Shatter Me Complete Collection (12 page)

Chapter Twenty-Three

I’m 14 years old again and I’m staring at the back of his head in a small classroom. I’m 14 years old and I’ve been in love with Adam Kent for years. I made sure to be extra careful, to be extra quiet, to be extra cooperative because I didn’t want to move away again. I didn’t want to leave the school with the one friendly face I’d ever known. I watched him grow up a little more every day, grow a little taller every day, a little stronger, a little tougher, a little more quiet every day. He eventually got too big to get beat up by his dad, but no one really knows what happened to his mother. The students shunned him, harassed him until he started fighting back, until the pressure of the world finally cracked him.

But his eyes always stayed the same.

Always the same when he looked at me. Kind. Compassionate. Desperate to understand. But he never asked questions. He never pushed me to say a word. He just made sure he was close enough to scare away everyone else.

I thought maybe I wasn’t so bad. Maybe.

I thought maybe he saw something in me. I thought maybe I wasn’t as horrible as everyone said I was. I hadn’t touched anyone in years. I didn’t dare get close to people. I couldn’t risk it.

Until one day I did, and I ruined everything.

I killed a little boy in a grocery store simply by helping him to his feet. By grabbing his little hands. I didn’t understand why he was screaming. It was my first experience ever touching someone for such a long period of time and I didn’t understand what was happening to me. The few times I’d ever accidentally put my hands on someone I’d always pulled away. I’d pull away as soon as I remembered I wasn’t supposed to be touching anyone. As soon as I heard the first scream escape their lips.

The little boy was different.

I wanted to help him. I felt such a surge of sudden anger toward his mother for neglecting his cries. Her lack of compassion as a parent devastated me
and it reminded me too much of my own mother.
I just wanted to help him. I wanted him to know that someone else was listening—that someone else cared. I didn’t understand why it felt so strange and exhilarating to touch him. I didn’t know that I was draining his life and I couldn’t comprehend why he’d grown limp and quiet in my arms. I thought maybe the rush of power and positive feeling meant that I’d been cured of my horrible disease. I thought so many stupid things and I ruined everything.

I thought I was helping.

I spent the next 3 years of my life in hospitals, law offices, juvenile detention centers, and suffered through pills and electroshock therapy. Nothing worked. Nothing helped. Outside of killing me, locking me up in an institution was the only solution. The only way to protect the public from the terror of Juliette.

Until he stepped into my cell, I hadn’t seen Adam Kent in 3 years.

And he does look different. Tougher, taller, harder, sharper, tattooed. He’s muscle, mature, quiet and quick. It’s almost like he can’t afford to be soft or slow or relaxed. He can’t afford to be anything but muscle, anything but strength and efficiency. The lines of his face are smooth, precise, carved into shape by years of hard living and training and trying to survive.

He’s not a little boy anymore. He’s not afraid. He’s in the army.

But he’s not so different, either. He still has the most unusually blue eyes I’ve ever seen. Dark and deep and drenched in passion. I always wondered what it’d be like to see the world through such a beautiful lens. I wondered if your eye color meant you saw the world differently. If the world saw you differently as a result.

I should have known it was him when he showed up in my cell.

A part of me did. But I’d tried so hard to repress the memories of my past that I refused to believe it could be possible. Because a part of me didn’t want to remember. A part of me was too scared to hope. A part of me didn’t know if it would make any difference to know that it was him, after all.

I often wonder what I must look like.

I wonder if I’m just a punctured shadow of the person I was before. I haven’t looked in the mirror in 3 years. I’m so scared of what I’ll see.

Someone knocks on the door.

I’m catapulted across the room by my own fear. Adam locks eyes with me before opening the door and I decide to retreat into a far corner of the room.

I sharpen my ears only to hear muted voices, hushed tones, and someone clearing his throat. I’m not sure what to do.

“I’ll be down in a minute,” Adam says a little loudly. I realize he’s trying to end the conversation.

“C’mon, man, I just wanna see her—”

“She’s not a goddamn spectacle, Kenji. Get the hell out of here.”

“Wait—just tell me: Does she light shit on fire with her eyes?” Kenji laughs and I cringe, slumping to the floor behind the bed. I curl into myself and try not to hear the rest of the conversation.

I fail.

Adam sighs. I can picture him rubbing his forehead. “Just get out.”

Kenji struggles to muffle his laughter. “Damn you’re sensitive all of a sudden, huh? Hangin’ out with a girl is changin’ you, man—”

Adam says something I can’t hear.

The door slams shut.

I peek up from my hiding place. Adam looks embarrassed.

My cheeks go pink. I study the intricate threads of the finely woven carpet under my feet. I touch the cloth wallpaper and wait for him to speak. I stand up to stare out the small square of a window only to be met by the bleak backdrop of a broken city. I lean my forehead against the glass.

Metal cubes are clustered together off in the distance: compounds housing civilians wrapped in multiple layers, trying to find refuge from the cold. A mother holding the hand of a small child. Soldiers standing over them, still like statues, rifles poised and ready to fire. Heaps and heaps and heaps of trash, dangerous scraps of iron and steel glinting on the ground. Lonely trees waving at the wind.

Adam’s hands slip around my waist.

His lips are at my ear and he says nothing at all, but I melt until I’m a handful of hot butter dripping down his body. I want to eat every minute of this moment.

I allow my eyes to shut against the truth outside my window. Just for a little while.

Adam takes a deep breath and pulls me even closer. I’m molded to the shape of his silhouette; his hands are circling my waist and his cheek is pressed against my head. “You feel incredible.”

I try to laugh but seem to have forgotten how. “Those are words I never thought I’d hear.”

Adam spins me around so I’m facing him and suddenly I’m looking and not looking at his face, I’m licked by a million flames and swallowing a million more. He’s staring at me like he’s never seen me before. I want to wash my soul in the bottomless blue of his eyes.

He leans in until his forehead rests against mine and our lips still aren’t close enough. He whispers, “How are you?” and I want to kiss every beautiful beat of his heart.

How are you?
3 words no one ever asks me.

“I want to get out of here,” is all I can think of.

He squeezes me against his chest and I marvel at the power, the glory, the wonder in such a simple movement. He feels like 1 block of strength, 6 feet tall.

Every butterfly in the world has migrated to my stomach.

“Juliette.”

I lean back to see his face.

“Are you serious about leaving?” he asks me. His fingers brush the side of my cheek. He tucks a stray strand of hair behind my ear. “Do you understand the risks?”

I take a deep breath. I know that the only real risk is death. “Yes.”

He nods. Drops his eyes, his voice. “The troops are mobilizing for some kind of attack. There have been a lot of protests from groups who were silent before, and our job is to obliterate the resistance. I think they want this attack to be their last one,” he adds quietly. “There’s something huge going on, and I’m not sure what, not yet. But whatever it is, we have to be ready to go when they are.”

I freeze. “What do you mean?”

“When the troops are ready to deploy, you and I should be ready to run. It’s the only way out that will give us time to disappear. Everyone will be too focused on the attack—it’ll buy us some time before they notice we’re missing or can get enough people together to search for us.”

“But—you mean—you’ll come with me . . . ? You’d be willing to do that for me?”

He smiles a small smile. His lips twitch like he’s trying not to laugh. His eyes soften as they study my own. “There’s very little I wouldn’t do for you.”

I take a deep breath and close my eyes, touching my fingers to his chest, imagining the bird soaring across his skin, and I ask him the one question that scares me the most. “Why?”

“What do you mean?” He steps back.

“Why, Adam? Why do you care? Why do you want to help me? I don’t understand—I don’t know why you’d be willing to risk your life—”

But then his arms are around my waist and he’s pulling me so close and his lips are at my ear and he says my name, once, twice and I had no idea I could catch on fire so quickly. His mouth is smiling against my skin. “You don’t?”

I don’t know anything, is what I would tell him if I had any idea how to speak.

He laughs a little and pulls back. Takes my hand and studies it. “Do you remember in fourth grade,” he says, “when Molly Carter signed up for the school field trip too late? All the spots were filled, and she stood outside the bus, crying because she wanted to go?”

He doesn’t wait for me to answer.

“I remember you got off the bus. You offered her your seat and she didn’t even say thank you. I watched you standing on the sidewalk as we pulled away.”

I’m no longer breathing.

“Do you remember in fifth grade? That week Dana’s parents nearly got divorced? She came to school every day without her lunch. And you offered to give her yours.” He pauses. “As soon as that week was over she went back to pretending you didn’t exist.”

I’m still not breathing.

“In seventh grade Shelly Morrison got caught cheating off your math test. She kept screaming that if she failed, her father would kill her. You told the teacher that you were the one cheating off of
her
test. You got a zero on the exam, and detention for a week.” He lifts his head but doesn’t look at me. “You had bruises on your arms for at least a month after that. I always wondered where they came from.”

My heart is beating too fast. Dangerously fast. I clench my fingers to keep them from shaking. I lock my jaw in place and wipe my face clean of emotion but I can’t slow the thrumming in my chest no matter how hard I try.

“A million times,” he says, his voice so quiet now. “I saw you do things like that a million times. But you never said a word unless it was forced out of you.” He laughs again, this time a hard, heavy sort of laugh. He’s staring at a point directly past my shoulder. “You never asked for anything from anyone.” He finally meets my eyes. “But no one ever gave you a chance.”

I swallow hard, try to look away but he catches my face.

He whispers, “You have no idea how much I’ve thought about you. How many times I’ve dreamt”—he takes a tight breath—“how many times I’ve dreamt about being this close to you.” He moves to run a hand through his hair before he changes his mind. Looks down. Looks up. “God, Juliette, I’d follow you anywhere. You’re the only good thing left in this world.”

I’m begging myself not to burst into tears and I don’t know if it’s working. I’m everything broken and glued back together and blushing everywhere and I can hardly find the strength to meet his gaze.

His fingers find my chin. Tip me up.

“We have three weeks at the most,” he says. “I don’t think they can control the mobs for much longer.”

I nod. I blink. I rest my face against his chest and pretend I’m not crying.

3 weeks.

Chapter Twenty-Four

2 weeks pass.

2 weeks of dresses and showers and food I want to throw across the room. 2 weeks of Warner smiling and touching my waist, laughing and guiding the small of my back, making sure I look my best as I walk beside him. He thinks I’m his trophy. His secret weapon.

I have to stifle the urge to crack his knuckles into concrete.

But I offer him 2 weeks of cooperation because in 1 week we’ll be gone.

Hopefully.

But then, more than anything else, I’ve found I don’t hate Warner as much as I thought I did.

I feel sorry for him.

He finds a strange sort of solace in my company; he thinks I can relate to him and his twisted notions, his cruel upbringing, his absent and simultaneously demanding father.

But he never says a word about his mother.

Adam says that no one knows anything about Warner’s mother—that she’s never been discussed and no one has any idea who she is. He says that Warner is only known to be the consequence of ruthless parenting, and a cold, calculated desire for power. He hates happy children and happy parents and their happy lives.

I think Warner thinks that I understand. That I understand him.

And I do. And I don’t.

Because we’re not the same.

I want to be better.

Adam and I have little time together but nighttime. And even then, not so much. Warner watches me more closely every day; disabling the cameras only made him more suspicious. He’s always walking into my room unexpectedly, taking me on unnecessary tours around the building, talking about nothing but his plans and his plans to make more plans and how together we’ll conquer the world. I don’t pretend to care.

Maybe it’s me who’s making this worse.

“I can’t believe Warner actually agreed to get rid of your cameras,” Adam said to me one night.

“He’s insane. He’s not rational. He’s sick in a way I’ll never understand.”

Adam sighed. “He’s obsessed with you.”

“What?” I nearly snapped my neck in surprise.

“You’re all he ever talks about.” Adam was silent a moment, his jaw too tight. “I heard stories about you before you even got here. That’s why I got involved—it’s why I volunteered to go get you. Warner spent months collecting information about you: addresses, medical records, personal histories, family relations, birth certificates, blood tests. The entire army was talking about his new project; everyone knew he was looking for a girl who’d killed a little boy in a grocery store. A girl named Juliette.”

I held my breath.

Adam shook his head. “I knew it was you. It had to be. I asked Warner if I could help with the project—I told him I’d gone to school with you, that I’d heard about the little boy, that I’d seen you in person.” He laughed a hard laugh. “Warner was thrilled. He thought it would make the experiment more interesting,” he added, disgusted. “And I knew that if he wanted to claim you as some kind of sick project—” He hesitated. Looked away. Ran a hand through his hair. “I just knew I had to do something. I thought I could try to help. But now it’s gotten worse. Warner won’t stop talking about what you’re capable of or how valuable you are to his efforts and how excited he is to have you here. Everyone is beginning to notice. Warner is ruthless—he has no mercy for anyone. He loves the power, the thrill of destroying people. But he’s starting to crack, Juliette. He’s so desperate to have you . . .
join
him. And for all his threats, he doesn’t want to force you. He wants you to want it. To choose
him
, in a way.” He looked down, took a tight breath. “He’s losing his edge. And whenever I see his face I’m always about two inches away from doing something stupid. I’d love to break his jaw.”

Yes. Warner is losing his edge.

He’s paranoid, though with good reason. But then he’s patient and impatient with me. Excited and nervous all the time. He’s a walking oxymoron.

He disables my cameras, but some nights he orders Adam to sleep outside my door to make sure I don’t escape. He says I can eat lunch alone, but always ends up summoning me to his side. The few hours Adam and I would’ve had together are stolen from us, but the fewer nights Adam is allowed to sleep inside my room I manage to spend huddled in his arms.

We both sleep on the floor now, wrapped up in each other for warmth even with the blanket covering our bodies. Every time he touches me it’s like a burst of fire and electricity that ignites my bones in the most amazing way. It’s the kind of feeling I wish I could hold in my hand.

Adam tells me about new developments, whispers he’s heard around the other soldiers. He tells me how there are multiple headquarters across what’s left of the country. How Warner’s dad is at the capital, how he’s left his son in charge of this entire sector. He says Warner hates his father but loves the power. The destruction. The devastation. He strokes my hair and tells me stories and tucks me close like he’s afraid I’ll disappear. He paints pictures of people and places until I fall asleep, until I’m drowning in a drug of dreams to escape a world with no refuge, no relief, no release but his reassurances in my ear. Sleep is the only thing I look forward to these days. I can hardly remember why I used to scream.

Things are getting too comfortable and I’m beginning to panic.

“Put these on,” Warner says to me.

Breakfast in the blue room has become routine. I eat and don’t ask where the food comes from, whether or not the workers are being paid for what they do, how this building manages to sustain so many lives, pump so much water, or use so much electricity. I bide my time now. I cooperate.

Warner hasn’t asked me to touch him again, and I don’t offer.

“What are they for?” I eye the small pieces of fabric in his hands and feel a nervous twinge in my gut.

He smiles a slow, sneaky smile. “An aptitude test.” He grabs my wrist and places the bundle in my hand. “I’ll turn around, just this once.”

I’m almost too nervous to be disgusted by him.

My hands shake as I change into the outfit that turns out to be a tiny tank top and tinier shorts. I’m practically naked. I’m practically convulsing in fear of what this might mean. I clear my throat just the tiniest bit and Warner spins around.

He takes too long to speak; his eyes are busy traveling the road map of my body. I want to rip up the carpet and sew it to my skin. He smiles and offers me his hand.

I’m granite and limestone and marbled glass. I don’t move.

He drops his hand. He cocks his head. “Follow me.”

Warner opens the door. Adam is standing outside. He’s gotten so good at masking his emotions that I hardly register the look of shock that shifts in and out of his features. Nothing but the strain in his forehead, the tension in his temples, gives him away. He knows something’s not right. He actually turns his neck to take in my appearance. He blinks. “Sir?”

“Remain where you are, soldier. I’ll take it from here.”

Adam doesn’t answer doesn’t answer doesn’t answer— “Yes, sir,” he says, his voice suddenly hoarse.

I feel his eyes on me as I turn down the hall.

Warner takes me somewhere new. We’re walking through corridors I’ve never seen, blacker and bleaker and more narrow as we go. I realize we’re heading downward.

Into a basement.

We pass through 1, 2, 4 metal doors. Soldiers everywhere, their eyes everywhere, appraising me with both fear and something else I’d rather not consider. I’ve realized there are very few females in this building.

If there were ever a place to be grateful for being untouchable, it’d be here.

It’s the only reason I have asylum from the preying eyes of hundreds of lonely men. It’s the only reason Adam is staying with me—because Warner thinks Adam is a cardboard cutout of vanilla regurgitations. He thinks Adam is a machine oiled by orders and demands. He thinks Adam is a reminder of my past, and he uses it to make me uncomfortable. He’d never imagine Adam could lay a finger on me.

No one would. Everyone I meet is absolutely petrified.

The darkness is like a black canvas punctured by a blunt knife, with beams of light peeking through. It reminds me too much of my old cell. My skin ripples with uncontrollable dread.

I’m surrounded by guns.

“In you go,” Warner says. I’m pushed into an empty room smelling faintly of mold. Someone hits a switch and fluorescent lights flicker on to reveal pasty yellow walls and carpet the color of dead grass. The door slams shut behind me.

There’s nothing but cobwebs and a huge mirror in this room. The mirror is half the size of the wall. Instinctively I know Warner and his accomplices must be watching me. I just don’t know why.

There are secrets everywhere.

There are answers nowhere.

Mechanical clinks/cracks/creaks and shifts shake the space I’m standing in. The ground rumbles to life. The ceiling trembles with the promise of chaos. Metal spikes are suddenly everywhere, scattered across the room, puncturing every surface at all different heights. Every few seconds they disappear only to reappear with a sudden jolt of terror, slicing through the air like needles.

I realize I’m standing in a torture chamber.

Static and feedback from speakers older than my dying heart crackle to life. I’m a racehorse galloping toward a false finish line, breathing hard for someone else’s gain.

“Are you ready?” Warner’s amplified voice echoes around the room.

“What am I supposed to be ready for?” I yell into the empty space, certain that someone can hear me.
I’m calm. I’m calm. I’m calm.
I’m petrified.

“We had a deal, remember?” the room responds.

“Wha—”

“I disabled your cameras. Now it’s your turn to hold up your end of the bargain.”

“I won’t touch you!” I shout, spinning in place, terrified, horrified, worried I might faint at any moment.

“That’s all right,” he says. “I’m sending in my replacement.”

The door squeals open and a toddler waddles in wearing nothing but a diaper. He’s blindfolded and hiccupping sobs, shuddering in fear.

One pin pops my entire existence into nothing.

“If you don’t save him,” Warner’s words crackle through the room, “we won’t, either.”

This child.

He must have a mother a father someone who loves him this child this child this child stumbling forward in terror. He could be speared through by a metal stalagmite at any second.

Saving him is simple: I need to pick him up, find a safe spot of ground, and hold him in my arms until the experiment is over.

There’s only one problem.

If I touch him, he might die.