Unravel Me (Shatter Me, #2)(67)

Why are my hands trembling.

He takes a deep breath. Looks down. Whispers, “I am so tired, love. I’m so very, very tired.”

Why won’t my heart stop racing.

“How much time,” he says after a moment, “do I have before they kill me?”

“Kill you?”

He stares at me.

I’m startled into speaking. “We’re not going to kill you,” I tell him. “We have no intention of hurting you. We just want to use you to get back our men. We’re holding you hostage.”

Warner’s eyes go wide, his shoulders stiffen. “What?”

“We have no reason to kill you,” I explain. “We only need to barter with your life—”

Warner laughs a loud, full-bodied laugh. Shakes his head. Smiles at me in that way I’ve only ever seen once before, looking at me like I’m the sweetest thing he’s ever decided to eat.

Those dimples.

“Dear, sweet, beautiful girl,” he says. “Your team here has greatly overestimated my father’s affection for me. I’m sorry to have to tell you this, but keeping me here is not going to give you the advantage you were hoping for. I doubt my father has even noticed I’m gone. So I would like to request that you please either kill me, or let me go. But I beg you not to waste my time by confining me here.”

I’m checking my pockets for spare words and sentences but I’m finding none, not an adverb, not a preposition or even a dangling participle because there doesn’t exist a single response to such an outlandish request.

Warner is still smiling at me, shoulders shaking in silent amusement.

“But that’s not even a viable argument,” I tell him. “No one likes to be held hostage—”

He takes a tight breath. Runs a hand through his hair. Shrugs. “Your men are wasting their time,” he says. “Kidnapping me will never work to your advantage. This much,” he says, “I can guarantee.”





FORTY-SIX


Time for lunch.

Kenji and I are sitting on one side of the table, Adam and James on the other.

We’ve been sitting here for half an hour now, deliberating over my conversation with Warner. I conveniently left out the parts about my journal, though I’m starting to wonder if I should’ve mentioned it. I’m also starting to wonder if I should just come clean about Warner being able to touch me. But every time I look at Adam I just can’t bring myself to do it. I don’t even know why Warner can touch me. Maybe Warner is the fluke I thought Adam was. Maybe all of this is some kind of cosmic joke told at my expense.

I don’t know what to do yet.

But somehow the extra details of my conversation with Warner seem too personal, too embarrassing to share. I don’t want anyone to know, for example, that Warner told me he loves me. I don’t want anyone to know that he has my journal, or that he’s read it. Adam is the only other person who even knows it exists, and he, at least, was kind enough to respect my privacy. He’s the one who saved my journal from the asylum, the one who brought it back to me in the first place. But he said he never read the things I wrote. He said he knew they must’ve been very private thoughts and that he didn’t want to intrude.

Warner, on the other hand, has ransacked my mind.

I feel so much more apprehensive around him now. Just thinking about being near him makes me feel anxious, nervous, so vulnerable. I hate that he knows my secrets. My secret thoughts.

It shouldn’t be him who knows anything about me at all.

It should be him. The one sitting right across from me. The one with the dark-blue eyes and the dark-brown hair and the hands that have touched my heart, my body.

And he doesn’t seem okay right now.

Adam’s head is down, his eyebrows drawn, his hands clenched together on the table. He hasn’t touched his food and he hasn’t said a word since I summarized my meeting with Warner. Kenji has been just as quiet. Everyone’s been a bit more solemn since our recent battle; we lost several people from Omega Point.

I take a deep breath and try again.

“So what do you think?” I ask them. “About what he said about Anderson?” I’m careful not to use the word dad or father anymore, especially around James. I don’t know what, if anything, Adam has said to James about the issue, and it’s not my business to pry. Worse still, Adam hasn’t said a word about it since we got back, and it’s already been 2 days. “Do you think he’s right that Anderson won’t care if he’s been taken hostage?”

James squirms around in his seat, eyes narrowed as he chews the food in his mouth, looking at the group of us like he’s waiting to memorize everything we say.

Adam rubs his forehead. “That,” he finally says, “might actually have some merit.”

Kenji frowns, folds his arms, leans forward. “Yeah. It is kind of weird. We haven’t heard a single thing from their side, and it’s been over forty-eight hours.”

“What does Castle think?” I ask.

Kenji shrugs. “He’s stressed out. Ian and Emory were really messed up when we found them. I don’t think they’re conscious yet, even though Sonya and Sara have been working around the clock to help them. I think he’s worried we won’t get Winston and Brendan back at all.”