Shatter Me (Shatter Me, #1)(49)

“No.” He jumps into the driver’s side and fumbles for the ignition. There’s no key, just a button. I wonder if it recognizes Adam’s thumbprint as authorization. A small sputter and the machine roars to life. “Warner had to renew my tracker serum every time I got back. Once it’s gone? It’s gone.” He grins. “So now we can really get the hell out of here.”

“But where are we going?” I finally ask.

He shifts into gear before he responds.

“My house.”





THIRTY


“You have a house?” I’m too shocked for manners.

Adam laughs and pulls out of the field. The tank is surprisingly fast, surprisingly swift and stealthy. The engine has quieted to a soothing hum, and I wonder if that’s why they switched their tanks from gas to electric. It’s certainly less conspicuous this way. “Not exactly,” he answers. “But a home of sorts. Yeah.”

I want to ask and don’t want to ask and need to ask and never want to ask. I have to ask. I steel myself. “Your fathe—”

“He’s been dead for a while now.” Adam’s not smiling anymore. His voice is tight with something only I would know how to place. Pain. Bitterness. Anger.

“Oh.”

We drive in silence, each of us absorbed in our own thoughts. I don’t dare ask what became of his mother. I only wonder how he turned out so well despite having such a despicable father. And I wonder why he ever joined the army if he hates it so much. Right now, I’m too shy to ask. I don’t want to infringe on his emotional boundaries.

God knows I have a million of my own.

I peer out the window and strain my eyes to see what we’re passing through, but I can’t make out much more than the sad stretches of deserted land I’ve grown accustomed to. There are no civilians where we are: we’re too far from Reestablished settlements and civilian compounds. I notice another tank patrolling the area not 100 feet away, but I don’t think it sees us. Adam is driving without headlights, presumably to draw as little attention to us as possible. I wonder how he’s even able to navigate. The moon is the only lamp to light our way.

It’s eerily quiet.

For a moment I allow my thoughts to drift back to Warner, wondering what must be going on right now, wondering how many people must be searching for me, wondering what lengths he’ll go to until he has me back. He wants Adam dead. He wants me alive. He won’t stop until I’m trapped beside him.

He can never never never know that I can touch him.

I can only imagine what he’d do if he had access to my body.

I breathe in one quick, sharp, shaky breath and contemplate telling Adam what happened. No. No. No. No. I squeeze my eyes shut and consider I may have misjudged the situation. It was chaotic. My brain was distracted. Maybe I imagined it. Yes.

Maybe I imagined it.

It’s strange enough that Adam can touch me. The likelihood of there being 2 people in this world who are immune to my touch doesn’t seem possible. In fact, the more I think about it, the more I’m determined I must have made a mistake. It could’ve been anything brushing my leg. Maybe a piece of the sheet Adam abandoned after using it to punch through the window. Maybe a pillow that’d fallen from the bed. Maybe Warner’s gloves lying, discarded, on the floor. Yes.

There’s no way he could’ve touched me, because if he had, he would’ve cried out in agony.

Just like everyone else.

Adam’s hand slips silently into mine and I grip his fingers in both my hands, suddenly desperate to reassure myself that he has immunity from me. I’m suddenly desperate to drink in every drop of his being, desperate to savor every moment I’ve never known before. I suddenly worry that there’s an expiration date on this phenomenon. A clock striking midnight. A pumpkin carriage.

The possibility of losing him

The possibility of losing him

The possibility of losing him is 100 years of solitude I don’t want to imagine. I don’t want my arms to be devoid of his warmth. His touch. His lips, God his lips, his mouth on my neck, his body wrapped around mine, holding me together as if to affirm that my existence on this earth is not for nothing.

Realization is a pendulum the size of the moon. It won’t stop slamming into me.

“Juliette?”

I swallow back the bullet in my throat. “Yes?”

“Why are you crying . . . ?” His voice is almost as gentle as his hand as it breaks free from my grip. He touches the tears rolling down my face and I’m so humiliated I almost don’t know what to say.

“You can touch me,” I say for the first time, recognize out loud for the first time. My words fade to a whisper. “You can touch me. You care and I don’t know why. You’re kind to me and you don’t have to be. My own mother didn’t care enough to—t-to—” My voice catches and I press my lips together. Glue them shut. Force myself to be still.

I am a rock. A statue. A movement frozen in time. Ice feels nothing at all.

Adam doesn’t answer, doesn’t say a single word until he pulls off the road and into an old underground parking garage. I realize we’ve reached some semblance of civilization, but it’s pitch-black belowground. I can see next to nothing and once again wonder at how Adam is managing. My eyes fall on the screen illuminated on his dashboard only to realize the tank has night vision. Of course.