I Swear I Still Hate Him (Atlas Lawson) novel Chapter 191

Chapter 191

Emery’s POV

I barely slept.

I’d watched that video Atlas sent me somewhere around eleven times, maybe twelve, I stopped counting after a while. Each time it ended I’d just sit there in the dark of my bedroom, phone resting on my chest, staring up at the stars in the ceiling with something warm and unfamiliar turning over quietly in my stomach.

Not dread. Not the hollow ache I’d carried around for two years every time swimming came up.

Happy. I felt happy.

And the second I recognized it for what it was, I knew exactly what I had to do.

****

Tommy’s assistant barely had time to announce me before I pushed open his office door.

He looked up from his desk, reading glasses low on his nose, coffee in hand, and whatever he saw on my face made him set the mug down slowly.

“Emery.”

I walked straight to his desk and placed the envelope down between us. No preamble. No small talk. My heart was hammering, but my hands were steady, and I held onto that.

Tommy looked at the envelope. Then up at me. One brow climbed toward his hairline.

“What’s this?”

I took a breath. “Take a look.”

He gave a small, uncertain nod, the kind that meant he already didn’t like where this was going, and reached for it. I watched his face as he unfolded the letter. Watched the confusion shift into something heavier. His expression fell in stages, like a slow exhale, and then his jaw set, and he dropped the paper on the desk..

“What the hell.” He pulled his glasses off. “No. Absolutely not.”

“Tommy…”

“You can’t just…” He was already out of his chair, one hand pressed flat on the desk, shaking his head like he could physically refuse the whole situation. “You can’t just do that, Emery.”

I sighed and looked at my resignation letter sitting there between us on his desk. Clean white paper. My signature at the bottom. Ten years of my life folded up in a single page.

“Where is this coming from?” His voice dropped, the anger giving way to something more like worry. “What happened?”

I thought about last night. Atlas’s voice low and certain in the dark. Fear is a real good liar, Em. The video playing on my phone while I lay in bed, tiny me standing at the edge of a pool with my whole future ahead of me and not a single doubt in my body. The way watching it had made me feel, not gutted and grieving, but lit up from the inside.

That feeling was the answer. It had been the answer all along.

I looked at Tommy.

“Thank you,” I said quietly, “for walking up to me at the café and handing me your card.”

He opened his mouth.

I kept going.

“Thank you for accepting me even after months of no response. For never questioning me. For never once looking at my disability like it was a problem to work around.” I stepped around the desk until I was standing in front of him, and I reached out and took his hand in both of mine. “Thank you for showing up every single time I needed you, even when you were exhausted. For not just being my manager but my friend.” My voice

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Chapter 191

held steady, and I was proud of that. “You gave me somewhere to land when I didn’t know where I was going. I won’t ever forget that.”

Tommy stared at me. The hard line of his mouth softened. He exhaled through his nose and looked away for a second, jaw working.

“Is this really what you want,” he said. Not quite a question. More like he already knew.

“Modeling was beautiful,” I said honestly. “It was fun, and it was good to me, and I mean that. But it was never really me, Tommy. It never made me feel whole.” I held his gaze. “I want to feel whole again. So I’m going back to my dream.”

Something moved across his face, something proud that he was clearly trying to keep in check and failing at completely. He let out a long breath, shook his head once, and then pulled me into a hug. His arms wrapped around my shoulders, firm and familiar, and I hugged him back hard.

“Don’t you dare forget me,” he muttered against the top of my head.

I laughed…a real one, soft and a little wet around the edges. “Wouldn’t dream of it, Tommy.”

We stayed like that for a moment. Then I pulled back, looked at him one last time, and smiled.

Then I turned and walked out.

***

She was right there in the hallway.

Leaning against the wall just outside Tommy’s door, arms loosely crossed, like she’d been there a while. The second our eyes met, she pushed off the wall and crossed to me.

“G.” My voice came out soft with surprise.

Gia pulled me into a hug without a word.

I let myself fall into it, arms going around her, the last of the morning’s nerves finally settling.

“I’m so proud of you,” she said quietly.

I pulled back with a small smile. “So, you heard everything.”

“Yeah.” She laughed a little, nodding. “Yeah, I did.”

But even as she smiled, and it was a real smile, I knew Gia’s real smile, something behind her eyes didn’t quite match it. Something dim and tired living back there that she was doing a decent job of keeping at a distance. I noticed it the way you notice a light that’s slightly too low. Not off. Just not as bright as it should be.

I almost asked.

She tilted her head before I could. “Coffee?”

I looked at her for just a second longer.

“Yeah,” I said softly. “Let’s go get coffee.”

***

“So.” Her eyes sparkled. “I’m sitting across from a soon-to-be gold medalist.” She set her mug down and pressed a hand to her chest. “At the Paralympics. I am so honored.” She reached across the table dramatically. “Can I get a signature? Right now, before you blow up? I’m thinking I could sell it, maybe frame it, put it on eBay…”

I burst out laughing, a real one, the kind that came from somewhere loose and easy in my chest. “You are so stupid.”

“I’m entrepreneurial,” she corrected, grinning wide.

We both laughed, and for a second the coffee shop and the morning and everything in it felt perfectly, simply good.

Then Gia reached across the table and covered my hand with hers.

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Chapter 191

The laughter settled. Her eyes went warm and serious all at once.

“I’m so proud of you, Em.” Her voice was quiet. Genuine in the way Gia only got when she meant something down to her bones. “Really.”

I squeezed her hand. “Thanks, G.”

She nodded, sitting back, turning her mug slowly in her palms. “And I’m glad you have Atlas.” She tilted her head slightly, mouth curving. “And yes, before you say anything, I know I give you shit about getting under his sheets…”

“Gia…

“…but for real though.” She cut through her own joke cleanly, voice dropping into something softer. “This is beautiful, Em. What you two have. You don’t just get love like that. It doesn’t just show up for everybody.” She held my gaze steady. “And I know the world is probably gonna have opinions about it. People always do. But you know what?” Her jaw set just slightly. “Forget the world. Because the world doesn’t lose sleep over you. So you shouldn’t lose a single second over it either.”

I smiled and felt it reach all the way up.

But even as I did, I felt something else settle in, quiet and familiar, the way it always did when I looked at Gia long enough. Behind everything she was giving me…the pride, the warmth, the fierceness, there was

something sitting back in her eyes that didn’t quite belong to this moment. Something that had been there for months, living just below the surface like a bruise that never fully healed.

I knew that look.

I knew exactly where it came from.

“I’m fine, Em.”

I blinked.

She hadn’t even let me get there. Just read my face like a page she’d already memorized and answered the question before I could form it.

I let out a small breath. “Your face is terrifyingly easy to read, you know that?”

“Yours too,” she said simply, taking a sip of her coffee. The corner of her mouth lifted. “We’re even.”

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