Believe Me (Shatter Me, #6.5) (41)

I turn around carefully to meet her, surprised she’s sought me out at all.

“Hey,” Sam says, trying to smile. She’s dressed up; she even appears to have attempted something like makeup, her eyelids shimmering in the soft light of the morning. “Big day.”

“Yes.”

“Listen, I’m sorry.” She sighs. “I didn’t mean to lash out at you like that last night. Really, I didn’t.”

I nod, then look away, staring into the distance. This yard is separated from its neighbor’s by only a short, shabby wooden fence. Kenji will no doubt spend the rest of our lives tormenting me from over top of it.

Sam sighs again, louder this time. “I know you and I don’t always see eye to eye,” she says, “but I’m hoping maybe—if we get to know each other better—that’ll change.”

I look up at that, analyzing Sam now.

She is being sincere, but I find her suggestion unlikely. I notice Nouria in my periphery then, huddled up with her father and three others, and shift my gaze in her direction. She’s wearing a simple sheath dress in a shade of chartreuse that compliments her dark skin. She appears to be happy at the moment—smiling—which even I realize is rare for Nouria these days.

Sam follows my line of sight, seeming to understand where my thoughts have gone. “I know she’s a little hard on you sometimes, but she’s been under crazy amounts of pressure lately. She’s never had to oversee so many people, or so many details, and The Reestablishment has been a lot harder to deconstruct than we’d thought—you can’t even imagine—”

“Can’t I?” I almost smile, even as my jaw tenses. “You think me incapable of understanding the weight of the burden we shoulder now?”

Sam looks away. “I didn’t say that. That’s not what I meant.”

“Our position is worse than precarious,” I say to her. “And whatever you think of me—whatever you think you understand about me—I am only trying to help.”

For the third time, Sam sighs.

Now, more than ever, those of us at the Sanctuary should be allied, but Sam and Nouria have grown to detest me over the last couple of weeks because I challenge them at every turn, refusing to agree with their tactics or ideology when I find it lacking—and unwilling to acquiesce merely to get along.

They find this fundamentally infuriating, and I don’t care.

I refuse to do anything that would put Ella’s life in jeopardy, and letting our movement fail would be doing exactly that.

“I want us to try again,” Sam says, steely now as she meets my eyes. “I want us to start over. We’ve been fighting a lot lately, and I think you would agree with me that it’s not sustainable. We should be united right now.”

“United? Nouria deliberately made me think I couldn’t get married. She willfully manipulated the truth to make the situation seem dire, simply to wound me. How can such petty machinations form any foundation for unity?”

“She wasn’t trying to wound you. She was trying to protect you.”

“In what alternate reality could that possibly be true?”

Sam’s anger flares. “You know what your problem is?”

“Yes. The list is long.”

“Oh my God,” she says, her irritation building. “This, this is exactly your problem. You think you know everything. You’re uncooperative, you’re uncompromising, and you’ve already decided you’ve figured everything out. You don’t know how to be part of a team—”

“You and Nouria don’t know how to take constructive criticism.”

“Constructive criticism?” Sam gapes at me. “You call your criticism constructive?”

“You’re free to call it whatever you like,” I say unkindly. “But I refuse to remain silent when I believe you and Nouria are making the wrong choices. You regularly forget that I was raised within The Reestablishment, from its infancy, and that there is a great deal I understand about the mechanics of our enemies’ minds—more than you are even willing to consider—”

“All okay over here?” Castle asks, striding toward us. His smile is uncertain. “We’re not talking about work right now, are we?”

“Oh, everything is fine,” Sam says too brightly. “I was just reminding Warner here how much Nouria has done to keep him and Juliette safe on their wedding day. An event I think we all agree would render them both most vulnerable to an outside threat.”

I go suddenly still.

“Well—yes,” Castle says, confused. “Of course. You already know that, though, don’t you, Mr. Warner? News of your impending nuptials was beginning to spread, and we feared the possible repercussions for both you and Ms. Ferrars on such a joyous day.”

I’m still staring at Sam when I say quietly: “That’s why you all lied to me yesterday?”

“Nouria thought it was imperative that we convince you,” Sam says stiffly, “more than anyone else, that you wouldn’t be getting married today. The supreme kids knew about the wedding before they left, and Nouria worried that even a whiff of an exchange on the subject yesterday might be intercepted in your daily communications, which we wanted to make certain you carried out as normal. The notifications Juliette sent out last night were done in code.”