Later that night after we had all bid our farewells and Angelica and I had been dropped off at the cabin, I’d taken to wandering around the place while Angelica showered. It wasn’t frequent that Atticus and Delaney would leave the both of us alone. Most of the time, Atticus would consistently remain by our sides and Delaney would go back and forth from his many different lives. The life he lived by his lonesome, the life he lived with Angelica and me, and the separate lives he lived with his other girls. Sometimes I wondered how he managed to keep up with his multitude of lies and stories in an attempt to keep all of us in line. 

It should have been insulting that Delaney and Atticus trusted us both to continue to fall in line. It should have angered me to no end that they were so certain— so confident— that neither of us would run away once presented the chance. They knew they had Angelica wrapped around their finger. I had no idea why. I don’t know what threats and manipulative fabrications they’d used to obtain her false loyalty, but I knew it had worked.

On the other hand, I had no idea why they trusted me. Maybe their sense of security came from the fact that they understood the way I thought. Maybe they knew I didn’t plan to leave until that godforsaken cabin was coated in their blood.

Casually, I went into Atticus’s room and poked around. There wasn’t much in the room. It was mostly empty with a single bed, the nightstand beside it, and the dresser across the room. Dust coated practically everything with the exception of a small notebook I found in his first dresser drawer.

The notebook was clearly old. The cover had fallen off presumably with age and the dates scribbled across some of the pages dated way back. Some dated nearly three years in the past. 

Skimming through the pages, I strolled through the cabin to sit at the dining room table. It was Atticus’s diary; there was no doubt about it. Most of its contents were random, pointless thoughts jotted down in what must have been the heat of the moment. I was surprised to see how emotional it was, how every single word reflected his anger and his sadness, and his hopelessness. For the first time, I began to wonder just who Atticus was.

How old was he? He looked young, seemed to be around my age, but he could pass for a young adult. 

How did he get into the situation where he’s working on Delaney’s side? A man that he’d always seemed to tolerate more than like. 

I don’t know how long I read through the thing. I just know it brought up more questions than it truly answered. It didn’t take too long for me to figure out he hated Delaney’s guts but absolutely adored someone named Jules. A lot of his writing talked about how much he missed them, but, to my confusion, some of it talked about how much he hated Jules. How Jules was the best thing that's ever happened to him but was also the cause of his horrible life. 

He talked about his shaky faith a lot, too. 

“You say sodomy is a sin,” I read aloud in a low whisper, eyebrows furrowed deep on my forehead, “but does it still count if it was forced upon you at such a young age? When you were completely defenseless and still too naive to understand the stars didn’t shine for people like you? Or is it more of a sin to understand but still crave the touch of another man? Since when has finding enjoyment in the similarities of another human being become so sinfully different? If you partake in the pleasures of women, does that erase the past transgressions or does it simply mask it?”

The writing didn’t stop there. It continued on, one question after the next, and it would have probably kept going forever if the front door creaking open didn’t break me out of my concentration. Atticus stepped in, casually kicked his shoes off, and looked as if he were about to say something until he noticed what I was reading. 

I didn’t try to hide it. I simply closed the journal and set it down on the table, eyeing Atticus through a brand-new lens, albeit warily. He was frozen for a while before his body started letting go of the slightest tremors.

He was enraged.

He stormed toward me and ripped me out of my seat by the front of my dress. The abrupt gesture knocked the breath out of me and I struggled to push him back but his grip was far too strong. 

“What the hell were you doing?” he seethed, glancing down at his diary as if he hoped he’d been wrong. Then, he grew impossibly angrier when he realized he was right. He slammed me back against the wall, sending my head crashing into the wall. I grunted at the resulting ringing in the back of my head along with the increasingly throbbing pain. “Well?”

“What does it look like I was doing?” I pushed out through clenched teeth, hands clenched tightly around his wrists, broken nails digging into the skin to leave small crescents behind.

I was surprised when he let me go and took a step back. He turned to lean over the table, his fists balled from where they pushed against the old wood. He drew in a multitude of ragged, rough breaths, his shoulders rising and falling rapidly. 

“Atticus…?” His name left my mouth in an apprehensive, breathless inquiry. 

"Oh, don't mind me," he bit out, hand reaching out to grasp the vase that sat in the center of the table. "I'm just contemplating how angry Delaney will be when he finds out I've killed one of his most precious girls."