I sob loudly, mouth open, finally losing the last drop of control I had over myself. My face contorts, expressing the most intense pain I’ve ever been capable of feeling.
“I’ll take her home,” Atlas tells Nero, and it’s almost like an out-of-body experience. I’m seeing everything, yet I feel as though my mind is no longer here. “This is over.” He steps away from his friend and approaches me.
Even in my state, I manage to recoil, frightened. He stops a few steps away and raises his hands, palms up, showing me goodwill.
“Do whatever you want,” Nero replies.
“I just want to take you home, okay?” Atlas tells me in a calm, soothing tone. I blink at him, but my eyes are drawn to Nero’s movement. He opens the folder he was carrying, takes its contents, and throws them at my feet.
Papers scatter across the ground, and when my eyes recognize what they’re seeing, I think I’m going to throw up. They’re photos. Photos of… of sex and… is that me?
Atlas looks away from the ground and speaks to me again.
“When you’re ready, just say the word.”
His words make sense, and yet I don’t understand them—too focused on the impossibility of everything that’s happening.
“Deny it,” Nero challenges me, his eyes locked on mine, overflowing with hatred in the same measure mine reflect pain.
I say nothing. How could I? How is it possible that I’m being accused of this? How could he, at any point, have believed that— that this— that these photos are real?
He knows me. Every part of me. Every smile, every plan, every dream—because I gave him everything. Nero infiltrated my days, climbed my walls, and battered down the gates of my conscience until I had no choice but to let him in.
He became part of my plans. He gave me new dreams. He turned my life into a place for two—even when I had no intention of it ever ceasing to be a place for one when we reconnected months ago, in the association’s lobby. Nero was the only man my body ever knew. The only touch that made my heart dance. He is the father of my child.
And because I knew all that, even after hearing his voice tell me I was nothing more than a disposable fling, I still came back here. I came back hoping—wanting—believing—that he could give me an explanation. That there would be an explanation.
He saw images. Photos that could have come from anywhere, and decided that was more than enough proof to condemn me. To turn every promise he made, every assurance he gave me, into nothing. To make the child—who is a part of both of us—irrelevant.
And that… that is something I will never be able to justify. There’s no way.
I think I’m going to throw up.
“I’ve already told you I don’t make promises I can’t keep,” my words come out in a thread of a voice as I fight to keep my gaze steady on Nero’s. “But what I’m about to promise now, I will keep, Nero. When you regret this—because you will—I may not know if it’ll be today, tomorrow, a year from now, or ten, but you will. And when that moment comes, I won’t forgive you.” I swear it. “I will never forgive you.”
Nero turns his back on me, dismissing the weight of my words as easily as he dismissed our story. I watch him walk away and get into the car.
I watch the car until it disappears on the horizon. A little longer, actually—unable to move or blink. Numb. I feel numb.
“Come on, Nina. I’ll take you home,” Atlas says, resting a hand on my elbow and guiding me toward his car.
My body moves on autopilot, and the churning in my stomach grows stronger and stronger. I fight the wave of nausea, pressing my lips together and trying to take slow, deep breaths—but I fail.
My body moves on autopilot, and the twisting in my stomach intensifies. I struggle against the sickness, pressing my lips together and trying to breathe slowly.
Even that, however, isn’t enough to make me react. I still feel as numb as before—and I simply don’t care.
CHAPTER 45
NERO ZANTHOS
“So that’s your plan?” Atlas says as he walks into my bedroom at my parents’ house and finds me sprawled in an armchair, drinking whiskey straight from the bottle. “Do and say things you know you’ll regret, then drink to forget?”
“If you came to talk about what I think you came to talk about, feel free to turn around and walk right back out,” I offer. He doesn’t. He sits in the chair across from me, leans forward, and rests his elbows on his knees.
“I think I’ll stay. And you can tell me what you plan to accomplish with all of this.”
“Yeah? Then I guess it’ll be a quiet night.” I lower the bottle and settle it against my thigh.
