Page 60 of The Dazzling Heights
“Hey,” she said simply. Let him give the next syllable; that was all she had to offer right now.
“Hey,” Atlas echoed. His eyes searched hers, but she just returned his stare, cool and level. “Look, can I come in?” he asked.
Avery stepped aside and he walked past her, shutting the door. “Took you long enough,” she muttered.
“I had a lot to think about.”
But Avery wasn’t finished. “I assume so. You really screwed up this time, Atlas.”
“I’m sorry,Iscrewed up? Don’t you hear yourself? You came back that morning from Cord’s! Who are you to talk?”
“You know full well that Cord and I are just friends.” Avery felt oddly pleased to have made him shout.
“I don’t know anything anymore,” Atlas replied, with a bitterness that surprised her.
They were standing beneath an enormous crystal chandelier, utterly still. It was as if the act of finally having this conversation had anchored them to the ground, and neither of them could move until they resolved things one way or another.
Avery bit her lip, wishing she’d rehearsed some kind of speech. “Look, I’m sorry about how I reacted when I saw you flirting with Calliope. It was stupid and immature. I came back that morning wanting to tell you I was sorry—but then I foundher, prancing around in your underwear!” She blinked back a fresh onslaught of tears. “Atlas, I know we fought, but you didn’t have tosleepwith her that same night!”
“Nothing happened between me and Calliope,” Atlas insisted. “Not that you’ll believe me, since you seem determined to think exactly what you want.”
Avery sighed. “Even if you didn’t sleep with her, you shouldn’t have brought her home. Don’t you see? When something bad happened, you went straight toher.You ran away.”To someone easier. Someone you could actuallybewith, in public, she wanted to add.
“It wasn’t just me. Webothran away to someone else.”
“Like I said, nothing happened between me and Cord.” Avery wasn’t quite sure why she wanted to make the point, but it didn’t matter; Atlas was shaking his head.
“I believe you. But what about next time, Aves? Maybe something will happen then, for either of us. Don’t you see what a huge problem it is that when we fought, we both turned to someone else, someone more …”
“Easy. Uncomplicated. Which is exactly what you and I are not,” she finished for him.
Atlas looked up at her. “Is that why you love me?” he asked, very quietly.
At first she didn’t understand. “What?”
“Did you fall in love with me because it was complicated, and forbidden—because I was the only thing in the entire world that you were ever denied? The only thing you ever wanted that you were told ‘no,’ instead of ‘yes’?”
Avery felt the blood drain from her face. “That’s cruel, Atlas. You don’t mean that.”
At the hurt in her voice, something of the old Atlas came back to his features, and he let out a breath. “I had to ask,” he replied, sounding more defeated than upset. It scared Avery, because she knew it meant he was shutting himself away from her, forcing himself not to feel, not to care.
“You know I love you,” she insisted.
“And you knowIloveyou. After all this, though …”
Avery heard the note of finality in his voice. And she realized, with a terrifying sense of clarity, that it was the beginning of the end.
“It isn’t working, is it?” she said quietly, because the words were so very painful, and Atlas shouldn’t have to be the one to say them.
“It can’teverwork. It’s impossible. Aves, it might be best for us to just … stop.”
Atlas spoke hollowly, almost formally, as though Avery were a client to whom he was proposing a new construction plan. But Avery knew his mind better, almost, than she knew her own—she could see what this was doing to him, the excruciating effort he was making to keep from breaking down in front of her.
I love you, and nothing else matters,she wanted to say, but she held the words back, because in the end they weren’t useful.Everythingelse mattered. She loved Atlas, and Atlas loved her, and yet it would never work between them.
She knew the events of last Saturday were her fault. She’d picked at their relationship, peeling off little pieces of it like a destructive child, until it all inevitably came to a head. But their problem was bigger than that one evening. Atlas was right, what had happened was just a symptom of the larger issue: the sheer impossibility of them being together.
There was nowhere they could go that was safe; nowhere that the truth of who they were, the forbiddenness of their love, wouldn’t come chasing them.
