pained, but when he makes eye contact with me, that pained sound is nothing compared to the turmoil in his
expression. “I heard you tell the nurse he bit you, but I wasn’t close enough to see that…” Atlas pauses midsentence and swallows hard. “I wasn’t close enough to see that you had the tattoo, and that he bit…” Atlas stops speaking again. He’s so upset, he can’t even finish his sentence. He just moves on to another one. “Is that why he did it? Because he read your journals and knew you got the tattoo for me?”

My knees feel shaky.

I can see why Atlas didn’t want to have this conversation. It’s too much for a casual chat while we’re on our way out the door. I press a hand flat against my nervous stomach, prepared to answer him, but it’s hard to talk about. Especially knowing how upset it’s making Atlas on my behalf.

I don’t want to hurt him, but I also don’t want to lie to him, or protect Ryle in any way. Because Atlas is right. That’s exactly why Ryle did what he did, and I hate that Atlas will now forever pair my tattoo with that awful memory.

My lack of response is enough confirmation for him. He winces and turns away from me. I can see the deep breath he forces himself to take in order to remain calm. He looks like he wants to explode, but Ryle isn’t here for him to explode on.

Atlas is so angry, but this is an anger I’m not afraid of.

I realize the significance of this moment. I’m alone with an angry man in my apartment, but I’m not in fear for my life, because he isn’t angry at me. He’s angry at the person who
hurt
me. It’s a protective anger, and there’s a world of difference between my reactions to Ryle’s anger versus my reaction to Atlas’s anger.

When Atlas turns to me again, I can see the hard set of
his jaw and the veins in his neck when he says, “How am I supposed to be civil around him, Lily?” There’s guilt in his voice when he whispers, “I should have been there for you. I should have done more.”

I can understand the anger, but Atlas has absolutely nothing to feel guilty for. I wasn’t at a point in my life where Atlas could have said or done anything to change my views of Ryle. I had to get to that point on my own.

I walk closer to Atlas and press my back into the wall across from him. He does the same on the opposite wall until we’re facing each other. He’s working through a lot of emotions right now, and I want to give him the space to do that. But I also have a lot to say about the guilt Atlas is holding on to.

“The first time Ryle hit me, it was because I laughed at him. I was tipsy, and I thought something was funny that wasn’t funny, and he backhanded me.”

Atlas has to break eye contact after hearing me say that. I don’t know if he wants these details, but I’ve been wanting to say all this to him for a long time. He remains still against the wall, but it looks like it’s taking everything in him not to run straight to wherever Ryle is right now. His eyes are sharp when he looks back at me, waiting for me to finish.

“The second time, he pushed me down the stairs. That argument started because he found your number hidden in my phone case. And when he bit me on my shoulder… You’re right. It was because he read the journals and found out my tattoo was because of you, and that the magnet I kept on my refrigerator was from you.” I look down briefly because it’s hard seeing how much this is affecting him. “I used
to think the things I did somehow warranted his reactions. Like maybe if I wouldn’t have laughed, he wouldn’t have hit me. Maybe if I didn’t have your number in my phone, he wouldn’t have gotten angry enough to push me down a flight of stairs.”

Atlas isn’t even looking at me anymore. His head is leaned back against the wall, and he’s staring at the ceiling, taking everything in, frozen in his anger.

“Every time I would start to take on the guilt and justify Ryle’s actions, I would think about you. I would ask myself what your reaction would have been compared to Ryle’s. Because I know it would have been different. If I would have laughed at you under the same circumstances that I laughed at Ryle, you would have laughed
with
me. You never would have backhanded me. And if any man on this planet gave me their phone number as a way to protect me from someone they feared was dangerous, you would
appreciate
them for that. You wouldn’t have pushed me down a flight of stairs. And if the journals I let you read were about another boy in high school besides you, you would have teased me. You probably would have highlighted lines you thought were cheesy and laughed about them with me.”

I stop speaking until Atlas brings his focus back to mine, and then I finish. “Every time I would doubt myself and think that what Ryle did to me was in any way deserved, all I had to do was think about you, Atlas. I think about how differently each scenario would have been if it were you, and that helped me remember that none of it was my fault. You’re a big part of the reason I got through it, even though you weren’t there.”

Atlas silently soaks up everything I’ve said for maybe five seconds, but then he closes the distance between us and kisses me. Finally.
Finally.

His right hand curls around my waist as he tugs me against him, his tongue sliding gently and warmly against my lips, coaxing his way past them. His left hand snakes its way through my hair until he’s molding his palm to the back of my head. A spool of yearning begins to unravel inside me.

He doesn’t kiss me with any trepidation. His mouth meets mine with confidence, and mine responds to his with relief. I pull at him, wanting his warmth to sink into me. His mouth and his touch are familiar since we’ve done this dance before, but completely new at the same time because this kiss is made up of a whole new set of ingredients. Our first kiss was made of fear and youthful inexperience.

This kiss is hope. It’s comfort and safety and stability. It’s everything I’ve been missing in my adult life, and I am so happy Atlas and I have each other again, I could cry.

There have been a lot of things in my life that have made me angry, but nothing filled me with rage like seeing Lily’s tattoo and the faded scars that circled it in the shape of a bite mark.

How any man can do that to a woman, I’ll never understand. How any
human
can do that to a human they’re supposed to love and want to protect, I will never understand.

But what I do understand is that Lily deserves better. And I get to be the one to
give
her better. Starting with this kiss that we can’t seem to stop. Every time we pause to look at each other, we go right back to kissing like we have to make up for all the lost time in this one kiss.

I trail kisses down her jaw until I meet her collarbone. I’ve always loved kissing her there, but until I read her journal, I didn’t know she was aware of how much I loved kissing her there. I press my lips to her tattoo, determined to make sure she remembers the good parts of us in all the future kisses I’m going to give her in this spot. If it takes a million kisses for her not to think about the scars that surround her heart tattoo, then I’ll kiss her there a million and
one
times.

I press kisses up her neck, then her jaw. When I’m looking at her again, I slide the shoulder strap of her dress back in place because as much as I could stay right here for hours,
I’m supposed to be taking her to a wedding. “We should go,” I whisper.

She nods, but I kiss her again. I can’t help it. I’ve been waiting for this moment since I was a teenager.

I can’t really say how the wedding went because I was more focused on Lily than anything else. I didn’t know anyone there, and after finally kissing Lily tonight, it was hard to focus on anything other than wanting it to happen again. I could tell Lily craved to be alone with me as much as I wanted to be alone with her. Being forced to patiently sit next to her after what happened between us in her hallway was torture.

As soon as we got to the reception and Lily saw how crowded it was, she was relieved. She said Lucy would never know if we left early, and I don’t even know Lucy, so I wasn’t about to argue with her when, after less than an hour of mingling, she grabbed my hand and we slipped out.

We’ve just pulled back up to Lily’s apartment complex, and while I’m almost positive she wants me to go upstairs with her, I’m not going to assume. I open her door and wait for her to put her shoes back on. She took them off in the car because they were hurting her feet, but they look difficult to fasten. There are strings, and Lily is struggling with them in the passenger seat. I doubt she wants to walk barefoot on the parking garage floor, though.

“I can carry you on my back.”

She glances up at me and laughs like I’m joking. “You want to give me a piggyback ride?”

“Yeah, grab your shoes.”

She stares at me for a moment, but then she grins like she’s excited. I turn around and she’s still laughing when she wraps her arms around my neck. I help her hoist herself onto my back and then I kick the car door shut.

When we make it to her apartment, I lean forward so she can use her key to unlock her door. Once we’re inside, she’s laughing when I lower her to her feet. I turn around just as she drops her shoes and starts to kiss me again.

Picking up right where we left off, I guess.

“What time do you need to be home?” she asks.

“I told Josh ten or eleven.” I look at the clock and it’s just after ten. “Should I call him and tell him I might be late?”

Lily nods. “You’re definitely gonna be late. Call him and I’ll make us drinks.” She walks to the kitchen, so I take out my phone and call Josh. I video-chat him so I can make sure he’s not throwing a party at my house. I doubt Theo would let him, but I’m not taking any chances with either of those two.

When Josh answers the video call, the phone is lying on the floor. I can see his chin and the light from the TV. He’s holding a controller. “We’re in the middle of a tournament,” he says.

“Just checking in. Everything okay?”

“It’s fine!” I hear Theo yell.

Josh starts shaking his remote, hitting buttons, but then he yells, “Shit!” He tosses the controller aside and picks up the phone, bringing it closer to his face. “We lost.”

Theo appears behind him. “That doesn’t look like a wedding. Where are you?”

I don’t answer him. “I might be a little late tonight.”

“Oh, are you at Lily’s?” Theo says, moving closer to the phone screen. He’s grinning. “Did you finally kiss her? Can she hear me? What line did you use to get her to invite you in?
Lily! We watched people wed, let’s hop into
—”

I immediately end the call before he finishes that rhyme, but Lily heard that whole conversation. She’s standing a few feet away from me, holding two glasses of wine. Her head is tilted in confusion. “Who was that?”

“Theo.”

“How old is he?”

“Twelve.”

“You talk to a twelve-year-old about us?”

She seems amused by this. I take a glass of wine from her, and right before I sip it, I say, “He’s my therapist. We meet every Thursday at four.”

She laughs. “Your therapist is in junior high?”

“Yeah, but he’s about to get fired.” I wrap my hand around Lily’s waist and pull her to me. When I kiss her, she tastes like the red wine she poured. I kiss her deeper to get more of that taste. More of her.

When she pulls back, she says, “This is weird.”

I don’t know what she’s referring to as weird. I hope she’s not referring to us, because
weird
is the last word I’d use to describe this. “What’s weird?”

“Having you here. Not having a kid here. I’m not used to free time, or… guy time.” She takes another sip of her wine and then separates from me. She sets her wineglass on the counter and walks toward her bedroom. “Come on, let’s take advantage of it.”

I follow her lead entirely too quickly.