Page 25 of Delirium
“Because he knew you were a little bitch.” I looked back at Storm. “Can we go out now? I need to say hi, I need to pee, and I’m fucking hungry. They’re not just going to magically disappear if we keep sitting here.”
I had never seen Storm scared, not like this. Even when Nikolai held that blade to his skin, Storm didn’t flinch, didn’t blink, didn’t show fear, but this… This was golden, and I had a feeling Lazar would laugh as well once I told him it went like this.
“Come on.” I nudged him. “Open the door, Storm.”
“He’s not going to take you away from me,” he announced. “I’m not going to allow that.”
“Buddy,” I groaned. “I’m not an item. You guys can’t volley me back and forth. If I want to leave, I will. But I don’t want to, so open the goddamn door and stop being a pussy.”
Pure shock flashed on his face. “Did you just call me a pussy?”
“Well, if the shoe fits.” I shrugged. “Open the door, Storm, or I’m going to crawl over you and open it myself. Sitting in the middle isn’t exactly comfortable, and you guys are huge.”
He grinned, leaning down toward me. “You know what else is huge?”
“My knife?”
His grin quickly fell off his face, his brows furrowing, while his eyes burrowed into me.
“What?” I asked, laughing at him. “It kinda is huge.”
“You just ruined a moment.” He huffed and looked outside the window. “I still want to know who told him we were going to be here. This can’t be a coincidence.”
“It isn’t,” Atlas piped in, looking straight at us. “I called him.”
“You did what?” I exclaimed, turning fully toward him. “Are you insane?”
“No.” Atlas shook his head, opening the door. “But you need to talk to him,” he said. “And you,” Atlas looked at Storm, “need to meet him.”
“You crossed the fucking line, Atlas,” Storm growled, fisting his hands. “You crossed a motherfucking line.”
“I didn’t. I did you all a favor. You need to stop tiptoeing around the fact that you’re going to be parents and start acting like you really want this. You also need to put aside these things that happened in the past. Do you want your kids to grow up like we did?” Atlas asked, not an ounce of remorse in his voice.
He was right. I didn’t want these kids to grow up how I did. I didn’t want them to have a mother and a father who would fight over everything. I didn’t want them to think it was their fault because we couldn’t get along.
Love turned to resentment if it wasn’t cherished. It turned into a vicious beast, destroying everything in its path, and two people like Storm and I wouldn’t know how to stop the destruction, because we would be its masters.
I didn’t want our children to feel unwanted, or to be blamed for our own mess.
I just wished I knew how to get over things. How to start trusting him again or how to stop feeling as if the entire world was against me.
“You shouldn’t have done this,” I said instead. I wasn’t angry at him, but people butting in my business wasn’t something I appreciated. No matter how much I loved Atlas, and how much I understood what he tried to do, this wasn’t the time or place.
Both Storm and I needed time to get over the things that had happened in this past year, and pushing my real father into this situation was the wrong thing to do.
“Let’s just go out,” I said, looking at Storm. His eyes were a blazing inferno of rage, directed at Atlas, who was completely oblivious to the mess he made.
Storm and I were finally making progress, no matter how small it was. For the first time in a very long time, I didn’t feel that the toxicity was the only path for us, and those small displays of affection warmed my heart more than those sleepless nights when he would come to fuck me and hold me afterward.
But we were teetering on the edge, and one tiny push could shatter the fragile peace we established between the two of us.
Lazar was much like me, and he wouldn’t appreciate the way Storm behaved. I knew it, Storm knew it, and Atlas should have known it as well.
I wanted to have more time before I had this conversation with my father. He offered to come and get me when I spoke with him last time, and I said no, confident that I could handle all of this.
He was thrilled about the twins, but he wasn’t thrilled about the way Storm behaved, constantly repeating that it reminded him of his brother, Nikolai, and the way he behaved toward my mother. But Storm wasn’t Nikolai, and I knew he wasn’t doing any of this to spite some other man who wanted me.
He wasn’t keeping me with him to piss Kieran off. He was keeping me here because he knew no other way. Or at least that’s what I kept telling myself.
