By the time she was signing her statement, Rebecca felt as if the story, weighing a thousand pounds, had been lifted off her back and into the hands of the detective.
It was his to deal with now. And it was hers to move on from.
She’d been going to therapy for weeks now and had dreaded it every time. For the first time though, Rebecca was almost looking forward to it. It felt as if she were light enough to run in the same race as everyone else. All this time, she’d felt pinned to the floor with the weight of her past.
She still had a lot of work to do to train her muscles, but at least now she was a part of the race.
The detectives shook her hand, excused themselves, and Rebecca made her way out of the room, almost blindly. She couldn’t help but sag against the doorway. Cedric, Sequence, and Geo were all standing, waiting to escort her back to the car.
“So,” Geo said. “How’d it go, sis?”
“Like butter,” Rebecca replied, making them all chuckle. “Now the only thing left is the eensy weensie detail of being the key witness in a murder trial.”
Which, of course, was what this was all leading up to. She’d given her statement to the detective who was building the case against Roderick. At which point, he’d be charged. At which point, she’d agree to testify as the sole witness to the murder. At which point her entire past would be torn to shreds and publicly thrown in her face as Roderick’s lawyers attempted to discredit her as a witness.
“Let’s think about that tomorrow,” Atlas suggested, from over her shoulder. She hadn’t been able to look at him yet. Not really. Maybe when they got in the car, she’d collapse against him, insist that he ride next to her. Maybe she’d treat herself to a full-body cry.
But for now, she had to concentrate on getting the hell out of this building. So Rebecca kept her eyes on the others.
“For now, let’s think about getting you back home,” Rook agreed.
“And feeding you,” Sequence piped up. Rebecca had noticed that he was fixated on what people ate. He liked to make sure that everyone had a full belly. And at that particular moment, Rebecca was appreciative of that particular habit of Sequence’s.
She was starving.
They escorted Rebecca from the building, in the same formation as they’d escorted her into the building. She was surrounded on all sides by a member of the team.
The SUV glinted like a black diamond in the distance and Rebecca’s mind was blankly grateful to see it. It was like a little home on wheels. She’d slide into the backseat and disintegrate if she wanted to. She could sleep the whole way home. Back to the bunker, where she’d be assuredly safe. At least until the trial.
She shoved that thought away and thought only about the glittering car twenty feet away. All she had to do was get there. All she—
Something made a strange thwacking sound in the ground in front of her feet and Rebecca looked down at the whirl of dust that was kicked up in front of her. She had no time to process what she’d just seen before she felt two strong hands grip her shoulders and slam her sideways.
She hadn’t been pushed to the ground in two years and she immediately thrashed against the feeling.
“No!” she screamed, thinking of Jeff Mather. The raw strength of him, his sick, guilty laughter that used to peel out of him when he’d push her down. She fell in slow motion and her eyes had just enough time to focus on the gravel rushing up to meet her cheek. She knew she was about to scrape the shit out of her face, but she couldn’t get her hands up fast enough to slow the fall.
But when her head bounced, it wasn’t against the blacktop of the parking lot, it was against a warm slab of a palm. A familiar hand. And it wasn’t Jeff’s sharp weight at her back, his breath at her neck, the stink of him.
It was Atlas’s familiar sturdiness, holding himself up from crushing her, keeping her sheltered on every side.
“Shots fired!” she heard Rook yell.
“The roof at nine o’clock!” Geo shouted.
“Go! Go!”
“Now!”
There were gunshots then and Rebecca jumped sharply with each one. These were loud and dangerous and too close. Three feet in front of her was that same quiet thwack against the ground and as dirt swirled up again Rebecca realized finally what it had been.
Bullets. There were silent bullets raining down on the ground around her. Aiming for her.
The rest of the situation started to spiral into focus for her. Atlas had shoved her down, was laying over top of her because someone was shooting at her.
“No!” she screamed again, realizing that he was putting his body between hers and death. “Atlas, don’t!”
She tried to buck him off of her, wanted to do anything she could to get him out of harm’s way, but he held her down tight, didn’t let her get free.
“Bex,” he started, but his body jerked suddenly and his breath was let out in a huff. He grunted and she watched in dismay as the hand planted on the dirt in front of her face curled into a fist.
There was more screaming from voices she recognized. But there were no more words. There were gunshots and sirens and screaming. Colors blended as Atlas’s weight came down on top of her. There was something wet against her back and she was aware of tears streaming down her face, mixing with the dirt below her. The sky became the ground became the sky as her world tumbled. There was no more breath against her ear and too much weight against her.
“Atlas,” she whispered over and over again, willing him desperately to speak to her. But she couldn’t breathe, she couldn’t speak. She was trapped under the weight of his body, unable to do anything but let him protect her.
EPILOGUE
Eight Weeks Later
Rebecca wiped tears from her face as she read the obituary. Eight long weeks of waiting and hoping and fearing and now here they were. He was nothing more than black and white ink printed on paper.
She hadn’t really let herself believe that he was gone until she read the words herself. James Roderick Jr., Deceased.
“Never seen tears like yours,” Atlas said from behind her. “Did I ever tell you that?”
“Hmm?” she asked, tipping her head back to lean against his shoulder as he came to stand behind where she sat at her usual barstool.
“Most people, when they cry, their tears roll down their faces clear to their chins. You though? When you cry, your tears jump straight off your cheekbones.”
“You’ve seen a lot of these tears over the last few months,” she whispered, wiping at her face.
“It’s just your body’s way of getting clear of all this emotion running through you, Bex. You cry all you want. You’ve had a hell of a year.” He nuzzled into her neck.
She tilted her head to one side to give him better access and he hummed in approval. Not that long ago, she might have karate chopped him for a move like that. But here she was purring like a kitten.
“Me? Atlas, you’re the one who got shot.”
“To be fair, I was unconscious for the worst parts of all that.”
“You mean the parts where you almost bled out on top of me?”
They both winced. “Yeah. And the four days after.”
“That were touch and go.” She shivered in his arms and he held her closer.
“The doctor said they weren’t that touch and go,” he insisted, still feeling oddly guilty over having been shot.
“I’d say we both had a pretty tough year,” she sighed, her eyes drifting back to the newspaper article.
“Not as tough as James Roderick Jr.”
Rebecca nodded her head in reluctant agreement. It didn’t feel awesome to speak ill of the dead, but he had, after all, shot Atlas in pursuit of trying to shoot Rebecca. Apparently, he’d been tipped off by someone in the ACPD that Rebecca was coming in to make an official statement about what she’d witnessed. Just as Rook had been scared might happen. He’d attempted to take her out with a sniper rifle and gotten Atlas instead. Realizing what had happened, he’
d immediately fled and gotten all the way to Nevada in a six-week interstate manhunt. He’d died in a firefight with the FBI two weeks ago just outside of Vegas.
Rebecca was desperately relieved. The man who’d shot Atlas, who’d hunted her, threatened her, killed other men, was wiped from the earth. And maybe it made her a bad person, but she was sleeping easier because of it.
Her therapist told her that everything was too fresh for her to be judging her emotions over it. Right now, she was supposed to feel her feelings and excuse herself from polite company when the feelings got too large to be socially appropriate. They’d deal with the nitty gritty when she’d healed a bit more.
Atlas gripped her harder and after a minute, his affectionate nuzzling started to escalate into nibbles, which escalated into heated, open-mouthed kisses along her throat.
“Atlas…”
“Hmm?”
“You know you aren’t supposed to be starting anything you can’t finish.”
“Rude,” he chuckled against her wetted skin. “The doctor gave me the green light this morning. For any and all activities I might care to undertake.”
“What?” Rebecca twirled in her chair to face him and accidentally elbowed him in the stomach in the process. “Oh! Shit! Are you okay? Let me see the incision.”
“Jeez, eager, are we?” Atlas rubbed his ribs but couldn’t stop the smile. “I’ll let you check me out in the bedroom, yeah?”
“Atlas, we can’t have sex, I just elbowed you in your injury!”
“Bex, my injury is in the back of my ribs and it’s not even an injury anymore. The damn thing is healed! It’s been eight weeks since I’ve been able to make love to the love of my life and I’m not waiting. If you want, we can do it extra gentle. It’ll be like sex in a country music video. Super romantic and soft lighting and rose petals falling from the sky. We’ll barely even exchange fluids, how about that? I don’t care.”
“Are you aware that you’re still talking?”
“Barely. I’m too horny to keep track of my mouth.”
“You should put that on a t-shirt, darling,” she said drily, a smirk on her lips. But she took pity on him and hopped down from the chair.
Like the eager lovebirds that they were, they raced one another to the bedroom. Rebecca pulled up short to keep from bowling him over as they made it to the bed. One, because she would probably never forget what it had been like to watch him barely clinging to life in that hospital bed, and she was going to make sure he healed up right if it was the last thing she did. But two, because he was cute when he won stuff, happy and proud and so Atlas.
She joined him on the bed, bouncing on her knees and stripping her shirt off over her head. He made a deep noise when he saw the fancy sports bra she was wearing.
“You’re wearing ballet clothes. You know what it does to me to see you in your ballet clothes.”
“Gentle, baby,” she laughed as he stretched the fabric of her bra over his head, pinning his face in between her breasts.
“Next time. We’ll be gentle next time,” he promised.
“Atlas… I’ve been thinking.” Her stomach flipped with what she was about to ask him.
“Now?” he asked incredulously, surfacing from under her shirt with his hair tousled. “I can barely remember my own name right now.”
“Funny you should bring up names,” she whispered, biting her bottom lip.
He searched her eyes. “What do you mean?”
“You remember how sad I was to give up my fake ID, but that I felt like I should continue to be Rebecca Beth for a little while? Until I got all of my legal mess figured out?”
He nodded, confusion still in his eyes as he waited for her to explain.
“Well, my legal stuff is pretty much cleared up. And I’ve been thinking that I was never very happy when I was Rebecca Beth. But when I was Bex Bone… I was the happiest I’ve ever been.”
“Baby—”
She clapped a hand over his mouth, unwilling to let him run away with words at a time like this. She knew her man; she knew he had to verbally process his life. But he was going to have to wait a minute.
“I’m saying that I’m ready to be Bex Bone.” She cleared her throat and forced herself to hold his eye contact. “Whenever you’re ready to make me Bex Bone.”
“Are you saying that you wanna get married?” he asked her, his words muffled behind her hand that still clamped over his mouth.
Rebecca nodded, tears spilling out of her eyes once more. Atlas lifted his hands to her cheeks, sweeping away the tears before they could swan dive off her cheekbones. “So bad,” she whispered.
He shook off her hand. “God. Me too. Yes. Tomorrow. Seriously. Let’s go in the morning and do it at the courthouse. The whole shebang. It’ll be perfect. I don’t care. Oh my god. I love you. Wait. I didn’t ask. Will you marry me and make a million babies and take my name and be buried next to me?”
She laughed and brought her lips to his. “Yes and no.”
He froze mid-kiss. “Clarify.”
“Yes to marrying you. No to tomorrow. I want at least chin-length hair at my wedding.”
“Wedding,” Atlas mused, his eyes big, as if he was just realizing what they were signing up for.
“A wedding,” she agreed. “A good old-fashioned, regular white wedding.”
“Regular,” he repeated, knowing just how much she relished being drama-free these days. “As regular as you want it.”
“And as special as you’ll make it,” she whispered to him. “As special as you’ve made everything.”
PART FOUR
CHAPTER ONE
Staring down at his perfectly packed duffel bag, there was absolutely nothing left to do but dump the whole thing out again. It went against every neat-freaky bone in his body, but he did it.
When the clothes were in a heap on his bed and he was just about to start rolling up his designer socks again, the door to his bedroom was nearly banged off its hinges with four aggressive knocks.
“Davy!” her low, husky voice reverberated with annoyance. “Are you ready yet?”
“Come in!” he called in an overly sweet tone that was guaranteed to irritate the pants off of her. Actually, it was guaranteed to irritate the pants onto her. He still hadn’t figured out the key to getting her pants off.
The door swung open and framed in the doorway was the most gorgeous woman of all time. And being one of the most famous men in the world, Moreau Davy had been up close and personal with more than his share of gorgeous women.
He didn’t care. Hollywood could keep its A-list actresses, Europe could keep its duchesses, and the internet could keep its Instagram models who were constantly DM-ing him. To Moreau, there was only one woman who could captivate him, and she was currently sucking her teeth at the pile of clothes on his bed.
“You haven’t even packed yet?” She threw her arms up in exasperation. “We were supposed to be on the road ten minutes ago!”
“You cannot rush brilliance,” he informed her, squinting at the lint on a pair of his trousers and brushing at it.
She strode toward him and shouldered him out of the way in that sharp, strong way of hers. “I’m not even going to comment on that idiocy.”
He’d dumped his things in order to kill time and to, hopefully, get her into his room and talking to him, but his heart seized when she grabbed handfuls of his clothes and started jamming them into his duffel.
“Hey!” Using an elbow and a knee, he bumped her away from his bed. “That’s Armani!”
“It’ll still be Armani,” she grunted as she shoved him back out of the way, jamming more clothes into the duffel, “Whether it’s wrinkled or not. And it’ll still be Armani when you’re finally wheels up and two thousand miles away again, all right?”
With that, a little of the fight went out of him. She sure knew how to hit where it hurt. And the fact that she was happier when he was on the other side of the country always hurt.
“All right,
I’ll do it. I’ll do it, Savannah!” He yanked a sweater and another pair of trousers from her death grip and set about folding them.
She sucked her teeth again and narrowed her eyes at him. “How many times do I have to tell you not to—?”
“Call you Savannah? Yes, yes. I know this already. Next headline.” He tossed his hand through the air as if he were scrolling through their conversation to get to the next topic. She did repeat that demand pretty much every single time they spoke. But Savannah was her first name and he’d be damned if he called her Geo the way everyone else did. Geo was not only a nickname, but it was a nickname based on her last name, Georgia.
He didn’t think it was possible to get more impersonal than that. And maybe he liked the fact that he was the only person on earth who called her Savannah.
Maybe he liked that there was one thing about him that made him special in her eyes. Especially when she went so far out of her way to show him that he was utterly insignificant to her.
Even worse than that, he was simply a client to her. An annoying one at that.
“Davy, I am supposed to get you to the airport in thirty minutes.” She folded her arms across her chest. “I don’t understand how this happens every single time. You have the entire day to get ready to leave, and still, we end up late.”
He kept his eyes on his clothes as he quickly re-packed his belongings. The fact that she hadn’t figured out the riddle yet proved just how little attention she paid to him. He thought that to even the casual observer it would be quite obvious that he made them late to the airport every time because he did not want to leave. Like a child who didn’t want to leave home for summer camp, leaving New York for LA was painful and dread-worthy, no matter how many times he had to do it. So, he dragged his feet and made messes and excuses and sure enough, they were inevitably late to board his private jet.
As he zipped up his bag and chanced a glance up at Geo’s gorgeous, sculpted face, he wondered what her reaction would be if he told her the other half of the truth. That he dragged his feet to leave every time because he hated leaving her. That he savored even her irritation and sharp words. That the second she booted him out of the car, every time, he missed her deeply.
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