My phone buzzes and I glance down at it on the mattress by my hip.
Atlas.
And a photo of a ridiculous mountain of baby snacks in a grocery cart, along with a huge bouquet of spring flowers.The photo itself does things to me, but the words have me nearly swooning.For Captain, enough snacks to feed an army.For management, pretty flowers well deserved.
“Stop,” I whisper to no one, smiling at my screen like an idiot.
I type back:I don’t accept bribes.
Three dots.This is extortion, not bribery.
I laugh and put the phone face down because if I keep going, I’ll want things I’m not allowed to want.
The cursor blinks at the bottom of the application, prompting me to attach my résumé.Once it’s uploaded, I hover over the “Submit” button.
I think about the last time I applied for a job, how flat and alone it felt.I think about Atlas in the kitchen, saying we’ll make it work like a promise he’s already keeping.I think about Grayce bonking the purple cat page seventeen times.I think about how rules are supposed to keep me safe, not small.
I submit my application.The rainbow wheel spins, loads and receipt is confirmed.
I put the laptop aside and lie back on the bed.I try to imagine tomorrow—meeting Brienne Norcross, the roar of fans, my nerves skittering out of control.
I try to imagine that I will not let fear keep my world small.That I will sit with women whose names I barely know and clap until my palms sting, and when cameras swing our way, I will look like a person who belongs exactly where she is.
I don’t believe it, not fully.
Not yet.
But I can practice.
I reach for my phone one more time.Atlas has sent nothing else, and that’s fine.He doesn’t owe me a good-night.He doesn’t owe me anything but the rules we both wrote.
Co-parents, that’s it.
The words taste hollow tonight so once again, I think about tomorrow where I’ll step into his world.I let myself have the luxury of wanting the version where his world is mine too.
Only for tonight.Only in my head.
Then I put the want away, like a good girl who knows the rules, and I close my eyes.I try to ignore the hollow feeling inside me.
And then my phone chimes again.My blood fires hot at Atlas’s text.Any chance you’d be waiting naked in my bed by the time I get back?
The hollowness disappears in an instant, replaced by a rush so fierce it almost makes me laugh.It has nothing to do with the promise of amazing sex—though that’s a guarantee—and everything to do with the fact that Atlas reached for me.That he wants the connection as much as I do, and that wanting it back might be the most dangerous rule I’m breaking of all.
CHAPTER 24
Maddie
The Titans’ staffer’sbadge swings from his lanyard as he leads me down the concrete hallway, his strides brisk enough that I have to quicken mine to keep up.Somewhere above us, the arena hums.It’s not even game time yet, and still, I can feel the low thrum of twenty thousand people gathering.
I clutch my crossbody bag a little tighter.It doesn’t hold much—lip balm, my phone, tissues, my Illinois driver’s license and forty bucks—but it feels like a shield.A poor one, considering my stomach has been in knots since I left the house.
Grayce is fine.
More than fine.
I repeat it like a prayer as the staffer swipes us through another restricted door.Grayce is with the sitter Brienne recommended—a woman raising three boys of her own and who Brienne and Drake use to babysit their boys.Brienne had assured me she was the best, the kind of mother you can call last minute and she’ll throw in a pan of pizza rolls and have a craft project ready.
I believed her.
