It Ends With Us by Colleen Hoover

  Where's my purse?

  Where are my keys?

  Where is my phone?

  It takes me a full five minutes to slide out from under him. I'm too scared to move too much at once, so I do it an inch at a time until I'm able to roll onto the floor. When I can no longer feel his hands on me, an unexpected sob breaks from my chest. I slap my hand over my mouth as I pull myself to my feet and run out of the bedroom.

  I find my purse and my phone, but I have no idea where he put my keys. I frantically search the living room and kitchen, but I can barely see anything. When he head-butted me, it must have left a gash on my forehead, because there's too much blood in my eyes and everything is blurry.

  I slide to the floor near the door, growing dizzy. My fingers are shaking so hard, it takes three tries to get the password right on my phone.

  When I have the screen up to dial a number, I pause. My first thought is to call Allysa and Marshall, but I can't. I can't do that to them right now. She just gave birth to a baby a matter of hours ago. I can't do this to them.

  I could call the police, but my mind can't even process what all that entails. I don't want to give a statement. I don't know that I want to press charges, knowing what this could do to his career. I don't want Allysa mad at me. I just don't know. I don't completely rule out eventually notifying the police. I just don't have the energy to make that decision right now.

  I squeeze the phone and try to think. My mother.

  I start to dial her number, but when I think of what this would do to her I start to cry again. I can't involve her in this mess. She's been through too much. And Ryle will try to find me. He'll go to her first. Then Allysa and Marshall. Then to everyone else we know.

  I wipe the tears from my eyes and then begin dialing Atlas's number.

  I hate myself more in this moment than I ever have in my entire life.

  I hate myself, because the day Ryle found Atlas's number in my phone, I lied and said I had forgotten it was there.

  I hate myself, because the day Atlas placed his number there, I opened it and looked at it.

  I hate myself, because deep down inside, I knew there was a chance that I might one day need it. So I memorized it.

  "Hello?"

  His voice is cautious. Inquiring. He doesn't recognize this number. I immediately start crying when he speaks. I cover my mouth and try to quiet myself.

  "Lily?" His voice is much louder now. "Lily, where are you?"

  I hate myself, because he knows the tears are mine.

  "Atlas," I whisper. "I need help."

  "Where are you?" he says again. I can hear panic in his voice. I can hear him walking, moving stuff around. I hear a door slam on his end of the phone.

  "I'll text you," I whisper, too scared to keep speaking. I don't want Ryle to wake up. I hang up the phone and somehow find the strength to still my hands while I text him my address and the access code for entry. Then I send a second text that says Text me when you get here. Please don't knock.

  I crawl to the kitchen and find my pants, struggling back into them. I find my shirt on the counter. When I'm dressed, I go to the living room. I debate opening the door and meeting Atlas downstairs, but I'm too scared I won't be able to make it down to the lobby alone. My forehead is still bleeding and I feel too weak to even stand up and wait by the door. I slide to the floor, clenching my phone in my shaky fist and staring at it, waiting for his text.

  It's an agonizing twenty-four minutes later when my phone lights up.

  Here.

  I scramble to my feet and swing open the door. Arms wrap around me and my face is pressed against something soft. I just start crying and crying and shaking and crying.

  "Lily," he whispers. I've never heard my name spoken so sadly. He urges me to look up at him. His blue eyes scroll over my face, and I see it happen. I watch the concern vanish as he darts his head up to the apartment door. "Is he still in there?"

  Rage.

  I can feel the rage come off of him and he starts to step toward the apartment door. I grab his jacket in my fists. "No. Please, Atlas. I just want to leave."

  I see the pain roll over him as he pauses, struggling to decide whether to listen to me or bust through the door. He eventually turns away from the door and wraps his arms around me. He helps me to the elevator and then through the lobby. By some miracle, we only run into one person and he's on his phone and facing the other direction.

  By the time we make it to the parking garage, I start to feel dizzy again. I tell him to slow down, and then I feel his arm wrap under my knees as he picks me up. Then we're in the car. Then the car is moving.

  I know I need stitches.

  I know he's taking me to the hospital.

  But I have no idea why the next words out of my mouth are, "Don't take me to Mass General. Take me somewhere else."

  For whatever reason, I don't want to risk the chance of running into any of Ryle's colleagues. I hate him. I hate him in this moment more than I've ever hated my father. But concern for his career still somehow breaks through the hatred.

  When I realize this, I hate myself just as much as I hate him.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Atlas is standing on the other side of the room. He hasn't taken his eyes off me the entire time the nurse has been helping me. After taking a blood sample, she immediately returned and began to attend to my cut. She hasn't asked me very many questions yet, but it's obvious my injuries are the result of an attack. I can see the pitying look on her face as she cleans up blood from the bite mark left on my shoulder.

  When she's finished, she glances back at Atlas. She steps to the right, blocking his view of me as she turns and faces me again. "I need to ask you some personal questions. I'm going to ask him to leave the room, okay?"

  It's in that moment that I realize she thinks Atlas is the one who did these things to me. I immediately start to shake my head. "It wasn't him," I tell her. "Please don't make him leave."

  Relief washes over her face. She nods her head and then pulls up a chair. "Are you hurt anywhere else?"

  I shake my head, because she can't fix all the parts of me Ryle broke on the inside.

  "Lily?" Her voice is gentle. "Were you raped?"

  Tears fill my eyes and I see Atlas roll across the wall, pressing his forehead against it.

  The nurse waits until I make eye contact with her again to continue speaking. "We have a certain examination for these situations. It's called a SANE exam. It's optional, of course, but I highly encourage it in your situation."

  "I wasn't raped," I say. "He didn't . . ."

  "Are you sure, Lily?" the nurse asks.

  I nod. "I don't want one."

  Atlas faces me again and I can see the pain in his expression as he steps forward. "Lily. You need this." His eyes are pleading.

  I shake my head again. "Atlas, I swear . . ." I squeeze my eyes shut and lower my head. "I'm not covering for him this time," I whisper. "He tried, but then he stopped."

  "If you choose to press charges, you'll need--"

  "I don't want the exam," I say again, my voice firm.

  There's a knock on the door and a doctor enters, sparing me from more pleading looks from Atlas. The nurse gives the doctor a brief rundown of my injuries. She then steps aside as he examines my head and shoulder. He flashes a light into both of my eyes. He looks down at the paperwork again and says, "I'd like to rule out a concussion, but given your situation, I don't want to administer a CT. We'd like to keep you for observation, instead."

  "Why don't you want to administer a CT?" I ask him.

  The doctor stands up. "We don't like to perform X-rays on pregnant women unless it's vital. We'll monitor you for complications and if there are no further concerns, you'll be free to go."

  I don't hear anything beyond that.

  Nothing.

  The pressure begins to build in my head. My heart. My stomach. I grip the edges of the exam table I'm sitting on and I stare at the floor until they bo
th leave the room.

  When the door closes behind them, I sit, suspended in frozen silence. I see Atlas move closer. His feet are almost touching mine. His fingers brush lightly over my back. "Did you know?"

  I release a quick breath, and then drag in more air. I start shaking my head, and when his arms come down around me, I cry harder than I knew my body was even capable of. He holds me the entire time I cry. He holds me through my hatred.

  I did this to myself.

  I allowed this to happen to me.

  I am my mother.

  "I want to leave," I whisper.

  Atlas pulls back. "They want to monitor you, Lily. I think you should stay."

  I look up at him and shake my head. "I need to get out of here. Please. I want to leave."

  He nods and helps me back into my shoes. He pulls off his jacket and wraps it around me, then we walk out of the hospital without anyone noticing.

  He says nothing to me as we drive. I stare out the window, too exhausted to cry. Too in shock to speak. I feel submerged.

  Just keep swimming.

  *

  Atlas doesn't live in an apartment. He lives in a house. A small suburb outside of Boston called Wellesley, where all the homes are beautiful, sprawling, manicured, and expensive. Before we pull into his driveway, I wonder to myself if he ever married that girl. Cassie. I wonder what she'll think of her husband bringing home a girl he once loved who has just been attacked by her own husband.

  She'll pity me. She'll wonder why I never left him. She'll wonder how I let myself get to this point. She'll wonder all the same things I used to wonder about my own mother when I saw her in my same situation. People spend so much time wondering why the women don't leave. Where are all the people who wonder why the men are even abusive? Isn't that where the only blame should be placed?

  Atlas parks in the garage. There's not another vehicle here. I don't wait for him to help me out of the car. I open the door and get out on my own, and then I follow him into his house. He punches in a code on an alarm and then flips on a few lights. My eyes roam around the kitchen, the dining room, the living room. Everything is made of rich woods and stainless steel, and his kitchen is painted a calming bluish-green. The color of the ocean. If I wasn't hurting so much, I would smile.

  Atlas kept swimming, and look at him now. He swam all the way to the fucking Caribbean.

  He moves to his refrigerator and pulls out a bottle of water, walking it over to me. He takes the lid off and hands it to me. I take a drink and watch as he turns the living room light on, then the hallway.

  "Do you live alone?" I ask.

  He nods as he walks back into the kitchen. "Are you hungry?"

  I shake my head. Even if I was, I wouldn't be able to eat.

  "I'll show you your room," he says. "There's a shower if you need it."

  I do. I want to wash the taste of scotch out of my mouth. I want to wash the sterile smell of the hospital off of me. I want to wash away the last four hours of my life.

  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 cafe
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."

  He shrugs and takes another bite of his food. I don't talk after that as we finish eating, because my mind wanders to his restaurant. The name of it. What he said in the interview. Then, of course, those thoughts lead me back to thoughts of Ryle and the anger in his voice as he yelled the last line of the interview at me.

  I think Atlas can see the change in my demeanor, but he says nothing as he clears the table.

  When he takes another seat, he chooses the chair right next to me this time. He places a reassuring hand on top of mine. "I have to go in to work for a few hours," he says. "I don't want you to leave. Stay here as long as you need, Lily. Just . . . please don't go back home today."

  I shake my head when I hear the concern in his words. "I won't. I'll stay here," I tell him. "I promise."

  "Do you need anything before I go?"

  I shake my head. "I'll be fine."

  He stands up and grabs his jacket. "I'll make it as quick as I can. I'll be back after lunch and I'll bring you something to eat, okay?"

  I force a smile. He opens a drawer and pulls out a pen and paper. He writes something on it before he leaves. When he's gone, I stand up and walk to the counter to read what he wrote. He listed instructions for how to set the alarm. He wrote his cell phone number, even though I have it memorized. He also wrote down his work number, his home address, and his work address.

  At the bottom in small print, he wrote, "Just keep swimming, Lily."

  Dear Ellen,

  Hi. It's me. Lily Bloom. Well . . . technically it's Lily Kincaid now.

  I know it's been a long time since I've written to you. A really long time. After everything that happened with Atlas, I just couldn't bring myself to open up the journals again. I couldn't even bring myself to watch your show after school, because it hurt to watch it alone. In fact, all thoughts of you kind of depressed me. When I thought of you, I thought of Atlas. And to be honest, I didn't want to think of Atlas, so I had to cut you out of my life, too.

  I'm sorry about that. I'm sure you didn't miss me like I missed you, but sometimes the things that matter to you most are also the things that hurt you the most. And in order to get over that hurt, you have to sever all the extensions that keep you tethered to that pain. You were an extension of my pain, so I guess that's what I was doing. I was just trying to save myself a little bit of agony.