It Ends With Us(77)

I follow him down the hallway and to a spare bedroom where he flips on the light. There are two boxes on a bare bed and more stacked up against the walls. There’s an oversized chair against one wall, facing the door. He moves to the bed and takes off the boxes, setting them against the wall with the others.

“I just moved in a few months ago. Haven’t had much time to decorate yet.” He walks to a dresser and pulls open a drawer. “I’ll make the bed for you.” He takes out sheets and a pillowcase. He begins making the bed as I walk inside the bathroom and close the door.

I remain in the bathroom for thirty minutes. Some of those minutes are spent staring at my reflection in the mirror. Some of those minutes are spent in the shower. The rest are spent over the toilet as I make myself sick with thoughts of the last several hours.

I’m wrapped in a towel when I crack the bathroom door. Atlas is no longer in the bedroom, but there are clothes folded on the freshly made bed. Men’s pajama bottoms that are too big for me and a T-shirt that goes past my knees. I pull the drawstring tight, tie it, and then crawl into bed. I turn the lamp off and pull the covers up and over me.

I cry so hard, I don’t even make a noise.





Chapter Twenty-Five


I smell toast.

I stretch out on my bed and smile, because Ryle knows toast is my favorite.

My eyes flick open and the clarity smashes down on me with the force of a head-on collision. I squeeze my eyes shut when I realize where I am and why I’m here and that the toast I smell is not at all because my sweet and caring husband is making me breakfast in bed.

I immediately want to cry again, so I force myself off the bed. I focus on the hollowness in my stomach as I use the bathroom, and tell myself I can cry after I eat something. I need to eat before I make myself sick again.

When I walk out of the bathroom and back into the bedroom, I notice the chair has been turned so that it’s facing the bed now instead of the door. There’s a blanket thrown over it haphazardly, and it’s obvious Atlas was in here last night while I slept.

He was probably worried I had a concussion.

When I walk into the kitchen, Atlas is moving back and forth between the fridge, the stove, the counter. For the first time in twelve hours, I feel an inkling of something that isn’t agony, because I remember he’s a chef. A good one. And he’s cooking me breakfast.

He glances up at me as I make my way into the kitchen. “Morning,” he says, careful to say it without too much inflection. “I hope you’re hungry.” He slides a glass and a container of orange juice across the counter toward me, then he turns and faces the stove again.

“I am.”

He glances back over his shoulder and gives me a ghost of a smile. I pour myself a glass of orange juice and then walk to the other side of the kitchen where there’s a breakfast nook. There’s a newspaper on the table and I begin to pick it up. When I see the article about the best businesses in Boston printed across the page, my hands immediately begin to shake and I drop the paper back on the table. I close my eyes and take a slow sip of the orange juice.

A few minutes later, Atlas sets a plate down in front of me, then claims the seat across from me at the table. He pulls his own plate of food in front of him and cuts into a crepe with his fork.

I look down at my plate. Three crepes, drizzled in syrup and garnished with a dab of whipped cream. Orange and strawberry slices line the right side of the plate.

It’s almost too pretty to eat, but I’m too hungry to care. I take a bite and close my eyes, trying not to make it obvious that it’s the best bite of breakfast I’ve ever had.

I finally allow myself to admit that his restaurant deserved that award. As much as I tried to talk Ryle and Allysa out of going back, it was the best restaurant I’d ever been to.

“Where did you learn to cook?” I ask him.

He sips from a cup of coffee. “The Marines,” he says, placing the cup back down. “I trained for a while during my first stint and then when I reenlisted I came on as a chef.” He taps his fork against the side of his plate. “You like it?”

I nod. “It’s delicious. But you’re wrong. You knew how to cook before you enlisted.”

He smiles. “You remember the cookies?”

I nod again. “Best cookies I’ve ever eaten.”

He leans back in his chair. “I taught myself the basics. My mother worked second shift when I was growing up, so if I wanted dinner at night I had to make it. It was either that or starve, so I bought a cookbook at a yard sale and made every single recipe in it over the course of a year. And I was only thirteen.”

I smile, shocked that I’m even able to. “The next time someone asks you how you learned to cook, you should tell them that story. Not the other one.”

He shakes his head. “You’re the only person who knows anything about me before the age of nineteen. I’d like to keep it that way.”

He begins telling me about working as a chef in the military. How he saved up as much money as he could so that when he got out, he could open his own restaurant. He started with a small café that did really well, then opened Bib’s a year and a half ago. “It does okay,” he says with modesty.

I glance around his kitchen and then look back at him. “Looks like it does more than just okay.”