Booktree.ngIt-Starts-with-Us-Colleen-Hoover

Here’s what’s crazy about that, Ellen: I was kind of hoping I had.
—Lily
Atlas isn’t smiling when I finish reading. He’s staring at me with a lot of
feeling, and the heaviness in his eyes is making my chest tight.
“We were so young,” he says. His voice carries a little bit of ache in it.
“I know. Too young to deal with the stuff we dealt with. Especially you.”
Atlas isn’t looking at his phone anymore, but he’s moving his head in
agreement. The mood has shifted, and I can tell he’s thinking about
something else entirely. It brings me back to what he tried to brush off
earlier when he said it’s been one of those weeks.
“What’s bothering you?”
His eyes return to his phone. He seems like he might brush it off again,
but then he just sighs and readjusts himself so that he’s sitting higher up
against his headboard. “Someone vandalized the restaurants.”
“Both of them?”
He nods. “Yeah, it started a few days ago.”
“You think it’s someone you know?”
“It’s not anyone I recognize, but the security footage wasn’t very clear. I
haven’t reported it to the police yet.”
“Why haven’t you?”
His eyebrows furrow. “Whoever it is seems younger—maybe in their
teens. I guess I’m worried they might be in a similar situation to the one I
was in back then. Destitute.” The tension in his eyes eases a bit. “And what
if they don’t have a Lily to save them?”
It takes a few seconds for what he says to register. When it does, I don’t
smile. I swallow the lump in my throat, hoping he can’t see my internal
reaction to that. It’s not the first time he’s mentioned I saved him back then,
but every time he says it, I want to argue with him. I didn’t save him. All I
did was fall in love with him.
I can see why I fell in love with him. What owner is more concerned
about the situation of the person vandalizing their business than they are
with the actual damage being done? “Considerate Atlas,” I whisper.
“What was that?” he says.
I didn’t mean to say that out loud. I slide a hand over the heat moving
across my neck. “Nothing.”