Page 48 of Atonement

“It’s fine.” She grabbed my hand and tilted my chin with the other, bringing my eyes to her. “You can relax now, Meyer. I’m going to be okay.”

I swiped my fingers across her chin, checking for any stray marks of blood that might not have been washed away in the shower. “Force of habit, I suppose.”

“Kids?”

We both looked up to see Eva standing in the doorway to the bathroom, wearing different clothes than when we’d last seen her.

“Mom,” Maddie breathed and jumped down to meet her halfway. I watched awkwardly as they embraced for several seconds.

“Come here, Meyer,” Eva said, and they both stepped to the side to make room for me. I hesitated, not wanting to intrude on their moment, but Maddie held out her hand to me with a smile, and I had no choice but to take it. She pulled me into their grasp, placing her head on my shoulder while Eva kissed my cheek.

“It’ll be okay, baby,” she whispered in my ear.

Just like that, the grief I had been holding back, the guilt that I’d been forcing myself not to feel, both broke free and flooded my body like a broken dam. All at once I was sobbing, incapable of speech.

“I … I let him…” I couldn’t breathe, couldn’t inhale past the cement that had settled into my lungs and was making its way up my throat. Maddie shifted and hooked both arms around my middle, putting pressure on my chest that somehow worked to alleviate my pain rather than add to it. I pressed my face into her neck and sobbed. Eva ran her hand through my hair, tousling the strands in a soothing motion.

“You saved us both, darling.”

I shook my head in the crook of Maddie’s shoulder. I could have ended it all so long ago.

“It’s true. Meyer, you’re a survivor of the highest caliber. I would know. It’s thanks to you and my daughter that all three of us are alive right now.”

I wiped at my eyes. “Joseph will never forgive me.” How could I be a part of this family going forward if he deemed me unworthy?

“I already spoke to my husband. He’ll be here in a few hours. A good idea, by the way, to put some security on him to keep him up there. Once he arrives, we can all talk about what to do next. But until then, I think you both need to sleep.”

I nodded vigorously as I raised my head, staring at Maddie as she wiped at my tears. “What happened to…”

“Don’t worry about it.” Her voice was clipped, and she seemed to force herself to soften her face before speaking again. “Joshua and I have taken care of everything.”

Eva walked ahead of us out to the bedroom, then pulled back the blankets on my bed for Maddie and me to slip in to. My eyes closed the moment my head hit the pillow, eager to sleep, though my mind still raced. But then I felt the warmth of Maddie’s small frame against mine, her arms and legs encircling my body as if to hold me together. The blanket covered us both, and the light flipped off. I never even heard the door close before I fell asleep.

*

The first thing I noticed when I woke up was the cold, the absence of another body against mine, and I shot up in bed so fast my head rang.

“Maddie?” She wouldn’t have left after all that, would she?

“I’m here!” she called, popping her head out of the bathroom with a toothbrush hanging out of her mouth. “Give me one second.”

I fell back onto the pillow as she spit and rinsed her mouth, and then she hopped back into bed and snuggled against me as she kissed my cheek.

“How do you feel?”

“I’m fucking freezing,” I muttered, and it was true. I’d never been so cold, not even when I had been forced to sit outside in the middle of winter because I’d been locked out of the house for misbehaving or dive in to a near-frozen lake to rescue a drowning woman.

Maddie released me briefly to grab the blanket and pull it over our bodies, then covered as much of my skin with hers as she could manage. “You thought I ran out on you?”

“I don’t think I’ll ever not be afraid of that.”

She kissed my cheek, then my neck, any available place that wasn’t wrapped up in her or buried in the blankets. “You’re stuck with me, Meyer. I’m not going anywhere.”

I hugged her fiercely, ignoring the tightness in my chest from the repeated Taser burns. "No one has ever stayed before."

She placed one hand against my cheek, guiding my face toward hers to look me in the eyes as she kissed my lips, softly, like dew on the petals of a dying flower. "What would it take to make you believe?"

I wanted to marry her. I wanted to take her last name in the court of law, raze this house to the ground, and forget everything about my life prior to this moment. But I couldn't say that, not yet, not when we'd only known each other a little over a month and had both risked our lives multiple times. So I didn't say anything. I just kissed her back.

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