“C’mon, Daddy Grump, I’m just fucking with you.” Laurel slipped the credit card into her pocket and shot him a grin. “I won’t be an asshole, and you won’t give me a limit.”
“Fine.”
“I hope you know how dangerous that is,” I said, my voice just above a whisper as I braced myself against the counter.
He turned toward me, the heat in his stare replaced almost immediately by concern. He ran his gaze over me from head to toe, his brow pinching at whatever he saw. “Why are you whispering? And why the hell are you wearing sunglasses in the house?”
“It’s just a headache,” I mumbled.
Laurel snorted as she rinsed her bowl and put it in the dishwasher. “Right. That’s just a headache like this is just a house.”
Atlas turned toward her. “What’s that mean?”
She lifted a shoulder in a shrug. “Mom gets migraines.”
He snapped his attention back to me, his jaw clenching as he so easily clocked the tightness in my expression. “If you have a migraine, what are you doing down here? You should be?—”
“Relax,” I interrupted him. “I just took a magic pill, so I’ll hopefully be fine by the time I get to work.”
“Work?” he barked, causing an ice pick to stab me through the skull.
I cringed, closing my eyes through the reverberating throb.
He muttered a curse under his breath and pointedly lowered his voice, though there was no denying the command still behind it. “Absolutely not. You’re not going to work. You’re going to go upstairs and get back in bed.”
“Can’t. The sun shines directly on my bed.”
“My room, then.”
“But—”
“This isn’t a negotiation, trouble.” He plucked the phone from my hand and set it on the island before guiding me upstairs. “You go back to bed. I’ll get Laurel to school.”
“I have to call?—”
“I’llcall the clinic. You sleep this off, and let me worry about everything else.”
Unable to argue, I shuffled into Atlas’s now-familiar room, the light shining through the open curtains and making me cringe. I started toward them before I felt warm hands on my hips and his hulking form behind me.
“I’ll get them.” He led me toward his side of the bed instead of the one I’d been occupying for the past several nights before pressing a button on the remote sitting on his nightstand. A soft whir filled the room as the shades over his windows lowered, offering wonderful, blissful darkness.
I exhaled a deep sigh, my shoulders relaxing from the position they’d taken up below my ears. Then gently, so gently, he skimmed his hands under my scrub top and pulled it from my body. While I unhooked my bra beneath my tank top and tugged it out the arm holes, he slid my pants down my legs.
As if he didn’t want me to suffer through even the effort of stepping out of my bottoms, he squatted in front of me and wrapped his hand around the back of my knee, lifting first one leg out, then the other.
Though I’d stood in front of him in much less than the panties and tank top I was currently wearing, this still felt far more intimate. I didn’t allow many people to see my cracks. Didn’t allowanyone,really, besides Laurel to witness me vulnerable.
It was something I’d learned growing up in the house I had—any weakness had been weaponized and used against me. WhenI’d left that house and my parents for good, I’d vowed never to allow anyone to do that to me again.
But as Atlas guided me into his bed and removed my sunglasses before pressing a soft kiss on my temple, he didn’t make me feel weak. Instead, I felt cared for. Cherished.
There, snuggled in his bed, wrapped up in blankets that smelled like him, I dozed off, not worrying about anything. Instead, completely comforted in the feeling of warmth that had settled over me.
CHAPTER THIRTY
ATLAS
When I toldSutton that I would worry about everything, I hadn’t realized just how literal that would be. I’d spent the entire day glancing at my phone, hoping for an update, but I hadn’t received anything from her. And I didn’t dare call to see how she was doing. I didn’t want to wake her up if she was sleeping. More than that, I didn’t want the ringing phone to worsen her pain.
