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.

Chapter Twenty-One Atlas

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.