Unravel Me (Shatter Me, #2)(75)

I fold myself to the floor across from Warner. Pull my knees up to my chest. Focus on the stone under my feet. “I don’t hate you.”

Warner seems to stop breathing.

“I think I understand you sometimes,” I tell him. “I really do. But just when I think I finally get you, you surprise me. And I never really know who you are or who you’re going to be.” I look up. “But I know that I don’t hate you anymore. I’ve tried,” I say, “I’ve tried so hard. Because you’ve done so many terrible, terrible things. To innocent people. To me. But I know too much about you now. I’ve seen too much. You’re too human.”

His hair is so gold. His eyes so green. His voice is tortured when he speaks. “Are you saying,” he says, “that you want to be my friend?”

“I-I don’t know.” I’m so petrified, so, so petrified of this possibility. “I didn’t think about that. I’m just saying that I don’t know”—I hesitate, breathe—“I don’t know how to hate you anymore. Even though I want to. I really want to and I know I should but I just can’t.”

He looks away.

And he smiles.

It’s the kind of smile that makes me forget how to do everything but blink and blink and I don’t understand what’s happening to me. I don’t know why I can’t convince my eyes to find something else to focus on.

I don’t know why my heart is losing its mind.

He touches my notebook like he’s not even aware he’s doing it. His fingers run the length of the cover once, twice, before he registers where my eyes have gone and he stops.

“You wrote these words?” He touches the notebook again. “Every single one?”

I nod.

He says, “Juliette.”

I stop breathing.

He says, “I would like that very much. To be your friend,” he says. “I’d like that.”

And I don’t really know what happens in my brain.

Maybe it’s because he’s broken and I’m foolish enough to think I can fix him. Maybe it’s because I see myself, I see 3, 4, 5, 6, 17-year-old Juliette abandoned, neglected, mistreated, abused for something outside of her control and I think of Warner as someone who’s just like me, someone who was never given a chance at life. I think about how everyone already hates him, how hating him is a universally accepted fact.

Warner is horrible.

There are no discussions, no reservations, no questions asked. It has already been decided that he is a despicable human being who thrives on murder and power and torturing others.

But I want to know. I need to know. I have to know.

If it’s really that simple.

Because what if one day I slip? What if one day I fall through the cracks and no one is willing to pull me back? What happens to me then?

So I meet his eyes. I take a deep breath.

And I run.

I run right out the door.





FIFTY-ONE


Just a moment.

Just 1 second, just 1 more minute, just give me another hour or maybe the weekend to think it over it’s not so much it’s not so hard it’s all we ever ask for it’s a simple request.

But the moments the seconds the minutes the hours the days and years become one big mistake, one extraordinary opportunity slipped right through our fingers because we couldn’t decide, we couldn’t understand, we needed more time, we didn’t know what to do.

We don’t even know what we’ve done.

We have no idea how we even got here when all we ever wanted was to wake up in the morning and go to sleep at night and maybe stop for ice cream on the way home and that one decision, that one choice, that one accidental opportunity unraveled everything we’ve ever known and ever believed in and what do we do?

What do we do

from here?





FIFTY-TWO


Things are getting worse.

The tension among the citizens of Omega Point is getting tighter with each passing hour. We’ve tried to make contact with Anderson’s men to no avail—we’ve heard nothing from their team or their soldiers, and we have no updates on our hostages. But the civilians of Sector 45—the sector Warner used to be in charge of, the sector he used to oversee—are beginning to grow more and more unsettled. Rumors about us and our resistance are spreading too quickly.

The Reestablishment tried to cover up the news of our recent battle by calling it a standard attack on rebel party members, but the people are getting smarter. Protests are breaking out among them and some are refusing to work, standing up to authority, trying to escape the compounds, and running back to unregulated territory.

It never ends well.

The losses have been too many and Castle is anxious to do something. We all have a feeling we’re going to be heading out again, and soon. We haven’t received any reports that Anderson is dead, which means he’s probably just biding his time—or maybe Adam is right, and he’s just recovering. But whatever the reason, Anderson’s silence can’t be good.

“What are you doing here?” Castle says to me.

I’ve just collected my dinner. I’ve just sat down at my usual table with Adam and Kenji and James. I blink at Castle, confused.

Kenji says, “What’s going on?”