Infinite Shades of Him (bxb)

12. You dropped this.

Days later, I found myself on a rooftop on Christmas Eve. I sat on the edge of the ledge I felt like I'd been on for over two years. My legs dangled there while I had a front-row seat at the best show in Fargo, North Dakota. My cowardness put me up here, but my inability to stay away from him made me show up in the first place.

Atlas arrived only five minutes ago, and I was perched up here three minutes ago. He wasn't hard to find for me anymore. He kept his path. I honestly wondered if he'd show up at all, considering I haven't spoken to him. We haven't spoken at all. If Atlas respected anything, it was boundaries, and he respected the ones I set when I told him to leave. Even if his leaving was the last thing I wanted.

My fingers brushed against the necklace around my neck. I looped my pointer finger through the ring, watching as Atlas stared at the blank space in front of him. I waited. And I waited. And... waited. Atlas wasn't painting. He had a brush in his hand but was staring at the wall. Eventually, he got to work on his painting. It was the same one with the blurry background and my eyes being the center of attention.

For hours, I watched as he penned the same artwork he'd been doing for... I honestly had no idea how long he'd been doing this. But now, I was sitting here, watching him paint like I used to do with him in college. A majority of our time was spent with me watching him paint because I could never get enough of it. And I knew that was why I continued to sit through Night Ninja's paintings whenever I had the chance. 

I furrowed my brows when Atlas did the same thing he did last time with the brush dipped in black paint. He held it tightly in his hand, staring at the image I knew was him. It broke me to pieces for reasons I couldn't even begin to explain. 

What shocked me was that he took action with the paintbrush this time. He slammed it against the wall where his face was and started erasing it in black paint. My heart skipped several beats as I choked on my next breath. The aggression behind it was personal. I watched with horror as he took himself out of the painting. 

My heart flopped out of my chest when Atlas ripped off the mask, threw it elsewhere, and crouched on the ground. Then he pressed his palms to his eyes. I didn't realize my heart could shatter even more than it already had, but when Atlas stayed in that position for longer than two minutes, I kept feeling pieces of my heart continue to chip away. 

Guilt started clawing and thrashing around in my throat as I stared at the tall man shrink himself down into something small. Because he felt small. And I was the reason he felt that way. I wanted to go down there and reassure him everything would be okay, but how? I didn't know that for sure. 

After several minutes, Atlas stood up and started painting over the faces of our friends with black paint. My guess was that when he had a surge of emotions and covered himself in black paint, he didn't have enough time to wait for it to dry and fix it. Now, he was painting the... moon and the stars. He added more color to the black, giving it some blue tint. 

Tears welled up in my eyes as I watched him fix a mistake with something that still signified our relationship. I didn't deserve this. He was hurting so badly, and I was the cause of it. I haven't done anything to fix it. I had no idea how to. Mcklean raped me, and afterward, I retreated into the dark corners of my mind and sent out an impersonator who didn't have any memories of my past.

Now, Memories Miles and No Memories Miles were living in my head. 

I touched the ring around my neck once again before I realized something. It made me rip the necklace over my head and stare down at the key that was there. I never thought more about why it was there. A quiet gasp left me as I recalled the night I found out Night Ninja was Atlas. Where he was.