Restore Me (Shatter Me #4)(14)

Kent smiles, but it looks sad. “I was a real dick to her at the end,” he says. “So I guess I got what I deserved. But it wasn’t actually about her, you know? All of that. It wasn’t about her.” He looks up at me out of the corner of his eye. “I’d been drowning for a while, actually. I was just really unhappy, and really stressed, and then”—he shrugs, turns away—“honestly, finding out you were my brother nearly killed me.”

I blink. Surprised once more.

“Yeah.” He laughs, shaking his head. “I know it seems weird now, but at the time I just—I don’t know, man, I thought you were a sociopath. I was so worried you’d figure out we were related and then, I mean—I don’t know, I thought you’d try to murder me or something.”

He hesitates. Looks at me.

Waits.

It’s only then that I realize—surprised, yet again—that he wants me to deny this. To say it wasn’t so.

But I can understand his concern. So I say, “Well. I did try to kill you once, didn’t I?”

Kent’s eyes go wide. “It’s too soon for that, man. That shit is still not funny.”

I look away as I say, “I wasn’t making a joke.”

I can feel Kent looking at me, studying me, trying, I assume, to make some sense of me or my words. Perhaps both. But it’s hard to know what he’s thinking. It’s frustrating to have a supernatural ability that allows me to know everyone’s emotions, except for his. It makes me feel off-kilter around him. Like I’ve lost my eyesight.

Finally, Kent sighs.

I seem to have passed a test.

“Anyway,” he says, but he sounds a bit uncertain now, “I was pretty sure you would come after me. And all I could think was that if I died, James would die. I’m his whole world, you know? You kill me, you kill him.” He looks into his hands. “I stopped sleeping at night. Stopped eating. I was losing my mind. I couldn’t handle it, any of it—and you were, like, living with us? And then everything with Juliette—I just—I don’t know.” He sighs, long and loud. Shaky. “I was an asshole. I took everything out on her. Blamed her for everything. For walking away from what I thought was one of the few sure things in my life. It’s my own fault, really. My own baggage. I’ve still got a lot of shit to work out,” he says finally. “I’ve got issues with people leaving me behind.”

For a moment, I’m rendered speechless.

I’d never thought of Kent as capable of complex thought. My ability to sense emotions and his ability to extinguish preternatural gifts has made for a strange pairing—I’d always been forced to conclude that he was devoid of all thought and feeling. It turns out he’s quite a bit more emotionally adept than I’d expected. Vocal, too.

But it’s strange to see someone with my shared DNA speak so freely. To admit aloud his fears and shortcomings. It’s too raw, like looking directly at the sun. I have to look away.

Ultimately, I say only, “I understand.”

Kent clears his throat.

“So. Yeah,” he says. “I guess I just wanted to say that Juliette was right. In the end, she and I grew apart. All of this”—he makes a gesture between us—“made me realize a lot of things. And she was right. I’ve always been so desperate for something, some kind of love, or affection, or something. I don’t know,” he says, shaking his head. “I guess I wanted to believe she and I had something we didn’t. I was in a different place then. Hell, I was a different person. But I know my priorities now.”

I look at him then, a question in my eyes.

“My family,” he says, meeting my gaze. “That’s all I care about now.”





JULIETTE





We’re making our way slowly back to base.

I’m in no hurry to find Warner only to have what will probably be a difficult, stressful conversation, so I take my time. I pick my way through the detritus of war, winding through the gray wreckage of the compounds as we leave behind unregulated territory and the smudged remnants of what used to be. I’m always sorry when our walk is nearly at an end; I feel great nostalgia for the cookie-cutter homes, the picket fences, the small, boarded-up shops and old, abandoned banks and buildings that make up the streets of unregulated turf. I’d like to find a way to bring it all back again.

I take a deep breath and enjoy the rush of crisp, icy air as it burns through my lungs. Wind wraps around me, pulling and pushing and dancing, whipping my hair into a frenzy, and I lean into it, get lost in it, open my mouth to inhale it. I’m about to smile when Kenji shoots me a dark look and I cringe, apologizing with my eyes.

My halfhearted apology does little to placate him.

I forced Kenji to take another detour down to the ocean, which is often my favorite part of our walk. Kenji, on the other hand, really hates it—and so do his boots, one of which got stuck in the muck that now clings to what used to be clean sand.

“I still can’t believe you like staring at that nasty, piss-infested—”

“It’s not infested, exactly,” I point out. “Castle says it’s definitely more water than pee.”

Kenji only glares at me.

He’s still muttering under his breath, complaining about his shoes being soaked in “piss water,” as he likes to call it, as we make our way up the main road. I’m happy to ignore him, determined to enjoy the last of this peaceful hour, as it’s one of the only hours I have for myself these days. I linger and look back at the cracked sidewalks and caving roofs of our old world, trying—and occasionally succeeding—to remember a time when things weren’t so bleak.