It Ends with Us

Chapter Twenty-Four
Atlas is standing on the other side of the room. He hasn’t taken his eyes
off me the entire time the nurse has been helping me. After taking a
blood sample, she immediately returned and began to attend to my cut.
She hasn’t asked me very many questions yet, but it’s obvious my injuries
are the result of an attack. I can see the pitying look on her face as she
cleans up blood from the bite mark left on my shoulder.
When she’s finished, she glances back at Atlas. She steps to the right,
blocking his view of me as she turns and faces me again. “I need to ask you
some personal questions. I’m going to ask him to leave the room, okay?”
It’s in that moment that I realize she thinks Atlas is the one who did
these things to me. I immediately start to shake my head. “It wasn’t him,” I
tell her. “Please don’t make him leave.”
Relief washes over her face. She nods her head and then pulls up a
chair. “Are you hurt anywhere else?”
I shake my head, because she can’t fix all the parts of me Ryle broke on
the inside.
“Lily?” Her voice is gentle. “Were you raped?”
Tears fill my eyes and I see Atlas roll across the wall, pressing his
forehead against it.
The nurse waits until I make eye contact with her again to continue
speaking. “We have a certain examination for these situations. It’s called a
SANE exam. It’s optional, of course, but I highly encourage it in your
situation.”
“I wasn’t raped,” I say. “He didn’t . . .”
“Are you sure, Lily?” the nurse asks.
I nod. “I don’t want one.”
Atlas faces me again and I can see the pain in his expression as he steps
forward. “Lily. You need this.” His eyes are pleading.
I shake my head again. “Atlas, I swear . . .” I squeeze my eyes shut and
lower my head. “I’m not covering for him this time,” I whisper. “He tried,

---

but then he stopped.”
“If you choose to press charges, you’ll need—”
“I don’t want the exam,” I say again, my voice firm.
There’s a knock on the door and a doctor enters, sparing me from
more pleading looks from Atlas. The nurse gives the doctor a brief
rundown of my injuries. She then steps aside as he examines my head and
shoulder. He flashes a light into both of my eyes. He looks down at the
paperwork again and says, “I’d like to rule out a concussion, but given
your situation, I don’t want to administer a CT. We’d like to keep you for
observation, instead.”
“Why don’t you want to administer a CT?” I ask him.
The doctor stands up. “We don’t like to perform X-rays on pregnant
women unless it’s vital. We’ll monitor you for complications and if there
are no further concerns, you’ll be free to go.”
I don’t hear anything beyond that.
Nothing.
The pressure begins to build in my head. My heart. My stomach. I grip
the edges of the exam table I’m sitting on and I stare at the floor until they
both leave the room.
When the door closes behind them, I sit, suspended in frozen silence. I
see Atlas move closer. His feet are almost touching mine. His fingers brush
lightly over my back. “Did you know?”
I release a quick breath, and then drag in more air. I start shaking my
head, and when his arms come down around me, I cry harder than I knew
my body was even capable of. He holds me the entire time I cry. He holds
me through my hatred.
I did this to myself.
I allowed this to happen to me.
I am my mother.
“I want to leave,” I whisper.
Atlas pulls back. “They want to monitor you, Lily. I think you should
stay.”
I look up at him and shake my head. “I need to get out of here. Please. I
want to leave.”
He nods and helps me back into my shoes. He pulls off his jacket and
wraps it around me, then we walk out of the hospital without anyone
noticing.

---

He says nothing to me as we drive. I stare out the window, too
exhausted to cry. Too in shock to speak. I feel submerged.
Just keep swimming.
• • •
Atlas doesn’t live in an apartment. He lives in a house. A small suburb
outside of Boston called Wellesley, where all the homes are beautiful,
sprawling, manicured, and expensive. Before we pull into his driveway, I
wonder to myself if he ever married that girl. Cassie. I wonder what she’ll
think of her husband bringing home a girl he once loved who has just
been attacked by her own husband.
She’ll pity me. She’ll wonder why I never left him. She’ll wonder how I
let myself get to this point. She’ll wonder all the same things I used to
wonder about my own mother when I saw her in my same situation.
People spend so much time wondering why the women don’t leave. Where
are all the people who wonder why the men are even abusive? Isn’t that
where the only blame should be placed?
Atlas parks in the garage. There’s not another vehicle here. I don’t wait
for him to help me out of the car. I open the door and get out on my own,
and then I follow him into his house. He punches in a code on an alarm
and then flips on a few lights. My eyes roam around the kitchen, the
dining room, the living room. Everything is made of rich woods and
stainless steel, and his kitchen is painted a calming bluish-green. The color
of the ocean. If I wasn’t hurting so much, I would smile.
Atlas kept swimming, and look at him now. He swam all the way to the fucking
Caribbean.
He moves to his refrigerator and pulls out a bottle of water, walking it
over to me. He takes the lid off and hands it to me. I take a drink and
watch as he turns the living room light on, then the hallway.
“Do you live alone?” I ask.
He nods as he walks back into the kitchen. “Are you hungry?”
I shake my head. Even if I was, I wouldn’t be able to eat.
“I’ll show you your room,” he says. “There’s a shower if you need it.”
I do. I want to wash the taste of scotch out of my mouth. I want to wash the
sterile smell of the hospital off of me. I want to wash away the last four hours of my
life.

---

I follow him down the hallway and to a spare bedroom where he flips
on the light. There are two boxes on a bare bed and more stacked up
against the walls. There’s an oversized chair against one wall, facing the
door. He moves to the bed and takes off the boxes, setting them against
the wall with the others.
“I just moved in a few months ago. Haven’t had much time to decorate
yet.” He walks to a dresser and pulls open a drawer. “I’ll make the bed for
you.” He takes out sheets and a pillowcase. He begins making the bed as I
walk inside the bathroom and close the door.
I remain in the bathroom for thirty minutes. Some of those minutes are
spent staring at my reflection in the mirror. Some of those minutes are
spent in the shower. The rest are spent over the toilet as I make myself sick
with thoughts of the last several hours.
I’m wrapped in a towel when I crack the bathroom door. Atlas is no
longer in the bedroom, but there are clothes folded on the freshly made
bed. Men’s pajama bottoms that are too big for me and a T-shirt that goes
past my knees. I pull the drawstring tight, tie it, and then crawl into bed. I
turn the lamp off and pull the covers up and over me.
I cry so hard, I don’t even make a noise.

---