Shatter Me (Shatter Me, #1)(42)

My knees are knocking together and my heart is beating so fast I don’t understand why it’s still working. He’s kissing away the pain, the hurt, the years of self-loathing, the insecurities, the dashed hopes for a future I always pictured as obsolete. He’s lighting me on fire, burning away the torture of Warner’s games, the anguish that poisons me every single day. The intensity of our bodies could shatter these glass walls.

It nearly does.

For a moment we’re just staring at each other, breathing hard until I’m blushing, until he closes his eyes and takes one ragged, steadying breath and I place my hand on his chest. I dare to trace the outline of the bird soaring across his skin, I dare to trail my fingers down the length of his abdomen.

“You’re my bird,” I tell him. “You’re my bird and you’re going to help me fly away.”

Adam is gone by the time I get out of the shower.

He wrung his clothes out and dried himself off and granted me privacy to change. Privacy I’m not sure I care about anymore. I touch 2 fingers to my lips and taste him everywhere.

But when I step into the room he’s not anywhere. He had to report downstairs.

I stare at the clothes in my closet.

I always choose a dress with pockets because I don’t know where else to store my notebook. It doesn’t carry any incriminating information, and the one piece of paper that bore Adam’s handwriting has since been destroyed and flushed down the toilet, but I like to keep it close to me. It represents so much more than a few words scribbled on paper. It’s a small token of my resistance.

I tuck the notebook into a pocket and decide I’m finally ready to face myself. I take a deep breath, push the wet strands of hair away from my eyes, and pad into the bathroom. The steam from the shower has clouded the mirror. I reach out a tentative hand to wipe away a small circle. Just big enough.

A scared face stares back at me.

I touch my cheeks and study the reflective surface, study the image of a girl who’s simultaneously strange and familiar to me. My face is thinner, paler, my cheekbones higher than I remember them, my eyebrows perched above 2 wide eyes not blue not green but somewhere in between. My skin is flushed with heat and something named Adam. My lips are too pink. My teeth are unusually straight. My finger is trailing down the length of my nose, tracing the shape of my chin when I see a movement in the corner of my eye.

“You’re so beautiful,” he says to me.

I’m pink and red and maroon all at once. I duck my head and trip away from the mirror only to have him catch me in his arms. “I’d forgotten my own face,” I whisper.

“Just don’t forget who you are,” he says.

“I don’t even know.”

“Yes you do.” He tilts my face up. “I do.”

I stare at the strength in his jaw, in his eyes, in his body. I try to understand the confidence he has in who he thinks I am and realize his reassurance is the only thing stopping me from diving into a pool of my own insanity. He’s always believed in me. Even soundlessly, silently, he fought for me. Always.

He’s my only friend.

I take his hand and hold it to my lips. “I’ve loved you forever,” I tell him.

The sun rises, rests, shines in his face and he almost smiles, almost can’t meet my eyes. His muscles relax, his shoulders find relief in the weight of a new kind of wonder and he exhales. He touches my cheek, touches my lips, touches the tip of my chin and I blink and he’s kissing me, he’s pulling me into his arms and into the air and somehow we’re on the bed and tangled in each other and I’m drugged with emotion, drugged by each tender moment. His fingers skim my shoulder, trail down my silhouette, rest at my hips. He pulls me closer, whispers my name, drops kisses down my throat and struggles with the stiff fabric of my dress. His hands are shaking so slightly, his eyes brimming with feeling, his heart thrumming with pain and affection and I want to live here, in his arms, in his eyes for the rest of my life.

I slip my hands under his shirt and he chokes on a moan that turns into a kiss that needs me and wants me and has to have me so desperately it’s like the most acute form of torture. His weight is pressed into mine, on top of mine, infinite points of feeling for every nerve ending in my body and his right hand is behind my neck and his left hand is reeling me in and his lips are falling down my shirt and I don’t understand why I need to wear clothes anymore and I’m a cumulonimbus existence of thunder and lightning and the possibility of exploding into tears at any inopportune moment. Bliss Bliss Bliss is beating through my chest.

I don’t remember what it means to breathe.

I never

ever

ever

knew

what it meant to feel.

An alarm is hammering through the walls.

The room beeps and blares to life and Adam stiffens, pulls back; his face collapses.

“This is a CODE SEVEN. All soldiers must report to the Quadrant immediately. This is a CODE SEVEN. All soldiers must report to the Quadrant immediately. This is a CODE SEVEN. All soldiers must report to the Quadra—”

Adam is on his feet and pulling me up and the voice is still shouting orders through a speaker system wired into the building. “There’s been a breach,” he says, his voice broken and breathy, his eyes darting between me and the door. “Jesus. I can’t just leave you here—”