Believe Me (Shatter Me, #6.5) (27)

“And do you remember what I said to you?”

I look away, sighing as I stare at a point in the distance. “You said you couldn’t wear a wedding dress with part of your bone sticking out.”

“Yeah,” she says, and laughs. “Wow. I was pretty out of it.”

“It’s not funny,” I whisper.

“No,” she says, drawing her hands up my back. “No, it’s not funny. But it was strange, how nothing was really making sense in my head. We’d just been through hell, but all I could think as I stared at myself was how impractical it was to be bleeding so much. I told you I couldn’t marry you if the bleeding didn’t stop, because then I’d get blood all over my dress, and your suit, and then we’d both just be covered in blood, and everything we touched would get bloody. And you”—she takes a deep breath—“you said you’d marry me right then. You said you’d marry me with my bleeding teeth, with a visibly broken leg, with dried blood on my face, with blood dripping from my ears.”

I flinch at that, at the memory of what my father put her through. What her own parents did to her. Ella suffered and sacrificed so much for this world—all to bring The Reestablishment to its knees. All because she cared so much about this planet, and the people in it.

I feel suddenly ill.

What I hate, perhaps more than anything else, is that it doesn’t stop. The demands on her body never stop. It doesn’t seem to matter what side of history we’re on; good or evil, everyone asks for more of her. Even now, after the fall of The Reestablishment, the people and their leaders still want more from her. They don’t seem to care that she’s only one person, or that she’s already given so much. The more she gives, the more they require, and the quicker their gratitude shrivels up, the desiccated remains of which become something else altogether: expectation. If it were up to them, they’d keep taking from her until they’ve bled her dry—and I will never allow that to happen.

“Aaron.”

Finally, I meet her eyes. “I meant what I said, love.”

“I was hideous.”

“You have never been hideous.”

“I was a monster.” She smiles as she says this. “I had that huge gash in my arm, the skin on my hands had split open, my nose wouldn’t stop bleeding, my eyes wouldn’t stop bleeding. I even had a freshly sutured finger. I was Frankenstein’s monster. You remember? From that book—”

“Ella—please— We don’t have to talk about this—”

“And I couldn’t stop screaming,” she says. “I was in so much pain, and I was so upset that I wouldn’t stop bleeding, and I kept saying the craziest things, and you just sat next to me and listened. You answered every ridiculous question I asked like I wasn’t completely out of my mind. For hours. I still remember, Aaron. I remember everything you said to me. Even after I passed out I heard you, on a loop, in my dreams. It was like your voice got caught in my head.” She pauses. “I can only imagine what that experience must’ve been like for you.”

I shake my head. “It wasn’t about me. My experience doesn’t matter—”

“Of course it does. It matters to me. You don’t get to be the only one who worries about the person you love. I get to do that, too,” she says, breaking away to better look me in the eye. “You spend so much time thinking about what’s best for me. You’re always worried about my safety and my happiness and the things I might need. Why don’t I get to do that for you? Why don’t I get to think about your happiness?”

“I am happy, love,” I say quietly. “You make me happy.”

She looks away at that, but when she meets my eyes again, she’s fighting tears. “But if you could marry me however you wanted, you’d choose to do it differently, wouldn’t you?”

“Ella,” I whisper, tugging her back into my arms. “Sweetheart, why are you crying? I don’t care about having a wedding. It doesn’t matter to me. I’ll marry you as you are right now, in the clothes we’re wearing, right where we’re standing.”

“But if you could do it however you wanted, you’d do it differently,” she says, looking up at me. “You’d do it better than that, wouldn’t you?”

“Well— Yes—” I falter. “I mean, if it were a different world, maybe. If things were different for us, if we had more time, or more resources. And maybe one day we’ll have a chance to do it over again, but right now all I—”

“No.” She shakes her head. “I don’t want to do it over again. I don’t want you to look back on our wedding day as a placeholder for something else, or for what might’ve been. I want us to do it right the first time. I want to walk down an aisle to reach you. I want you to see me in a pretty dress. I want someone to take our picture. I want you to have that. You deserve to have that.”

“But—how—”

I look up, distracted by the sounds of movement, voices. A crowd of people is swarming, moving toward us. Nazeera and Brendan lead the charge; Lily and Ian and Alia and Adam and James and Castle and Nouria and Sam and dozens of others—

They’re all holding things: bouquets of flowers and covered trays of food and colorful boxes and folded linens and—