For me.
That fucks me up more than any hit I’ve ever taken.
She doesn’t look up as I stop beside her.
“You okay?”I ask.My voice is rough — always rough — but today it sounds sharper.
She nods without meeting my eyes.“Fine.”
That word again.
Her favorite lie.
“I didn’t ask if you were fine,” I say quietly.“I asked if you were okay.”
She doesn’t answer.
Instead, her phone buzzes in her hand.
Her fingers jerk.
She fumbles it — actually fumbles it — and catches it at the last second.Her face drains of color.Not the pale of a trainer seeing blood or injury.This is something else.
This is fear.
Real fear.
Her hands tremble.
She tries to swipe the message open, but her finger misses.She tries again.Misses again.
I swear I can hear her heartbeat from where I’m standing.
This isn’t normal.This isn’t just stress.This is someone tearing her apart from the inside.
“Who’s texting you?”I ask.
She stiffens like I slapped her.
“It’s nothing,” she says too fast.“Just...personal stuff.”
Personal.
From the way she’s reacting, it feels like someone got personal with her throughout last night, too.
“Show me,” I say, surprising myself.
I don’t know why I said it.I don’t know what I expected.But I know I need to see it.I know the look on her face.I’ve seen it before — on people cornered by someone they can’t fight.
Her eyes snap up to mine, wide, wounded, begging me not to press.
“Atlas—no.”
Her voice.That small.That thin.
It hits something in me I don’t like acknowledging.
I reach forward instinctively, hand brushing her elbow.
