Unravel Me (Shatter Me, #2)(82)

“Why?” Barely a whisper in an attempt to buy some time.

Warner’s lips flicker up and into a smile before they fall open, just a bit, just enough to twitch into a strange, curious look that lingers in his eyes. He doesn’t answer. He doesn’t say a word. He only moves closer to me, studying me and I’m frozen in place, my mouth stuffed full of the seconds he doesn’t speak and I’m fighting every atom in my body, every stupid cell in my system for being so attracted to him.

Oh.

God.

I am so horribly attracted to him.

The guilt is growing inside of me in stacks, settling on my bones, snapping me in half. It’s a cable twisted around my neck, a caterpillar crawling across my stomach. It’s the night and midnight and the twilight of indecision. It’s too many secrets I no longer contain.

I don’t understand why I want this.

I am a terrible person.

And it’s like he sees what I’m thinking, like he can feel the change happening in my head, because suddenly he’s different. His energy slows down, his eyes are deep, troubled, tender; his lips are soft, still slightly parted and now the air in this room is too tight, too full of cotton and I feel the blood rushing around in my head, crashing into every rational region of my brain.

I wish someone would remind me how to breathe.

“Why can’t you answer my question?” He’s looking so deeply into my eyes that I’m surprised I haven’t buckled under the intensity and I realize then, right in this moment I realize that everything about him is intense. Nothing about him is manageable or easy to compartmentalize. He’s too much. Everything about him is too much. His emotions, his actions, his anger, his aggression.

His love.

He’s dangerous, electric, impossible to contain. His body is rippling with an energy so extraordinary that even when he’s calmed down it’s almost palpable. It has a presence.

But I’ve developed a strange, frightening faith in who Warner really is and who he has the capacity to become. I want to find the 19-year-old boy who would feed a stray dog. I want to believe in the boy with a tortured childhood and an abusive father. I want to understand him. I want to unravel him.

I want to believe he is more than the mold he was forced into.

“I think you can change,” I hear myself saying. “I think anyone can change.”

And he smiles.

It’s a slow, delighted smile. The kind of smile that breaks into a laugh and lights up his features and makes him sigh. He closes his eyes. His face is so touched, so amused. “It’s just so sweet,” he says. “So unbearably sweet. Because you really believe that.”

“Of course I do.”

He finally looks at me when he whispers, “But you’re wrong.”

“What?”

“I’m heartless,” he says to me, his words cold, hollow, directed inward. “I’m a heartless bastard and a cruel, vicious being. I don’t care about people’s feelings. I don’t care about their fears or their futures. I don’t care about what they want or whether or not they have a family, and I’m not sorry,” he says. “I’ve never been sorry for anything I’ve done.”

It actually takes me a few moments to find my head. “But you apologized to me,” I tell him. “You apologized to me just last night—”

“You’re different,” he says, cutting me off. “You don’t count.”

“I’m not different,” I tell him. “I’m just another person, just like everyone else. And you’ve proven you have the capacity for remorse. For compassion. I know you can be kind—”

“That’s not who I am.” His voice is suddenly hard, suddenly too strong. “And I’m not going to change. I can’t erase the nineteen miserable years of my life. I can’t misplace the memories of what I’ve done. I can’t wake up one morning and decide to live on borrowed hopes and dreams. Someone else’s promises for a brighter future.

“And I won’t lie to you,” he says. “I’ve never given a damn about others and I don’t make sacrifices and I do not compromise. I am not good, or fair, or decent, and I never will be. I can’t be. Because to try to be any of those things would be embarrassing.”

“How can you think that?” I want to shake him. “How can you be ashamed of an attempt to be better?”

But he’s not listening. He’s laughing. He’s saying, “Can you even picture me? Smiling at small children and handing out presents at birthday parties? Can you picture me helping a stranger? Playing with the neighbor’s dog?”

“Yes,” I say to him. “Yes I can.” I’ve already seen it, I don’t say to him.

“No.”

“Why not?” I insist. “Why is that so hard to believe?”

“That kind of life,” he says, “is impossible for me.”

“But why?”

Warner clenches and unclenches 5 fingers before running them through his hair. “Because I feel it,” he says, quieter now. “I’ve always been able to feel it.”

“Feel what?” I whisper.

“What people think of me.”

“What …?”

“Their feelings—their energy—it’s—I don’t know what it is,” he says, frustrated, stumbling backward, shaking his head. “I’ve always been able to tell. I know how everyone hates me. I know how little my father cares for me. I know the agony of my mother’s heart. I know that you’re not like everyone else.” His voice catches. “I know you’re telling the truth when you say you don’t hate me. That you want to and you can’t. Because there’s no ill will in your heart, not toward me, and if there was I would know. Just like I know,” he says, his voice husky with restraint, “that you felt something when we kissed. You felt the same thing I did and you’re ashamed of it.”