The Atlas Six (The Atlas, #1)

by Olivie Blake

greatness was never offered to anyone who couldn’t stand to bear it.

Knowing him, the idea that a woman could exist who didn’t worship at his feet must have kept him up at night.

If not for him she might have breezed through her studies, perhaps even found them dull.

Really, there was nothing more dangerous than a woman who knew her own worth.

He beat his thumb against his thigh a few more times at the precise moment she remarked to nobody, “I love this song,” which was another customary difference between them. He had felt the presence of the rhythm first; she had heard the melody sooner and identified it more quickly.

I know how useful you are; it’s your turn to convince the others. The promise of your talents is nothing compared to whatever you ultimately prove to be.”

And before you ask what that means,” he assured Libby with a smile, “I’m happy to explain.

she was much too fragile to contend with Reina’s lofty disinterest in her, but that was only because it was in Libby’s personal moral code to fret pointlessly about things she couldn’t control.

Was that why he’d chosen to do this? Atlas Blakely had told Tristan he was rare and special and therefore he’d thought, Yes, fine, time to drop everything I spent years tirelessly cultivating in order to prove to my estranged father that I, too, can do something wildly unsafe?

Maybe she was right; maybe it was daddy problems. Maybe after a lifetime of being useless, Tristan simply wanted to be used.

She wasn’t the neatest person alive, nor was she the best at rising early. All in all, she felt woefully inadequate next to Tristan, who was so pulled together he nearly sparkled.

Incredible how he made it feel like a capital crime just to ask him a simple question.

“Not sorry,” she amended, forcing a smile. “I only meant—” “You don’t have to be sorry for existing, you know,”

“I find people to be largely disappointing,” Tristan commented. “Interestingly, so do I.” “Is that considered interesting?” “Well, seeing that my specialty requires me to grasp most details of human nature, yes, I think so,” Callum said. “Knowing what I know, I should really find other people fascinating, or at least valuable.”

She was the sort of person who would always do what was best for herself, even if it took her some time to puzzle it out.

Gideon already had plenty of psychological trauma without adding a father fixation to the mix, so if anything, the absence of Gideon’s father was probably a blessing. His mother was already bad enough, given that her reasons for seeking out her son were almost never maternal.

Reina spoke little and saw much, though what Nico liked most about her was that she considered most of what she viewed to be substantially unimportant, and therefore not worth discussion. Unlike Libby, who felt precisely the opposite.

She was the sort of perfectionist who was so desperately frightened of being any degree of inadequate that, on occasion, the effort of trying at all was enough to paralyze her with doubt.

Funny how that worked; the innocent fragility of being human. There were so many ways to break and so few of them heroic or noble.

“You are not going to do something so utterly unforgivable as to waste your talent and die, I won’t have it,”

She wasn’t fully exhausted, not like he was, but there had definitely been a toll. She had shouldered some of his burden for him.

the future seemed at once nonexistent, distant, and rapidly approaching.

The idea of staying in a place occupied by boys in their early twenties gave Reina an unpleasant itch. “No thanks,” she said.

There was such a thing as asking too much, and she had known the demands of others all her life. Even, or perhaps especially, the demands of those who had not wanted her at all.

“Men in particular are draining, they bleed us dry. They demand we carry their burdens, fix their ills. A man is constantly in search of a good woman, but what do they offer us in return?”

Libby thought constantly, relentlessly. She was perpetually wavering between states of worry or apprehension or, in most cases, fear. Fear of ineptitude, fear of failure.

It was enough to taste, to feel, to touch, instead of think. Enough to be that free of feeling. Enough, for once, to feel, and nothing else.

“I’d do something about it, only the prospect of managing anything at all sounds positively exhausting.”

You’re lonely because you choose to be.” “Perhaps I simply loathe other people,” said Parisa.

there was one thing Tristan had always aimed to be, it was well to the left of whatever his father was.

To stare into the familiar and somehow expect to see something new felt frustrating and thoroughly impossible.

“Please don’t psychoanalyze me today,” Tristan said. “Fine, fine.” Callum’s smile quirked. “Daddy issues.”

“For what it’s worth,” he said, clapping a hand on Tristan’s shoulder, “the parts of you that you seem to loathe are hardly abhorrent at all.”

Everyone wanted most desperately to be unafraid and numb.

She was too small-minded, too un-hungry for that. Too trapped within the cage of her own fears, her desires to be liked.

That’s why you can’t turn your back on me, even if you want to. You know my flaws but crave them; you lust for them. The worse I am, the more desperate you are to forgive me.”

You need me to hurt you so that you can finally learn the difference between torture and love.”

“Theoretically, men are a disaster. As a concept, I unequivocally reject them.”

The day you are not a fire,” he said, “is the day the earth will fall still for me.”

Thank you for teaching everyone, me most of all. I tire of everything, always, but never you.