Believe Me (Shatter Me, #6.5) (44)

It becomes terrifyingly clear to me then exactly where Ella is expected to soon stand. Where I am expected to soon stand.

“But I haven’t finished with the tablecloths,” I say, “or the seating inside—”

“Yeah. I noticed.” Kenji takes a sharp breath, tearing his gaze away from Nazeera to look me in the eye. “Anyway, don’t worry. We took care of it. You seemed really busy standing still for half an hour, staring at nothing. We didn’t want to interrupt.”

“All right, I think I should get going,” Sam says, offering me a real, genuine smile. “Nouria is saving me a seat. Good luck out there.”

I nod at her as she goes, surprised to discover that, despite the long road ahead, there might be hope of a truce between us after all.

“Okay.” Kenji claps his hands together. “First things first: do you need to go to the bathroom or anything before we start? Personally, I think you should go even if you don’t think you have to, because it would be really awkward if you suddenly had t—”

“Stop.”

“Oh—right!” Kenji says, slapping his hand to his forehead. “My bad, bro, I forgot—you never have to use the bathroom, do you?”

“No.”

“No, of course not. Because that would be human, and we both know you’re secretly a robot.”

I sigh, resisting the urge to run my hands through my hair.

“Seriously, though—anything you need to do before you go up there? You’ve got the ring, right?”

“No.” My heart is pounding furiously in my chest now. “And yes.”

“Okay, then.” Kenji nods toward the wedding arch. “Go ahead and get into position under that flower thing. Castle will show you exactly where to stand—”

I turn sharply to face him. “You’re not coming with me?”

Kenji goes stock-still at that, his mouth slightly agape. I realize, a moment too late, exactly what I’ve just suggested— and still I can’t bring myself to retract the question, and I can’t explain why.

Right now, it doesn’t seem to matter.

Right now, I can’t quite feel my legs.

Kenji, to his credit, does not laugh in my face. Instead, his expression relaxes by micrometers, his dark eyes assessing me in that careful way I detest.

“Yeah,” he says finally. “Of course I’m coming with you.”





FOURTEEN


Sunlight glances off my eyes, the glare shifting, flickering through a webbing of bare branches as a gentle breeze moves through the yard, fluttering leaves and skirts and flower petals. The scent of the gardenia affixed to my lapel wafts upward, filling my head with a heady perfume as the sharp collar of my shirt scrapes against my neck, my tie too tight; I clasp my hands in front of me to keep from adjusting it, my palms brushing against the wool of my suit, the fabric soft and lightweight and still somehow abrasive, suffocating me as I stand here in stiff shoes sinking slowly into dead grass, staring out at a sea of people come to bear witness to what might be one of the most publicly vulnerable moments of my life.

I can’t seem to breathe.

I can’t seem to make out their faces, but I can feel them, the individual emotional capsules that make up the members of this audience, the collective frenzy of their thoughts and feelings overwhelming me in a breathtaking crush that crowds my already chaotic thoughts. I feel myself begin to panic—my heart rate increasing rapidly—as I try to digest this noise, to tune out the barrage of other people’s nervousness and excitement. It’s a struggle even to hear myself think, to unearth my own consciousness. I try, desperately, to find an anchor in this madness.

It is nearly impossible.

Sonya and Sara lift their violins, sharing a glance before one of the sisters, Sonya, takes the lead, launching into the opening of Pachelbel’s Canon in D. Sara soon accompanies her, and the evocative, heart-wrenching notes fill the air, igniting in my chest a flare of emotion that only intensifies my apprehension, pulling my nerves taut to a painful degree. I swallow, hard, my pulse racing dangerously fast. My hands seem to spark and fade with feeling, prickling hot and cold, and I flex them into fists.

“Hey, man,” Kenji whispers beside me. “You all right?”

I shake my head an inch.

“What’s wrong?”

I can feel Kenji studying my face.

“Oh—shit—are you having a panic attack?”

“Not yet,” I manage to say. I close my eyes, try to breathe. “It’s too loud in here.”

“The music?”

“The people.”

“Okay. Okay. Shit. So you can, like, feel everything they’re feeling right now? Right. Shit. Of course you can. Okay. All right, what should I do? You want me to talk to you? How about I just talk to you? Why don’t you just focus on me, on the sound of my voice. Fade everything else out.”

“I don’t know if that will work,” I say, taking a shaky breath. “But I can try.”

“Cool. Okay. First of all, open your eyes. Juliette is going to walk out in a couple of minutes, and you won’t want to miss it. Her dress is awesome.” He whispers this, his voice altered just enough that I can tell he’s trying not to move his lips. “I’m not supposed to tell you anything about it, because, you know, it’s supposed to be a surprise, but whatever, we’re throwing surprises out the window right now because this is an emergency, and I have a feeling that once you see her your brain will do that creepy super-focus thing it always does—you know, like when you ignore literally everyone around you—and then you’ll start feeling better because, um, yeah”—he laughs, nervously—“you know what? I’m beginning to realize only right this second that, uh, when she’s around you don’t even seem to notice other people, so, um—until then I can—yeah, I’m just going to describe her to you, because, like I said, she’s going to look great. Her dress is, like, really, really pretty, and I don’t even know anything about dresses, so that should tell you something.”