Page 175 of Becoming Us
Atty sat up on the bed. “What is it?”
“Lan wants to meet now. Says she needs to talk to me.”
“Sounds serious. Want me to come with you?”
I stared at the screen. “No, that’s okay. I’ll meet her now, and we’ll do dinner after. The Space Needle—we haven’t hit any of the tourist stuff yet.”
“You sure?”
I nodded. “We’ve got to start crossing things off the list anyway.”
“No, I meant with your sister,” he said, more gently.
I bit the inside of my cheek. I’d been dodging this conversation for years. Ilana had reached out before, and I’d shut her down every time. It was my way of protecting whatever thin threads still connected us. If I didn’t talk to her, I couldn’t lose her.
But I couldn’t live in fear forever. Not if I wanted to rebuild something real. And now…now I had Atty. If things got hard, he’d be there with me. That made me braver.
Me
ok
meet me at the hotel’s bar?
Lan
be there in fifteen
Time to face the music.
CHAPTER
TWENTY-SIX
BEFORE
Iwasn’t religious.
We’d been raised that way—Sunday Mass, plaid uniforms, the whole thing—but in that vague, inconsistent way Catholic school can sometimes be. So it never really clicked with me.
Not that I didn’t believe in anything. I believed in the universe. In energies. I used to believe in love. In fate.
Right now, the little Catholic boy in me was losing his mind, because the guy standing in front of him looked like a fucking angel brought down straight from heaven. Not the delicate kind. A soldier angel, cut from stone, with a face that didn’t give anything away, pale-blue eyes, and dirty-blond hair neatly in place. His features were still boyish—maybe he was younger—but he was tall. Not lanky or awkward. Built like a damn wall, lean muscle wrapped around every surface my eyes could cling to.
And he was staring right at me.
“These are a couple of guys from the team,” Colin said, snapping me back to the present.
I shook the other guy’s hand, barely catching his name, then looked back at him.
Atticus, Colin had said.
Even his fucking name was perfect. Up close, his eyes were the lightest shade of blue I’d ever seen—almost gray—and his thick, dark-blond brows were drawn in a scowl.
I held out my hand, and he clasped it firmly before letting go. Big hands. Ripped, veiny forearms.
“That’s quite a name. Atticus,” I said, because I couldn’t think of anything else. I was still trying to piece myself back together after the shock of him—still trying to figure out where the hell he’d dropped from.
There was something about him. Something about this moment. It felt right. Prophetic, even. Like the curtains had been pulled back and the light hit me, full-force, sharp and blinding; faint beats of music fading in and out of my brain, not quite catching on a song.
