“Atlas…?”Her voice splintered like glass.
My heart stuttered.“Neve.”
For a moment—for a terrible, impossible heartbeat—neither of us moved.
Then she scrambled to her feet too fast and nearly stumbled.I was across the room before she could fall, catching her arms, pulling her against me.
Her hands pressed against my chest as though she was checking if I was real.
“You’re alive,” she whispered.It sounded like a prayer.Like a confession.Like a punishment.“I thought—you didn’t come—I thought you were?—”
“I know.”My voice cracked, raw and gutted.“I know.I’m sorry.”
She shoved at my chest then—not hard, not enough to push me back, just enough to shake with it.“Why didn’t you come?Why didn’t you tell me you were alive?I thought—” Her breath hitched.“I thought you died and blamed myself for leaving you there.”
I swallowed hard, resting my forehead against hers.
“You didn’t leave me.I sent you away.I was the one bleeding on the floor.Not you.You lived because I wanted you to live.”
“But I didn’t know,” she choked out.“I didn’t know anything.”
I tightened my grip around her.“Neve.Look at me.”
She did—eyes red, cheeks wet, the kind of grief that could tear a man apart shining in every line of her face.
“I would have come for you the second I could stand.But I needed to make sure the world was safe enough for you to breathe in again.”
She shivered.
“I came as soon as I knew where you were.”
A tear slipped down her cheek.“I waited.Every day.”
“I know.”
“I thought you forgot me.”
“I never forget what’s mine.”
Her breath stopped.Just stopped.A fragile second passed between us—her trembling, me breathing her in like oxygen, the world collapsing quietly around our feet.Then she folded into me, arms wrapping around my waist, face pressed to my chest as if she was trying to crawl inside and hide there.
I held her.Tight.Tight enough to bruise.I didn’t let go.
“I dreamed of this,” she whispered into my shirt.“That you would walk through that door and I wouldn’t be alone anymore.”
I closed my eyes.
“You’ll never be alone again,” I told her, and it wasn’t a promise.It was a vow carved from every violence I’d ever known.
She pulled back just enough to search my face.“What happens now?”
I ran a thumb over her cheek, wiping the tear she missed.
“Now?”My voice turned dark, sure, irrevocable.“Now you come home.”
She swallowed hard.“To your world?”
“To our world,” I corrected.“Where no one touches you.”