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"Me and the boys. Micah, Pierce, Gavin… Lakewood too."
I dropped my bag on the counter and pulled out my phone, seeing a text from him that just said I'm sorry.
"I need you to explain better, Atticus."
"I tried to call you. I knew you were out, but I did try to tell you what we were doing. I called and called and I had to make a call. And we fucking managed it. Got the phone cloned. Lakewood got the data but all we got back was gibberish.”
“Wait, you tried to brute force the encryption, with the state of the Sword-in-the-Stone as it is right now? Are you kidding? No wonder the data was corrupted. That’s why I was going to make sure we got a clean transfer. Lance is good, but I know that software inside and out. If we try again?—”
“I know. If we try again, anything we get could be completely worthless.”
I couldn’t believe him. He’d risked us, risked everything because he couldn’t wait? “Wait, you tried to call me.”
He nodded. “See, I can learn. I knew I had to tell you. I couldn’t just run off and make a decision without notifying you. And so I tried, but you were out of range, so I made the choice I could to try and protect everyone.” He shook his head. “Micah said when it comes to you, I can’t see straight. I can’t seem to make good choices.”
My heart and stomach went into a freefall dive. “I don’t know if that’s true or fair to look at right now. We can find our way back, I’ll need to see how Lance tried to do it, then maybe I can safeguard against any problems for next time. I might need to be closer to the phone or have it plugged in to the device which is harder but not impossible.”
He blinked up at me with shimmering eyes as I stepped between his legs. “You’re not mad?”
Mad? “No. You made a call. And I wasn’t around. I’m sure Micah and Lance tried to give you alternatives. This isn’t like last time. You didn’t just decide something. You trusted me. I’m just sorry I wasn’t there.”
A shadow passed behind his eyes just before he pulled me close and held me. “We shouldn't have tried to do it without you. We should've just stuck to the original plan. I know. I just…"
Listening to him I realized what was off. “Atticus?”
“Yeah?” He held me tight, his arms wrapped around my waist. It was too easy to get sucked into the warmth of his hold.
“When you called me, were you calling to tell me the plan or were you calling me to discuss it?”
He blinked at me slowly. “What’s the difference? I called you. I told you I wouldn’t make these unilateral decisions anymore. I trust you with my life.”
But he didn’t answer the question.
“Well, if you were calling me to discuss it, that’s one thing, that’s opening yourself up to feedback. That’s you trusting me. If you were calling me to notify me, that’s different.”
The muscle in his jaw worked again. “What does it matter as long as I called you. It’s not important.”
“It’s important to me. I told you what it means for me to have agency in my own life. I told you how important it is to me to feel trusted, to feel like I have a say.”
He let out an exasperated breath. “Don’t do this. You’re getting hung up on semantics because you want to be pissed at me. I called you; you weren’t available. I had to make a call.”
I tried to step out of his hold, but his arms caged me to him. “Believe me, I don’t want to be pissed at you. I’m the fool that’s in love with you. I don’t want to be angry. But this is important to me Atticus. This speaks directly to the core of who we are to each other. Were you trying to notify me or discuss with me.”
Atticus Price was a lot of things, but he wasn’t a liar. He might not have wanted to tell me, but he would. And deep down a part of him understood why I was hurt. “I was notifying you.”
It shouldn’t have hurt, shouldn’t have sliced through me, but it did. He was just another person in my life who didn’t see fit to trust my judgement or input. “So you were just going to what, say, we’re pulling a Hail Mary today without you. I wanted you to know.”
“Not like that,” he groused.
“Oh yeah, then how?”
When he cleared his throat, I knew the answer was not going to be one I wanted. “I would have taken more care with your feelings.”
Staring at him now, I could see all the places I’d gone wrong. Had all the things he’d said in the Winston Isles been bullshit? The sickening realization of what had happened hit me slowly. Like a slow-acting poison. This was like before. Where he had decided something and all I could do was hang on for the ride. "I thought you weren't going to do this anymore?"
"This isn't even the same, Gwen."
"Yes it is. We had an easier plan that involved the whole team, with contingencies and secondaries. But then you made a decision and expected us all to fall in line."
