Total pages in book: 88
Estimated words: 84114 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 421(@200wpm)___ 336(@250wpm)___ 280(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 84114 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 421(@200wpm)___ 336(@250wpm)___ 280(@300wpm)
“Reporter caught me leaving the arena.” Grayce now stands wobbly between us with a hand on his knee, as if participating in the meeting. “Someone posted a picture of us from yesterday when we were shopping. It started making the rounds. There’s a ‘secret baby’ rumor.”
The world narrows to a pinpoint. “Oh,” I say, and then realize how useless that is. I try again. “Okay. What… what did you say?”
“The truth.” His voice is steady. “Told him about Gray and his request for us to raise her. That we’re going to adopt her.”
A wave of competing feelings hits—relief and gratitude and a hot lick of panic at the idea that strangers will be discussing Grayce like she’s a riddle to solve. “Okay,” I say again, and find a better word. “Thank you for handling that.”
He nods. “Then they asked if we were together. Married. Engaged. You know how it goes.” He flexes his jaw. “I shut it down. Said no—we’re co-parents, that’s it.”
The smile I manufacture is serviceable. The quiet crack I feel inside is not. “Good. That’s… good.”
It is. It’s the right answer. We wrote that script together.
So why does it feel like the closing door echoes like a boom?
Atlas watches me. “You okay?”
“Yeah.” I reach for a block and palm it. “Just bracing for the noise. People have opinions about things that are none of their business.”
“They can have them,” he says, a thread of steel in the words. “We’ll live our lives anyway.”
We. The pronoun again. I’m not ready to accept it but can’t quite step away from it, leaving me to wonder… where do I belong?
“Right,” I say, too briskly, because if I linger here I’ll say something I can’t take back.
Grayce loses interest in standing, plops onto her butt, then toys with the rabbit’s ear.
Inside my head, a film plays. It’s short, silent and cruel—a looping montage of an impossible life. Thanksgiving with too much pie, Christmas light strands tangled around Atlas’s arms while he swears cheerfully, birthdays with messy cakes and cheap crowns, fights about nothing and everything that end with both of us laughing into each other’s shoulders. We would argue about paint colors and compromise on soft blue. We would teach Grayce to skate, pack school lunches, buy soccer shin guards, attend parent-teacher nights, forget it’s a miracle because it would be ordinary and ours.
I close my eyes, just for a heartbeat, and kill the projection.
Atlas shifts slightly and my gaze focuses in on him. “I saw Brienne at the arena and she asked if you’d come to the game tomorrow,” he says casually, but his eyes are steady on me. “Sit in the suite with her.”
My heart trips because it’s decision time. “I want to… I really do. But I don’t think it’s right to drag Grayce out that late. It’s just too long a night for her.”
His brows lift, like he expected me to say exactly that. “So, don’t. Will you come if I find us a babysitter? Someone I trust?”
I tuck my hands under my thighs to stop fidgeting. “I don’t know…” The words are automatic, stalling, but the truth is, I want to.
He leans forward a little, voice lower. “I’d really like you there. Your support would mean a lot.”
The simple honesty peels away the first layer and then the realization that he needs me is my undoing. “Okay,” I say, breath catching. “If you’re sure you can find someone good for her, then… yeah. I’ll come.”
His smile is quick and real, the kind that sneaks under my ribs. “I’m sure. And I’m glad.”
He helps me wrestle Grayce through dinner like we’re a formula pit crew changing a tire—one of us catching spaghetti before it becomes wall art, the other swapping a bib mid-howl, both of us laughing and cursing and surrendering to the inevitable mess.
Atlas tells me more about practice while he wipes sauce off the high chair straps, and I find myself asking questions about the game. He answers without condescension, a teacher who loves when the student seeks knowledge he can sink his teeth into.
After dinner, he cleans the kitchen and I bathe the kiddo. Grayce responds to water like a flower to rain and she splashes so fiercely, my shirt ends up soaked.
When Atlas sticks his head in the door to check on us, he takes in the material clinging to my breasts. “Thank you, Grayce,” he drawls suggestively.
She beams.
“Creeper,” I mutter.
We get her into pajamas that say DREAM BIG and Atlas reads Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See? with the theatrics of a starring role on Broadway. She interrupts to flip back to the page with the purple cat every time, affronted that the narrative continues without consultation.
He adapts. “Purple cat, purple cat, what do you see?” he intones for the seventeenth time. “I see my father losing his mind looking at me.”