“You shouldn’t be here,” he says, voice low and wrecked.
“You walked away,” I answer, softer than I mean to.“I thought you might need—”
“Don’t say help.”His mouth twists.“I don’t know what to do with help.”
The honesty hits hard.“Okay,” I whisper.“Then I’ll just...be.”
He huffs out a humorless breath, pushes off the wall, and turns.He’s too big for this hallway.He makes the air thinner by standing in it.But the look in his eyes isn’t a threat.It’s a warning—for me or for himself, I can’t tell.
“I don’t want to scare you,” he says.
“You don’t,” I tell him.
A flicker of something passes over his face—disbelief, hope, both, neither.He starts to shake his head, then stops.His hands flex, curl, uncurl, like he needs a fight and there isn’t one to have.
“What did I do wrong?”I ask, and it comes out before I can pull it back.“Because it felt like I did something wrong back there.”
His stare goes sharp.“You didn’t.”
“Then why are you looking at me like that?”
He swallows.The tendon in his neck jumps.“Because I...”He drags a hand down his face.“It’s not you.”
I wait.The silence between us stretches, a wire that could snap if either of us pulls too hard.
Finally, quiet, almost shameful: “I saw something this morning I didn’t want to see.”
My pulse stumbles.My mind sprints in a dozen directions—Adrian, my phone, the bar, the way I left my blinds open a few inches like an idiot.“What did you see?”
He shakes his head, jaw clenching.“Doesn’t matter.Wasn’t my business.”A breath.“I’m not asking questions.I’m not...I don’t get to ask.”
I take a step closer, then another, slow enough he can stop me if he needs to.He doesn’t move.
“You can ask,” I say.“Maybe I won’t answer.But you can ask.”
He laughs once, soft and broken.“That’s worse.”
“Why?”
“Because I don’t want to put something on your back you already can’t carry.”
The corridor is too bright.The world is too loud.I am suddenly and acutely aware of the way my heart has learned to beat around fear, around men who taught it to panic.Atlas isn’t panic.He is danger, yes, but not the kind that turns rooms into traps.He’s the kind that throws himself between you and the trap and tears it apart with his hands.
“Atlas,” I say, “if this is about me...you’re allowed to care.”
He goes very still.
“Don’t,” he says after a moment, voice roughened to sand.“Don’t use that word like it isn’t gasoline.”
“You’re the one who keeps setting matches,” I answer, and it’s not brave so much as it is tired.
He exhales, almost a laugh, almost a groan.“I’m trying not to.”
“Then tell me what to do,” I say.“Because I’m standing here trying not to shake, and you’re standing here trying not to explode, and neither one of us looks fine.”
His eyes close.When he opens them, the anger has banked to an ember.What burns now is something else.“Be safe,” he says quietly.“Just—be safe.”
The words make my throat ache.It’s not an answer and it’s everything.He sawsomething.Not specific, not named, not an accusation—just enough to scratch up all his edges.I think of Finn’s careful softness last night, the way he put his shoulder under my weight and didn’t ask me to explain the heaviness; of Kael’s pen on my clipboard,IF YOU WANTscrawled under a practical note; of Atlas throwing himself into drills like the only language he trusts is impact.Three men trying to hold me up without knowing where the cracks are.
