Page 16 of The World Undone

ELI

Thankfully, Levi ditched us as soon as he’d delivered us to the meeting. We found ourselves in a small room at the back of Charlie’s restaurant—it was crowded and cramped but had been repurposed into a cluttered conference room of sorts.

He didn’t say so, but I knew he was going back to sit with my father, and as much as I wanted to hate him for encroaching, for being the one my father seemed to turn to in those moments when he lost himself, I was also grateful that my dad wouldn’t be alone.

Atlas was locked next to Max, a silent sentinel.

He still hadn’t spoken much to the rest of us, but every day he seemed to be getting a little bit better, a little more like himself. The problem was that Atlas was a bit of a quiet, surly loner even when he was his usual, brooding self. That made gauging any improvement in his mental state difficult.

He didn’t leave his room, other than to use the bathroom. Max crawled into bed with him each night in an effort to help comfort him, to combat some of the lingering dread tugging at his mind.

It was almost like he was relearning how to fit inside of his skin, his world—and she was the key to helping him do it.

I had a feeling that the dark shadows that seemed to encase him would linger for a long time though. None of us really knew what he went through, and Max didn’t talk too much about the glimpses she’d seen in her dreamwalks to him. She didn’t want to betray his trust, to tell his story.

I respected the hell out of her for it, but respect and understanding did nothing to quell my curiosity or my concern.

But I knew from the brief things she did tell us—the fear that flickered in her expression whenever we brought up his name, the way she spent most of the evenings in his room, trying to coax him out of his shell and soothe whatever invisible scars he harbored, her obsession with healing Sarah—that what he was going through would take time.

Maybe even a lifetime.

Honestly, it was something that he actually let her see him like this. Atlas wasn’t one for being comforted, for allowing someone to see him in his most raw and vulnerable state.

I supposed I shouldn’t have been surprised though. Max had that effect on us all. The ability to get in and truly see us—even the parts of us we wanted to hide. It’s why we’d all been so fucking terrified of getting too close to her. The fear that she’d see the worst we had to offer and leave.

She hadn’t though. And I was beginning to realize that we’d done her a disservice in assuming she was the kind of person who’d bail.

Atlas wasn’t himself, but the fact that he was letting Max get a glimpse of the pain he was enduring had me confident he would be himself again.

One day.

Ideally it would happen before the impending apocalypse, but we couldn’t afford to be picky.

He shifted awkwardly, limbs stiff, and I knew it took everything in him not to run back to our cabin, back to the dark shelter of the room he’d taken over. This was the first time since his return that he’d left, the first time he’d settled into a room all of us occupied. His discomfort shone through every muscle twitch, every nervous sidelong glance at us.

A door opened and Charlie and Bishop walked in. Behind them was a tall white man with dark red hair knotted in a bun on his head, and an East-Asian woman with a sharp, black bob. I hadn’t seen either of them around the Lodge yet.

And I didn’t give either of them much attention because it was the last person who walked in that made my stomach bottom out.

Evelyn.

I’d done a damn good job of avoiding her when she was at Headquarters, and an even better job since arriving here.

But apparently that avoidance spree was ending now.

Her eyes locked on mine, her lips lifting into a small, tentative smile, but it disappeared when I offered her blankness in response.

It took everything I had to swallow the anxiety lodged in my throat, my chest damn near like a vise at just the sight of her.

An unfamiliar emotion flashed across her expression—hurt, maybe—before she covered it up with the usual protector mask and greeted the others with a stiff nod.

“Thanks for joining us.” Either oblivious to the tension or kindly ignoring it, Charlie smiled before gesturing to the mismatched swivel chairs surrounding the large, wooden table we were all hovering around. “Why don’t we all take a seat and get comfortable?”

Without a word, we all shuffled to an available chair. It was an almost comical moment of musical chairs, each set of hinges squeaking loudly under the weight of bodies. The room was a far cry from the command centers where we’d received our mission at Headquarters.

It wasn’t until all the other spots had been taken that I realized the only available seat left was directly across from my mother.

Fuck today.

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