Page 76 of Heat Lightning

Atlas.

Atlas.

The name tasted like browned butter and vanilla ice cream on a stormy, summer night.

“Atlas,” I repeated with a whisper. It settled into my bones as if it belonged. Rather than learning it for the first time, it felt like I’d always known and simply needed reminding.

With startling clarity, I realized I was in far, far more danger than I’d ever suspected, and it had nothing to do with the fact that the man still locked inside me was a murderer.

I linked my fingers with his, and tucked in close. “Hello, Atlas.”

PART THREE

NINETEEN

ATLAS

Seventeen Years Ago

“Stop, stop, stop!” Saint said, grabbing me by the shoulders and throwing my back against the wall so I couldn’t kick at the locked door anymore. I’d hit a growth spurt and was now just as tall as him, but he was still bigger through the shoulders. “You’re just going to make him mad again. Why do you always have to complicate things?”

“I need out of here!” I screamed back, unable to calm down. It made my face hurt even worse—my cheek was already swollen, and the cut above my eye wouldn’t stop bleeding. “It’s too small. I can’t breathe.”

A confused look crossed his face. The oozing gash across the top of his cheek stretched and reopened. “You can’t breathe? Did he get your nose again? It doesn’t look broken.”

I heaved a few deep breaths until I could talk in full sentences. “No. My nose is fine. It’s the door. It feels like I can’t breathe when he locks the door.”

We were in the bedroom we’d shared since we were little, and usually, it was a safe place. Somewhere our father rarely intruded upon. But when he got mad—almost always because of me—he’d lock us both in as punishment.

The start of it, anyway.

And all of a sudden the walls that were usually the only haven I had grew too close and the air too thick. It made me want to crawl out of my skin.

Spotting the roof-access skylight over his shoulder, I pushed him off and gripped the headboard of my twin bed, dragging it away from the wall.

“What are you doing?” he asked, watching me push the bed underneath the small window.

I ignored him and stood up on the bouncy mattress. I still couldn’t reach the latch, even if I jumped. “Put me on your shoulders,” I said. “I’m getting us out of here.”

He sighed but stood on the bed with me and leaned over so I could hop up. “He’s going to kill us for this.”

No, he wouldn’t. A clinically depressed wife—signed off on by all the best doctors, of course—was easy to pass off as a suicide. But his sons, too?

Our father cared way too much about his image to be a kid killer.

“Stand up straighter,” I commanded, swiping at the latch and missing.

“I’d like to see you do this,” he wheezed. “God, what do you eat?”

But he did as I’d asked, and the window swung open wide.

“Now, what?” he asked, clearly annoyed I was still on his shoulders.

Hooking my hands over the windowsill, I heaved myself up and prayed it wouldn’t give out. “Now, we escape.”

“There’s no way you’ll fit.”

“Watch me.”