Page 83 of Atone

“Who would do that?” My eyebrows pinch. “The interrogator?”

“Never.” Alex shakes his head. “He respected the trials and never would have jeopardized them like that. Declan tied it to Teal’s dad at some point. I was the one who was there the night she tried to kill herself when she was sixteen, and her father was paranoid that maybe she said something to me about it. She didn’t, but Declan’s best guess is that somehow her dad used that as an excuse to shut me up just in case. He dug until he found someone who hated me enough to do his dirty work, and then he gave him access.”

“Is that why you waited to leave Montgomery until Declan flipped the Sigma House Council? Because Teal’s dad used to be on it?”

“Among other reasons.”

Alex brushes a thumb over my jaw, tracing the line of my face and tucking my hair behind my ear. His touch sends a current through my bones.

Alex has survived unspeakable things. But he’s here. He’s out.

“Patience doesn’t know any of this, does she?” I ask. “Maybe she’d understand if you explained it wasn’t really Sigma House’s fault.”

“She won’t.” The hint of a smile he offers is almost sympathetic. “She can’t.”

That’s an interesting way to put it, bubbling a hundred more questions to the surface. Like he senses them brewing, he presses his lips to mine, ending the conversation. He pulls me closer and seals me to him.

My nails scrape the back of his neck. I just want to hold him. Offer comfort when he no longer knows how to accept it. Alex’s arms tighten around my waist, and I’m an anchor in the churning sea for him.

Solid ground.

I trail my hands over his thick shoulders, down his hard chest. Needing to feel him.

To hold him.

To understand him.

To make life worth living for him again after all he’s experienced.

My hands slip under the band of his shirt, and I expect him to stop me as I start to pull it up, but he doesn’t.

Maybe he’s as desperate for a distraction as I am after everything we talked about.

Alex let his secrets slip tonight, and as much as I want to know more—know everything—there’s only ever so much I’ll understand from his words. The rest has always been unspoken between us.

He helps me lift his shirt over his head until the thick muscles of his arms and chest are on full display. Only then do I trace the scars over their full length. They go farther than I thought, extending all the way up his left arm to his neck, webbing halfway across his pec.

I trace my fingers over them, and his back stiffens, but he doesn’t stop me. He watches me draw my fingers over his heart. I flatten my palm against it, freezing when I see the seven perfectly stacked scars carved into his chest on the other side.

“You’re a legacy?”

That can’t be right.

Alex was sent to Montgomery during his third trial.

How could he have all seven marks? How could he be a legacy in the fraternity that, as far as everyone knows, mutilated his body and left him in a psychiatric ward to rot?

“You have all seven marks.” I trace my fingers over them.

They’re perfectly healed, which means he must have had them for a while.

“I do,” is all he says as he lifts me up and does a one-eighty, until he’s the one pinning me to his bed.

Alex strips my shirt, kissing the path from my belly button to my breast. Taking my nipple between his teeth and teasing me with a delicious tug. The way this man claims me—owns me—erases everything else from existence.

He nips at my skin.

Everything about Alex is sharp, but I press myself to the edge of his blade and let him see the truth my blood offers.