Ignite Me (17 page)

“I will make sure you are fed well and regularly,” Warner says by way of response. “Your accommodations will be simple, but they will not be simpler than this,” he says, gesturing to the room. “The arrangement will provide us ample opportunity to meet and structure our next moves. You must know that you’re putting everyone at risk by staying on unregulated territory. You and your friends will be safer with me.”

“Why would you do that, though?” Ian asks. “Why would you want to help us and feed us and keep us alive? That doesn’t make any sense—”

“It doesn’t need to make sense.”

“Of course it does,” Lily counters. Her eyes are hard, angry. “We’re not going to walk onto a military base just to get ourselves killed,” she snaps. “This could be some sick trick.”

“Fine,” Warner says.

“Fine, what?” Lily asks.

“Don’t come.”

“Oh.” Lily blinks.

Warner turns to Kenji. “You are officially refusing my offer, then?”

“Yeah, no thanks,” Kenji says.

Warner nods. Looks to me. “Should we get going?”

“But—no—” I’m panicking now, looking from Warner to Kenji and back to Warner again. “I can’t just
leave
—I can’t just never see them again—”

I turn to Kenji.

“You’re just going to stay here?” I ask. “And I’ll never see you again?”

“You can stay here with us.” Kenji crosses his arms against his chest. “You don’t have to go.”

“You know I can’t stay,” I tell him, angry and hurt. “You know Adam meant what he said—he’ll go crazy if he comes back and I’m still here—”

“So you’re just going to leave, then?” Kenji says sharply. “You’re going to walk away from all of us”—he gestures to everyone—“just because Adam decided to be a douchebag? You’re trading all of us in for Warner?”

“Kenji—I’m not—I have nowhere else to live! What am I supposed to—”

“
Stay
.”

“Adam will throw me out—”

“No he won’t,” Kenji says. “We won’t let him.”

“I won’t force myself on him. I won’t beg him. Let me at least leave with a shred of dignity—”

Kenji throws his arms in the air in frustration. “This is
bullshit
!”

“Come with me,” I say to him. “Please—I want us to stay together—”

“We can’t,” he says. “We can’t risk that, J. I don’t know what’s going on between you two,” he says, gesturing between me and Warner. “Maybe he really is different with you, I don’t know, whatever—but I can’t put all of our lives at risk based on emotions and an assumption. Maybe he cares about
you
,” Kenji says, “but he doesn’t give a shit about the rest of us.” He looks at Warner. “Do you?”

“Do I what?” Warner asks.

“Do you care about any of us? About our survival—our well-being?”

“No.”

Kenji almost laughs. “Well at least you’re honest.”

“My offer, however, still stands. And you’re an idiot to refuse,” Warner says. “You’ll all die out here, and you know that better than I do.”

“We’ll take our chances.”

“No,” I gasp. “Kenji—”

“It’ll be all right,” he says to me. His forehead is pinched, his eyes heavy. “I’m sure we’ll find a way to see each other one day. Do what you need to do.”

“No,” I’m trying to say. Trying to breathe. My lungs are swelling up, my heart racing so fast I can hear it pounding in my ears. I’m feeling hot and cold and too hot, too cold, and all I can think is
no
, it wasn’t supposed to happen like this, it wasn’t all supposed to fall apart, not again not again—

Warner grabs my arms. “Please,” he’s saying, his voice
urgent, panicked. “Please don’t do that, love, I need you not to do that—”

“Dammit, Kenji!” I explode, breaking away from Warner. “Please, for the love of God, don’t be an idiot. You have to come with me—I need you—”

“I need some kind of guarantee, J”—Kenji is pacing, hands in his hair—“I can’t just trust that everything is going to be all right—”

I turn on Warner, chest heaving, fists clenched. “Give them what they want. I don’t care what it is,” I say to him. “Please, you have to negotiate. You have to make this work. I need him. I need my friends.”

Warner looks at me for a long time.

“Please,” I whisper.

He looks away. Looks back at me.

He finally meets Kenji’s eyes. Sighs. “What do you want?”

“I want a hot bath,” I hear Winston say.

And then he giggles.

He actually giggles.

“Two of my men are ill and injured,” Kenji says, immediately switching gears. His voice is clipped, sharp. Unfeeling. “They need medicine and medical attention. We don’t want to be monitored, we don’t want a curfew, and we want to be able to eat more than the Automat food. We want protein. Fruits. Vegetables. Real meals. We want regular access to showers. We’ll need new clothes. And we want to remain armed at all times.”

Warner is standing so still beside me I can hardly hear him breathing anymore. My head is pounding so hard and my heart is still racing in my chest, but I’ve calmed down enough that I’m able to breathe a little easier now.

Warner glances down at me.

He holds my gaze for just a moment before he closes his eyes. Exhales a sharp breath. Looks up.

“Fine,” he says.

Kenji is staring at him. “Wait—
what?
”

“I will be back tomorrow at fourteen hundred hours to guide you to your new quarters.”

“Holy shit.” Winston is bouncing on the couch. “Holy shit holy shit holy
shit
.”

“Do you have your things?” Warner asks me.

I nod.

“Good,” he says. “Let’s go.”

TWENTY-NINE

Warner is holding my hand.

I only have enough energy to focus on this single, strange fact as he leads me down the stairs and into the parking garage. He opens the door of the tank and helps me in before closing it behind me.

He climbs into the other side.

Turns on the engine.

We’re already on the road and I’ve blinked only six times since we left Adam’s house.

I still can’t believe what just happened. I can’t believe we’re all going to be working together. I can’t believe I told Warner what to do and he
listened to me
.

I turn to look at him. It’s strange: I’ve never felt so safe or so relieved to be beside him. I never thought I could feel this way with him.

“Thank you,” I whisper, grateful and guilty, somehow, about everything that’s happened. About leaving Adam behind. I realize now that I’ve made the kind of choice I can’t undo. My heart is still breaking. “Really,” I say again. “Thank you so much. For coming to get me. I appreciate—”

“Please,” he says. “I’m begging you to stop.”

I still.

“I can’t stomach your pain,” he says. “I can feel it so strongly and it’s making me crazy—
please
,” he says to me. “Don’t be sad. Or hurt. Or guilty. You’ve done nothing wrong.”

“I’m sorry—”

“Don’t be sorry, either,” he says. “God, the only reason I’m not going to kill Kent for this is because I know it would only upset you more.”

“You’re right,” I say after a moment. “But it’s not just him.”

“What?” he asks. “What do you mean?”

“I don’t want you to kill anyone at all,” I say. “Not just Adam.”

Warner laughs a sharp, strange laugh. He looks almost relieved. “Do you have any other stipulations?”

“Not really.”

“You don’t want to fix me, then? You don’t have a long list of things I need to work on?”

“No.” I stare out the window. The view is so bleak. So cold. Covered in ice and snow. “There’s nothing wrong with you that isn’t already wrong with me,” I say quietly. “And if I were smart I’d first figure out how to fix myself.”

We’re both silent awhile. The tension is so thick in this small space.

“Aaron?” I say, still watching the scenery fly by.

I hear the small hitch in his breath. The hesitation. It’s the first time I’ve used his first name so casually.

“Yes?” he says.

“I want you to know,” I tell him, “that I don’t think you’re crazy.”

“What?” He startles.

“I don’t think you’re crazy.” The world is blurring away as I watch it through the window. “And I don’t think you’re a psychopath. I also don’t think you’re a sick, twisted monster. I don’t think you’re a heartless murderer, and I don’t think you deserve to die, and I don’t think you’re pathetic. Or stupid. Or a coward. I don’t think you’re any of the things people have said about you.”

I turn to look at him.

Warner is staring out the windshield.

“You don’t?” His voice is so soft and so scared I can scarcely hear it.

“No,” I say. “I don’t. And I just thought you should know. I’m not trying to fix you; I don’t think you need to be fixed. I’m not trying to turn you into someone else. I only want you to be who you really are. Because I think I know the real you. I think I’ve seen him.”

Warner says nothing, his chest rising and falling.

“I don’t care what anyone else says about you,” I tell him. “I think you’re a good person.”

Warner is blinking fast now. I can hear him breathing.

In and out.

Unevenly.

He says nothing.

“Do you . . . believe me?” I ask after a moment. “Can you sense that I’m telling the truth? That I really mean it?”

Warner’s hands are clenched around the steering wheel. His knuckles are white.

He nods.

Just once.

THIRTY

Warner still hasn’t said a single word to me.

We’re in his room now, courtesy of Delalieu, who Warner was quick to dismiss. It feels strange and familiar to be back here, in this room that I’ve found both fear and comfort in.

Now it feels right to me.

This is Warner’s room. And Warner, to me, is no longer something to be afraid of.

These past few months have transformed him in my eyes, and these past two days have been full of revelations that I’m still recovering from. I can’t deny that he seems different to me now.

I feel like I understand him in a way I never did before.

He’s like a terrified, tortured animal. A creature who spent his whole life being beaten, abused, and caged away. He was forced into a life he never asked for, and was never given an opportunity to choose anything else. And though he’s been given all the tools to kill a person, he’s too emotionally tortured to be able to use those skills against his own father—the very man who taught him to be a murderer. Because somehow, in some strange, inexplicable way, he still wants his father to love him.

And I understand that.

I really, really do.

“What happened?” Warner finally says to me.

I’m sitting on his bed; he’s standing by the door, staring at the wall.

“What do you mean?”

“With Kent,” he says. “Earlier. What did he say to you?”

“Oh.” I flush. Embarrassed. “He kicked me out of his house.”

“But why?”

“He was mad,” I explain. “That I was defending you. That I’d invited you to come back at all.”

“Oh.”

I can almost hear our hearts beat in the silence between us.

“You were defending me,” Warner finally says.

“Yes.”

He says nothing.

I say nothing.

“So he told you to leave,” Warner says, “because you were defending me.”

“Yes.”

“Is that all?”

My heart is racing. I’m suddenly nervous. “No.”

“There were other things?”

“Yes.”

Warner blinks at the wall. Unmoving. “Really.”

I nod.

He says nothing.

“He was upset,” I whisper, “because I didn’t agree that you were crazy. And he was accusing me”—I hesitate—“of being in love with you.”

Warner exhales sharply. Touches a hand to the doorframe.

My heart is pounding so hard.

Warner’s eyes are glued to the wall. “And you told him he was an idiot.”

Breathe. “No.”

Warner turns, just halfway. I see his profile, the unsteady rise and fall of his chest. He’s staring directly at the door now, and it’s clear it’s costing him a great deal of effort to speak. “Then you told him he was crazy. You told him he had to be out of his mind to say something like that.”

“No.”

“No,” he echoes.

I try not to move.

Warner takes a hard, shaky breath. “Then what did you say to him?”

Seven seconds die between us.

“Nothing,” I whisper.

Warner stills.

I don’t breathe.

No one speaks for what feels like forever.

“Of course,” Warner finally says. He looks pale, unsteady. “You said nothing. Of course.”

“Aaron—” I get to my feet.

“There are a lot of things I have to do before tomorrow,” he says. “Especially if your friends will be joining us on base.” His hands tremble in the second it takes him to reach for the door. “Forgive me,” he says. “But I have to go.”

THIRTY-ONE

I decide to take a bath.

I’ve never taken a bath before.

I poke around the bathroom as the tub fills with hot water, and discover stacks and stacks of scented soaps. All different kinds. All different sizes. Each bar of soap has been wrapped in a thick piece of parchment, and tied with twine. There are small labels affixed to each package to distinguish one scent from another.

I pick up one of the bundles.

HONEYSUCKLE

I clutch the soap and can’t help but think how different it was to take a shower at Omega Point. We had nothing so fancy as this. Our soaps were harsh and smelled strange and were fairly ineffective. Kenji used to bring them into our training sessions and break off pieces to pelt at me when I wasn’t focusing.

The memory makes me inexplicably emotional.

My heart swells as I remember that my friends will be here tomorrow. This is really going to happen, I think. We’ll be unstoppable, all of us together. I can’t wait.

I look more closely at the label.

Top notes of jasmine and nuances of grape. Mild notes of lilac, honeysuckle, rose, and cinnamon. Orange-flower and powder base notes complete the fragrance
.

Sounds amazing.

I steal one of Warner’s soaps.