I didn't know who Savannah Allen was anymore.

After my night tangled up in Atlas's Porsche, we lingered in the hotel elevator going back to our rooms, and we decided we hadn't had enough of each other. In what seemed like overnight, we'd become addicted to each other on every level imaginable, but I supposed that was exactly how addiction worked. On the surface, it was craving skin on skin, craving the sound of each other's names in our mouths, and craving the dizzying, gut wrenching euphoria that came with being that deeply intimate with someone. But it was also knowing that no matter how much we shouldn't be doing it, no matter how much it was going to hurt later, we did it anyway.

We littered the floor with our clothes the way confetti littered Times Square on New Year's Day. We whispered secrets to each other that were only kept between the moon and us. I unraveled at his touch, and he stitched me back together. Over and over and over again.

"Savannah," he breathed out against my bare shoulder, and my name in his mouth might as well have been a spell that separated my soul from my body.

Most people just called me Sav. But whoever Savannah was to Atlas Vaughn felt like a totally different person. Being with him was an out of body experience, like I was watching us from above. Every kiss, every sigh, every climax...we were something out of an independent film screened at Cannes. It was beautiful, and it was surreal. I'd give us a few awards at the end of the night.

Things were different at 3 am. The quiet of the night as it transitioned into early morning made all the lines and all the moments blur and twist, justifying every way we touched each other, and every word we said, like they'd fade away in the light of the morning.

Atlas rested his head on my stomach as I absentmindedly ran my fingers through his mess of hair. He was warm, but not in a gross, sticky way like people normally were after sex. He was warm in the way the sun warmed the ocean.

I felt his fingers caress down the inside of my thigh, stopping at the mangled bit of scarred skin on my knee, forever branding me of my injury. I inadvertently tensed up at the touch.

"You alright?" he asked softly.

"Never better," I breathed out. I meant it.

He kept his hand on my knee, gently tracing circles around my surgery scars. His words fluttered over my skin when he spoke. "You got hurt, didn't you?"

"So you Googled me too, huh?" I asked, my words threaded with amusement.

He chuckled faintly. "Guilty."

I felt the question he wanted to ask linger through his touch. "It was my ACL and my MCL. It's normally an injury that football players or basketball players get from cutting on a dime and changing directions too quickly when they're running. All that wear and tear on the knee and it just...happens."

He was quiet for a moment. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to...you don't have to talk about it if you don't want to."

The smallest bit of worry crept into his voice. It unraveled me, tiny string by tiny string.

"It's fine. I...I want to tell you." I rested my hand on his cheek, and even though he wasn't facing me, I felt his breath slow as it danced across the bare skin on my stomach. "I bailed on a wave I thought I was going to wipe out on, and when I jumped off my board...let's just say I met the bottom a lot faster than I thought I would, and my knee went in a direction it's not supposed to go in."

Atlas let out a soft groan. "Ouch."

"I needed two surgeries over the course of eight months. Not only did I have to withdraw from that season, but I wasn't recovered enough to compete last year either. So now here I am, trying to act like everything's normal again. I think physically I am normal, but the psychological recovery...it's different. I'm constantly second guessing what I can and can't do. I'm..." I swallowed hard, but the admission was already on the tip of my tongue, begging to finally be heard. Atlas had that effect on me without even trying. "I'm scared. More often than not."

He finally rolled over so that he was facing me, and in the dim glow of the Miami city lights through the window, his eyes were the softest, palest blue, like the ocean in Encinitas when the first rays of the morning hit it. "I don't want to tell you not to be scared because it's human nature to be afraid. But...you still have to keep going. Eventually you just realize the only thing you're afraid of is the unknown. Nothing tangible can actually stop you."

"And I suppose you'd know all about that, wouldn't you?" I quirked an eyebrow at him.

"Unfortunately, yes." The raw honesty in his voice should have been more jarring, but it wasn't. We'd cracked each other open, and once the secrets came out, they couldn't just be put back in like organs after open heart surgery. "Everyone has these wild expectations of me, like I'm supposed to be just like my father. Right from the moment I slipped into a Formula 1 car...I never really had the option to be afraid of anything, even though..." he paused and let out a sigh, and I felt myself put a reassuring touch to his freckled shoulder. "Sometimes I'm fucking terrified. I'm...I'm terrified of not being what he wanted me to be."

He paused and rolled his head over again onto my stomach so that he was looking up at the ceiling. I watched his throat ripple as he swallowed, almost as if he was swallowing more words he wanted to say. Realizing up until now I'd still only seen the tip of Atlas's iceberg was sobering, and if I saw what was beneath the surface, it would only make it harder to pull myself away.

"I'm sorry," I said softly, shaking my head. "About your dad. I really am."

A soft, almost wistful smile pulled at Atlas's lips. "I miss him, but I always know he's with me. And thinking about him and what happened...it's the one thing that doesn't scare me at all, even though maybe it should. Instead, it just gives me strength, like I'm capable of anything."

"I'm sure he would be really proud of you." I raked a hand gently through his hair again. It was so soft I could have buried myself in it.

"There's something about being in control of a car going 200 miles per hour. The sound, the speed, the adrenaline...it just shoots through you. It's weird, because you need to be in total control, but at the same time it gives you this...this kind of freedom that you can't get anywhere else. He taught me that, and it's stuck with me through it all. I think at least he'd be proud I've carried that with me. No point in doing it if you aren't getting something fulfilling out of it."

Something warmed inside of me, and it made me smile. When I hit a wave right, and the sound of the ocean and the smell of the sea overtook my body, that same exact feeling he put into words flooded through me, unraveling me all over again. I let my fingers caress his cheek and glide down to his jaw, catching little prickles where he'd cut himself shaving.

"Sounds like he was one hell of a guy."

That same wistful smile of his lingered. "He was. Even when I was a kid, he just had this way of making me feel larger than life. I used to get picked on when I was little, like getting called skunk hair and stuff. I'll never forget one day I came home so upset about it, begging my parents to let me dye my hair or something, and he sat me down and told me a story about how the same thing used to happen to him when he was little. But then my gran told him that it means our family had been kissed by thunder, and that's why she named him Taren. It means thunder in Welsh."

I traced the lines where that stark white streak of hair cut into the rest of its ashy chocolate brown, fading into just little bright flecks like stars at dusk. I didn't know how anyone could ever think it was anything but beautiful. "That's amazing. So then where did Atlas come from?"

"My mum, actually," he chuckled. "My parents had trouble having kids, so when they finally had me, Mum said she held the world in her hands."

"Her Atlas." I mused with a soft smile.

"Exactly," he chuckled. "She's also the reason my car number is 1. She'd always say I was one of one. That did wonders for my ego, of course."

I laughed, but I felt a bitterness on the tip of my tongue. It wasn't that my father wasn't supportive of me or what I did, but to have parents that treated you like you hung the moon itself seemed like nothing more than a fantasy in a children's book...until now.

Atlas slid himself up next to me, resting his chin on my shoulder. We laid in silence for what felt like hours, every so often planting gentle kisses to every bare piece of skin we could reach.

"I can't believe we didn't sleep," I groaned. Atlas barked out a laugh.

"Worth it."

He gently pressed his lips to my shoulder, then my collarbone, and up to my neck, feeling the warmth of his touch desperately linger on my skin as slivers of rising sunlight cut across the floor, indicating the end of our night.

He slid himself out of bed and ambled around for his tailored black suit, now a wrinkled mess from spending the night on the floor of my hotel room. I couldn't tear my gaze away from him as he buttoned his shirt back up, and the thought of never seeing him like this again, exposed and intimate and so human, burned through me.

"What?" A soft grin pulled at his lips when he realized I had been staring.

"Got your watch?"

Add deflect subtle embarrassment with humor to my list of maneuvers. A solid 10 point trick.

Atlas chuckled and held up his wrist, his watch big and gleaming even in the soft light of my hotel room. He walked back over to the bed and leaned down to kiss my cheek one last time. He lingered for what felt like a lifetime, and in that moment reality hit us both.

We were close, but so out of reach, like two fish in different tanks in the same aquarium.

"Atlas..." I sighed out. "This is...this should probably be the last time we do this."

"I know." He finally pulled away, and with it he took all the warmth I never knew I'd miss until it was gone.

I sat up in bed, piling my mess of hair on top of my head while he finished gathering his things. "Sex makes things complicated, and I just don't have room in my life for complicated. I...I need to worry about myself right now."

"I know," he said again. "So do I. The last thing I need is fabricated relationship drama and fans going off the wall bonkers about it, nor would I drag you through that."

I hesitated to bring up fans going off the wall bonkers had already happened, but I swallowed it down. Like he said, it was the last thing either of us needed - might as well be pouring gasoline on an open fire, and neither of us could afford to get burned.

"By the way, it's not the sex that makes it complicated. Sex is easy." Atlas smirked as he slipped on his jacket. "It's lying in bed with someone at 4 am and telling them things you don't tell normal people that makes it complicated."

I didn't have to be neck-deep in the Formula 1 community to know that any of what he told me wasn't common knowledge. He trusted me...but I trusted him too, and now I'd seen that iceberg under the surface.

I finally let out a weary sigh. "We've never been normal people, Atlas."

He made an effort to smooth his hair down, but it still looked as messy and windswept as ever. "Fair enough."

I sighed and propped my chin up on my hand. "Besides, what are the chances we'll ever accidentally run into each other again?"

A wistful look glazed over his eyes, but it was gone as quickly as it came. "Probably none." He gave me one last faint grin with his hand on the doorknob. "But who knows?"

Just like that he was gone, and I did nothing to stop him.

& she walks along the edge
of where the ocean meets the land

round here / counting crows

I'VE BEEN WAITING TO USE THIS GIF I JUST *faints*-

anyway, she's a little bit of a shorty compared to chapters so far but i really wanted our kids to have this moment to themselves - most of the content in this chapter is brand new (not from the original draft) and i think this is the moment where i can say that sav and atlas are my *best* couple - they have this undeniable, palpable chemistry and their dialogue together comes so naturally.

we got ship names yet???