Unravel Me (Shatter Me, #2)(42)

I walk over to his side of the room and stare at the brick he’s holding. He gives it to me like he’s handing over some kind of family heirloom. “Now,” he says. “You have to let yourself get comfortable, okay? Allow your body to touch base with its core. Stop blocking your own Energy. You’ve probably got a million mental blocks in your head. You can’t hold back anymore.”

“I don’t have mental blocks—”

“Yeah you do.” He snorts. “You definitely do. You have severe mental constipation.”

“Mental what—”

“Focus your anger on the brick. On the brick,” he says to me. “Remember. Open mind. You want to crush the brick. Remind yourself that this is what you want. It’s your choice. You’re not doing this for Castle, you’re not doing it for me, you’re not doing it to fight anyone. This is just something you feel like doing. For fun. Because you feel like it. Let your mind and body take over. Okay?”

I take a deep breath. Nod a few times. “Okay. I think I’m—”

“Holy shit.” He lets out a low whistle.

“What?” I spin around. “What happened—”

“How did you not just feel that?”

“Feel what—”

“Look in your hand!”

I gasp. Stumble backward. My hand is full of what looks like red sand and brown clay pulverized into tiny particles. The bigger chunks of brick crumble to the floor and I let the debris slip through the cracks between my fingers only to lift the guilty hand to my face.

I look up.

Kenji is shaking his head, shaking with laughter. “I am so jealous right now you have no idea.”

“Oh my God.”

“I know. I KNOW. So badass. Now think about it: if you can do that to a brick, imagine what you could do to the human body—”

That wasn’t the right thing to say.

Not now. Not after Adam. Not after trying to pick up the pieces of my hopes and dreams and fumbling to glue them back together. Because now there’s nothing left. Because now I realize that somewhere, deep down, I was harboring a small hope that Adam and I would find a way to work things out.

Somewhere, deep down, I was still clinging to possibility.

And now that’s gone.

Because now it’s not just my skin Adam has to be afraid of. It’s not just my touch but my grip, my hugs, my hands, a kiss—anything I do could injure him. I’d have to be careful just holding his hand. And this new knowledge, this new information about just exactly how deadly I am— It leaves me with no alternative.

I will forever and ever and ever be alone because no one is safe from me.

I fall to the floor, my mind whirring, my own brain no longer a safe space to inhabit because I can’t stop thinking, I can’t stop wondering, I can’t stop anything and it’s like I’m caught in what could be a head-on collision and I’m not the innocent bystander.

I’m the train.

I’m the one careening out of control.

Because sometimes you see yourself—you see yourself the way you could be—the way you might be if things were different. And if you look too closely, what you see will scare you, it’ll make you wonder what you might do if given the opportunity. You know there’s a different side of yourself you don’t want to recognize, a side you don’t want to see in the daylight. You spend your whole life doing everything to push it down and away, out of sight, out of mind. You pretend that a piece of yourself doesn’t exist.

You live like that for a long time.

For a long time, you’re safe.

And then you’re not.





TWENTY-FIVE


Another morning.

Another meal.

I’m headed to breakfast to meet Kenji before our next training session.

He came to a conclusion about my abilities yesterday: he thinks that the inhuman power in my touch is just an evolved form of my Energy. That skin-to-skin contact is simply the rawest form of my ability—that my true gift is actually a kind of all-consuming strength that manifests itself in every part of my body.

My bones, my blood, my skin.

I told him it was an interesting theory. I told him I’d always seen myself as some sick version of a Venus flytrap and he said, “OH MY GOD. Yes. YES. You are exactly like that. Holy shit, yes.”

Beautiful enough to lure in your prey, he said.

Strong enough to clamp down and destroy, he said.

Poisonous enough to digest your victims when the flesh makes contact.

“You digest your prey,” he said to me, laughing as though it was amusing, as though it was funny, as if it was perfectly acceptable to compare a girl to a carnivorous plant. Flattering, even. “Right? You said that when you touch people, it’s, like, you’re taking their energy, right? It makes you feel stronger?”

I didn’t respond.

“So you’re exactly like a Venus flytrap. You reel ’em in. Clamp ’em down. Eat ’em up.”

I didn’t respond.

“Mmmmmmm,” he said. “You’re like a sexy, super-scary plant.”

I closed my eyes. Covered my mouth in horror.

“Why is that so wrong?” he said. Bent down to meet my gaze. Tugged on a lock of my hair to get me to look up. “Why does this have to be so horrible? Why can’t you see how awesome this is?” He shook his head at me. “You are seriously missing out, you know that? This could be so cool if you would just own it.”