Page 15

Atlas

A bove me, Willa shivers, but she’s all fire. So tight and hot, wrapped around my cock. She could have been hurt, but I caught her. She rocks her hips taking control, taking me deeper. My dick weeps inside of her, throbbing as she lifts herself and slams back down. She’s doing all the work right now. All I can do is stare up at her, completely mesmerized by her beauty.

Her hands clutch my shoulders, one fanning to my throat. She sets it over my Adam’s apple, jumping with every breath, but she doesn’t press down.

She feels so good. Smells so good. She’s panting, dragging air through her noise noisily, her head tipped back, lost in the pleasure herself. My hips finally move, rolling inside her. With every thrust, she feels impossibly tighter, the ripples of her pleasure tracing through her muscles, pouring straight into me.

I want to let myself go, to lose myself in her, but when I close my eyes, the absolute black is there.

No. No, please.

Being with her has only ever brought me peace. Her presence has always been a soothing balm to the torn and flayed skin. She’s seen down to the heart of me, but that’s not where I’ve hidden this. It’s deeper. In the pit of my stomach, which churns and spins, nausea rising in my chest.

I make a choked sound. I wrench my eyes open, but the black is still there. It’s taken over my vision so that I can see nothing at all. It’s thicker than tar and darker than a starless night. There’s nothing to guide me, nothing to ground me. I can’t stop the cinching of my lungs, the compressing in of my ribs until it feels as though they’re going to puncture them. I can’t get a single breath.

Willa shifts, slowly sliding forward until I pop out of her. I’m still painfully hard. Muscle memory. The most fucked up thing is that her touch is still heaven, her fingers wrapping around my dick. She grasps me hard in her palm, jacking me a few times before her fingers trace lower, to my balls.

A jolt of pleasure rips through me, but a shard of nausea flashes through it like a frayed bolt of lightning. There’s still only dark. I’m lost in it. I. Can’t. Breathe.

Willa cups my balls, smoothing one finger over them gently. My body doesn’t know what to feel. There’s no control. There’s nothing in the way of stopping the panic. There’s the edge and I’m past it. I didn’t even have time to pull myself back.

Willa’s hand creeps lower, past my balls. She finds that tight spot between my sack and my asshole and works it with a small circle.

The pleasure of that touch bursts right along with the balloon of panic, detonating like a grenade in my chest. All I know is that I’m trapped. Caged. I’m falling and the roof is crumbling. The ceiling is going to cave in and we’re going to be trapped under the wooden beams and bricks. I. Still. Can’t. See. Can’t. Breathe. Can’t. Think.

My body reacts like an animal would when they’ve just sprung a steel trap around their leg. I’m on my back and Willa is on top of me. I grasp her hips, somehow aware even in the mire of black and with the walls pressing in on me from every angle, the ceiling, the beams, the fucking sky coming down, that I don’t want to hurt her.

I tilt her to the side gently, spilling her away from me as I jerk backwards. The motion sends me reeling along the concrete. It bites in against my naked skin, flaying me, but I barely feel a thing. I tip myself onto my stomach, get my hands under me, and push up onto my knees.

Bile splashes up my throat and I turn, dry heaving to the side, but nothing comes up. My mouth floods with saliva and a bitter taste creeps along my tongue, but that’s it.

“Atlas!”

I’m heaving, but there’s no oxygen filling my lungs. There’s nothing but a crush, the searing burning grasp. I can taste my own end when I flick my tongue out, tasting the air, begging for just the smallest amount.

“Simon!”

Willa’s hand is on the small of my back. Stroking. Soft, gentle circles.

“You’re hurt. You’re bleeding . What’s happening. Please tell me!”

I can’t. I’m drowning in the black. Dark water sucking me under, filling my lungs. This is how I die. This. Is. How. I. Die.

I’m going to pass out. There’s going to be nothing after. I’ll never wake up again. Never see the people that I love. This will be Willa’s last memory. Me, dying on her floor, right in front of her.

No.

I claw at my throat like I’d claw at the surface of that black water.

“Are you having an asthma attack? Atlas, please tell me what’s happening!”

My fingers grasp my jaw. Both hands. I wrench it open, parting it, opening my own airway, but still, there’s nothing. Only more black water, rushing in.

“I’m calling an ambulance. Hold on. I need to find my phone.” I can hear her, dimly, scrambling around. “Fuck!” Something clatters to the ground. “Just hold on!”

I’m not crushed under the weight of the building. It hasn’t collapsed. It’s all in my head. My head is doing this to me. There’s no lake. No black. There’s air. I just have to relax enough to let my muscles expand instead of being clenched so tight they won’t release. I don’t have to drown. There’s no water. I just have to swim. I just have to breathe.

The first gasp is like fire, a sucking, wheezing sound as though I was just kicked straight in the stomach. The second goes down cleaner, and my vision clears just enough that I make out the shape of Willa, phone in hand.

“No!” I stumble to her, knocking it away.

She blinks at me. Hard. Again. The are still black spots dancing all over the room, but my eyes focus on her face, and I can see one thing clearly. Her horror . I’ve terrified her. She thought I was dying. I wouldn’t have. It just felt like that. Didn’t it?

I reel from her, ramming myself straight into the bench of tools on the far side of the room and sending them half of them flying with my flailing arm. I look like I’m drunk, completely out of control. That’s the truth. I have no control left. Nothing stands between me and the black.

I stumble and surge forward, locating pieces of clothing and ramming them on. Underwear. Jeans. Boots. Shirt. My back screams like a whole host of demons have taken up residence there and are breathing fire all over my skin. I don’t know why. I can’t stop. I’ll worry about it later.

I wheel around, trying to find the damn door so I can wrench it open and get the fuck out of here before my head explodes. Before I lose whatever tenuous grasp I have that’s keeping the black at bay.

“Atlas!” Willa doesn’t just chase after me. She throws herself at me, wrapping her arms around my waist. “I- I shouldn’t have touched you like that. I’m so, so sorry. We clearly weren’t ready for that. I should have asked I should have given you some warning.”

I clench my eyes shut against the burning liquid that wants to spill out. Not tears, but blood. Hot, bloody, black streaks. She thinks this is all her fault. Not only was I not put together properly, as any man should be, but there’s this . This shit in my head, in my chest. The shit I have to struggle to control, the way some days I feel like I’m constantly going to go out of my skin, out of my head.

She doesn’t need this. She’s too kind. She’ll want to stand by my side and tell me I’m not broken. That this is okay.

I could have hurt her. I scared her. It could be worse next time, or the time after, or the time after that. When I was with Jodie I managed to get a handle on my anxiety—at least most of the time. But the break-up did a number on me. If I didn’t feel like shit already, I’d be mortified about losing it while I was having sex with the woman I’m falling for.

Talk about emasculating.

She’ll try to convince me that I can be saved. That I’m not half a man for not having a handle on this shit. That I’m not pathetic. She’ll tell me that I’m worthy. Worthy of her and of myself. She’ll say all the right things and she’ll truly believe them.

She’ll still be wrong.

“Hey… Earth to Atlas,” Willa’s hands grasp my arms. Her fingers press into my skin. It feels good. Grounding. My whole body aches like I just came out the loser in a fight against five big dudes and a grizzly bear, but her touch is sweet. Sweeter than it’s ever been.

She had nothing to do with that.

I just lost control and the shit I normally have to try so hard to hold back came for me.

“I’m sorry,” she whispers again, so urgently. “Let me help you. You’re bleeding through your t-shirt.”

What the fuck? Right. The floor. I drove myself along the concrete, giving myself a shit ton of road rash.

“Can you sit down while I get something for you?”

I can’t sit down. I can’t stay here. I can’t do this with Willa. I may want her with everything that I am, but everything that I am is not nearly enough . She’s not my mother. She doesn’t deserve to have to babysit this shit like I do.

“Was it… I shouldn’t have done that,” she repeats, latching onto the last thing that happened before I wigged the fuck out.

I don’t want her to feel like this is her fault, but I know that saving her means driving her away. “No. No, you shouldn’t have done that.” I can’t force any heat behind it. I barely sound convincing even to my own ears.

Her face crumples, her burning eyes filling with tears to replace the frantic shadows. “There’s no shame in pleasure,” she whimpers, her voice shaky and thick. “Nothing we do between us is wrong. If you didn’t like it, I promise I will never do that again. I swear it. But you can’t- I- if you…”

She’s struggling and I need to help her, but I also need to leave. I need to ensure that she knows that I tried to do this and I can’t stick around and watch her ground down, worn down, broken down by who I really am. It’s not fair to her. Willa’s had enough rough shit and hard times in her life. She deserves happiness, not looking after someone who can’t even look after himself.

“It’s my job to make you feel good in any way I can,” she insists. “There’s nothing wrong with having kinks.”

“It’s not your job,” I bark out.

She hangs her head. My heart twists and wrenches. I can’t save her without hurting her. This woman who has laughed with me, cried for me, held me, gave me her secrets, trusted me, shared with me, cared for me.

“If you were ever made to feel ashamed about something like this, I- or if you were hurt…”

“No. I wasn’t. Not hurt.”

“Enjoying backdoor play is exciting, not weird. I love butt stuff. Trust me, it’s awesome. If it ends up it’s not, then that’s okay too.” She’s trying to find some humor in this, but I can’t let her. I can’t let her be so damn nice to me.

I can’t do it.

I can’t twist her words around and hurt her this way.

I can’t bring myself to break her, even though that’s the only way she’s ever going to leave me alone. She’d have to truly hate me.

I’m not strong enough to make that happen. It would hurt her to the point of crippling her and I could never cause her suffering like that. I can’t let her think that this is her fault.

“I just need to go. I can’t do this, Willa. We should never have gone anything beyond friends and now even that is wrecked.”

Of course Willa won’t let me go. She’s a fighter. She’s so damn strong and so determined to save me from myself.

She beats me to the door and stands in front of the glass, arms crossed over her chest. “What the fuck, asshole?” She stabs me in the chest, eyes blazing with real anger, but I can tell she doesn’t mean it. She’s just trying to get my attention. “You don’t get to just bow out like that. Not without a legit reason.”

“The reason is that…” I whip my hand towards the back room and then bring it in, jabbing it between us. “This… this isn’t real.”

My back starts screaming, the wet still seeping into the fabric of my shirt. My stomach spins, the sick feeling rising up again, but not like it normally does.

“What isn’t real? Emotions? Feelings? Commitment? Because if that’s what you’re saying, that’s like looking at your parents and implying that their relationship is a farce.”

“Very few people find what they have.”

“Or my sister and Bullet. Do you think that’s fake?”

“I don’t know. That’s their business.”

Willa grasps her arms so hard that her knuckles whiten. Probably so she doesn’t accidentally release a hand and smack me as good and hard as my dumb ass deserves. She’s dressed. The fog in my brain clears off. She must have pulled on her clothes right before coming after me. I notice how skewed they are, and her shirt is on backwards.

“What’s going on?” she demands, eyes raking over me like a scanner, as though she can find the truth hidden beneath my skin, lodged between tissue and bone. “I’ve seen enough of life to know that there’s a crazy amount of shit in the world. No one needs to add any more to it by being a tool bag. If you think that’s how I’m going to react to you telling me what the real issue is, you’re wrong.”

“They’re my truths,” I snap at her. “You have no right to them.”

Anyone else might tell me to go to hell and step out of the way so I can fuck right off until I’m in a better headspace, but not Willa. Never, never this brave, incredible woman. She doesn’t need the golden child version of me that the rest of the world created and bought into. She just wants me. I fucking know that, but it’s so hard to truly believe it. I’d rather self-sabotage and implode to shit instead because that’s safer for both of us.

“You’re right.” She drops her hands, the tension flowing out of her. “I don’t have any right to demand that you tell me anything. This is obviously something more than just what I did. I don’t have any right to demand that you let me in or let me help you. I want to, as a friend and as someone who cares about you. I want to be your partner and have you come to me for help and lean on me when you need it, but I can see why that’s an unattractive option. The world tells men they can’t be soft. Life tells them that they need to be hard hardasses.”

She obviously expects me to say something biting or try to push past her, but when I don’t do anything at all, she keeps going. “To me, that looked like a rank panic attack. That doesn’t make you broken or weird. Panic attacks are an actual disorder that can be treated. Anxiety is not fucking made up and you do not need to be ashamed.”

Forget the dark, the closed throat, the sickness creeping up my esophagus. Forget my bruised lungs, even the endless shame that I’ve felt at not being the perfect child or teenager or man that everyone wanted and saw and expected… none of that matters more than the way Willa is looking at me.

My eyes get hot and achy, my throat scratchy, my airway tight for a different reason. The banging pain in my temples intensifies, but then Willa is there, fisting her hands in my t-shirt and wrenching me close.

I fall into her, catching her as she breaks against me.

Her arms wrap low around my waist so she doesn’t press against the broken skin on my back.

“I’m so mad at you,” she seethes under her breath, her cheek pressed to my chest. “I’m so mad that you thought you couldn’t tell me this, and at the same time, I’m not mad at you at all, because I know if it was me, I would try to just handle it on my own. I wouldn’t like it, and I’d probably even be ashamed that something is not fucking right in my head. I’d be frustrated and I’d feel alone, and if anyone ever said anything to me about it, it would probably make it all worse.”

She tilts her face up and the intensity and the love shining there, breaks me. My chest aches, my throat growing even thicker. “My sister would have understood if it had been me and I’d gone to her. So would your parents and your sister, or your brother, or so many of those guys at the club. Why did you think you had to do it alone?”

She pulls me tighter, standing so there’s nothing between our bodies, not even air.

I tilt my face down to the crown of her head, lost in the scent of her skin and her hair, of us together . I close my eyes and gravity does the rest. The moisture slicks down my cheeks, bathing her hair, but it’s not a violent storm.

All these years, maybe this is what I needed. It’s been a painful road to get here and maybe I was wrong, but this will always be my everything moment. The moment where I let go of all of it, where I pour my soul out and set my heart and all its burdens down into a set of capable hands. I needed the gentle rain that is Willa. My heart needed to be crushed and broken and pieced back together with hers.

No matter what I’ve done, what oaths I’ve taken, or who I tried to let in, it’s always been just me in my head. Alone.

It’s so fucking terrifying to finally be seen and so, so right.

This isn’t the end of me. This is the start of healing. A new beginning. A path that broadens so I no longer have to walk it alone.