to Savea and Reagan. It was a brotherly smile.
All I could see right in the moment, though, was a man smiling at Katie. And all I felt was a strange, primal voice in the back of my mind saying "That's mine!" Even though every rational brain cell I had knew that wasn't the case, it would never be the case.
An hour later, though, Beau was telling us we'd better get on the road, knowing the traffic patterns better than the two of us.
I offered to go get Katie's bags, mostly as a move to prevent Beau from being the good guy again. But regretted it as I was coming down the stairs and heard him rattling off his phone number to her.
"In case you remember the name of that board game you mentioned," he told her as she tucked her phone away. "I think the guests would get a kick out of it."
Not five minutes later, Beau was opening her door for her while I put her bags in her trunk.
"Drive safe, okay?" Beau asked as she gave him a shy smile before putting the car into reverse.
She didn't even spare me a glance.
"Don't know what you did to piss her off, but that is going to be a long-ass plane ride," Beau said, whacking me on the back of the shoulder.
He wasn't wrong.
By the time I got on the plane, I was exhausted, hungry, and in a shitty mood.
Katie was seated two rows up from me, both of us at aisle seats, but Katie was clearly not comfortable with it, shrinking smaller and smaller each time someone walked past her.
Despite arriving at different times, we'd both chosen the same book at one of the shops in the airport, some rom-com that likely wasn't even up my alley since it didn't have anything blowing up, and likely had fade-to-black sex scenes which didn't help me at all in terms of research. But I wanted something, anything, to distract me from watching every move she made, each time she shuffled in her seat, the way she closed the book inward toward itself to flip ages, how she nervously tapped her foot during takeoff and landing.
Clearly, the book wasn't great at doing anything but keeping my seat neighbors from talking to me, because I noticed all those things.
I noticed, too, the way she darted off the plane as soon as she could, getting such a head start that I didn't see her at the baggage claim, or even outside waiting for a cab or a ride.
She was gone.
And that, I tried to remind myself, was for the best.
It was Atlas who picked me up from the airport.
I'd been expecting Kingston or maybe even Nixon, possibly one of the Mallicks if those two were busy. Atlas was never on the top of anyone's expectations list when it came to showing up for anything.
Much like his name suggested, he was someone who liked to see the world. He was hardly in the area for a few weeks put together each year, often missing birthdays and—the biggest sacrilege of them all—Helen Mallick's Sunday dinners.
"It's not funny," I told him, seeing the way his lips were twitching, his eyes were bright.
"Oh, it's funny. You know you would be laughing your ass off if this was my situation. Don't get all butt-hurt because she picked on you this time."
"I'm not mad because she picked on me. I'm mad because she picked on Katie."
That rang mostly true. And Atlas wasn't typically someone who analyzed what was under your words, choosing to take them at face value because he rarely had time to spend hashing shit out.
"Katie," Atlas repeated, racking his brain to put a face to a name.
"She works the front desk at work. Shy girl. Never fucks with anyone. I don't understand why Fee would fuck with her. What?" I asked when his brow lifted.
"Just wondering why you're pissed on some coworker's behalf is all," he said, shrugging.
"Because it was reckless and dangerous. A tree could have crashed through the ceiling and hurt one of us, and the other had no way to get help."
"But it didn't and you're fine and she's fine. And you can give Fee a talking to over Sunday dinner. Still doesn't explain the clenched jaw."
"It's nothing."
"Funny," Atlas said, letting the word hang, knowing it would piss me off, that I would want clarification.
"What's funny?"
"That whenever one of my brothers claim "it's nothing" about a woman, within a few months, they're living with