Total pages in book: 176
Estimated words: 167257 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 836(@200wpm)___ 669(@250wpm)___ 558(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 167257 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 836(@200wpm)___ 669(@250wpm)___ 558(@300wpm)
I wasn’t blind, and I wasn’t going to be fake humble by pretending I didn’t know I was a beautiful brown girl. Still, no one had ever made me feel as beautiful as Owen did every day since I’d met him—not even Sutton’s bitch-ass.
“My birthmark?” I asked, even though it was so much more than that. I’d been born with a rare case of congenital vitiligo that was mostly present on my breasts, thighs, belly, and feet.
The markings on my face, however, were different.
They were smaller and lighter, but the star-shaped patches couldn’t be missed. They traveled from my left cheek to my right temple in a pattern I could never quite put my finger on.
My mother said it reminded her of how sailors once used the stars to navigate and had named me Atlas because of it.
“Why?” I asked when Rowdy nodded.
“Because it’s proof that I was meant to find you.”
I gave him a crooked smile. “Technically, I found you.”
“You did,” he agreed with a nod. “And you were the map all along.” I blinked at him in shocked silence, wondering if he’d read my thoughts. “Do you believe in fate?” he asked me when I just gaped at him.
“I’m not sure. Maybe?”
“What if I told you the markings on your face follow the same pattern as one of the constellations?”
My belly dipped, and my breath rushed out of me as I searched his gaze for the answer. “I’d ask what constellation you’re referring to.”
But I didn’t. Because I already knew.
Leo.
The markings on my face made the Leo constellation. I’d known the moment he’d posed the question.
Seeing the answer on my face, Rowdy smiled, then stood and closed my door before rounding the hood and climbing into the driver’s seat.
In nineteen years, Rowdy had been the only one to ever figure it out, the only one who’d ever truly seen me.
I expected him to gloat about stunning me into silence, but he didn’t. He just turned on Summer Walker even though he complained whenever I played her music, saying she made his ears bleed.
We rode in silence, vibin’ to her album Over It, before a thought struck me, and I turned down the music, stealing his focus for a moment before it was forced back to the road. “What was the biggest shock?” At his confused frown, I added, “You said before that my trying to leave wasn’t the biggest shock. What was?”
I could tell he didn’t want to answer but did anyway after stopping at the light. He knew I wouldn’t let it go. “Realizing I’d do anything to make you stay. Nothing was off limits, Atlas. Nothing. I let someone I wasn’t sure about into my kingdom because it meant I could have you instead.”
I held his gaze as I turned over his confession in my mind, and he stared right back at me until I couldn’t take the distance anymore, and I found my way into his lap. Safe in his arms, the place I’d abandoned everything I knew to be, I kissed him, forcing traffic to go around us with an angry blare of their horns.
Winter left, spring had come and gone, and now summer was nearing its end as well. I wish I could say the six months since Rowdy and I became official had been pure bliss, but…I hadn’t considered the backlash.
And since I was the first to hold that title, there had been no one to warn me.
Rowdy had put the word out on me long before he’d made his intentions known, but it was a different story when people saw the truth with their own eyes and knew it wasn’t a rumor started by some clout chaser.
Nope.
I, Atlas Ilana Beck, was Rowdy Wray’s official girl.
The position came with endless adoration, affection, respect, care, security, that big, beautiful Black dick, and the long list of enemies I’d inherited overnight.
I couldn’t go anywhere without some girl Rowdy had fucked in the past trying to befriend me or fight me. Usually, it was the latter. It had gotten so bad that Rowdy now forbade me from going anywhere alone. Since I didn’t have anyone else, it meant without him.
I sighed as I studied my reflection in the floor-length mirror. My faux locs were a thing of the past, and I now wore my natural hair in two long stitch braids with my baby hair softly curling around my hairline. I admired the nude halter bikini clinging to my body one last time before grabbing the matching cover-up and tying it around my waist.
The decorative mirror leaning in the corner of the master closet was just one of the many additions I’d made to Rowdy’s barren bedroom.
His room, along with the rest of his house, had been the picture of bachelorhood, bereft of furnishings and a personal touch. When I’d asked him why, he’d said there was no need when he was never home.