Shatter Me Complete Collection (79 page)
Read Shatter Me Complete Collection Online
Authors: Tahereh Mafi
Kenji is back after only a couple of hours. His face ashen, his hands trembling. He’s breathing hard and his eyes are unfocused and he sits down on the couch without a word and I’m already panicking.
“What happened?” I ask.
“What’s going on?” Lily says.
“You okay, bro?” This from Ian.
We pepper him with questions and he doesn’t answer. He stares, unblinking, a replica of Castle, who’s sitting in a chair across from him.
Finally, after a long moment of silence, he speaks.
Three words.
“Juliette is dead.”
Chaos.
Questions are flying and screams are muffled and everyone is shocked, horrified, freaking out.
I’m stunned.
My brain feels paralyzed, unwilling to process or digest this information.
Why?
I want to ask.
How?
How? How is it possible?
But I can’t speak. I’m frozen in horror. Grief.
“It wasn’t Warner who came after her,” Kenji is saying, tears falling fast down his face. “It was Anderson. Those were Anderson’s men. They made the announcement just a couple hours ago,” he says, choking on the words. “They said they bombed Omega Point, captured Juliette, and killed her just this morning. The supreme has already headed back to the capital.”
“No,” I gasp.
“We should’ve gone after her,” Kenji is saying. “I should’ve stayed behind—I should’ve tried to find her—it’s my fault,” he says, hands in his hair, fighting back tears. “It’s my fault she’s dead. I should’ve gone after her—”
“It’s not your fault,” Ian says to him, rushing over and grabbing his arms. “Don’t you dare put that on yourself.”
“We lost a lot of people,” Lily says. “People dear to us that we couldn’t save. This is not your fault. I promise. We did our best.”
Everyone is consoling Kenji now, trying to reassure him that there’s no guilt necessary. No person to blame for all this.
But I can’t agree.
I trip backward until I hit the wall, leaning against it for support. I know who to blame. I know where the fault lies.
Juliette is dead because of me.
FRACTURE ME
Copyright © 2013 by Tahereh Mafi
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
EPub Edition © DECEMBER 2013 ISBN: 9780062284839
ISBN 978-0-06-228483-9
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
FIRST EDITION
For my readers. For your love and support. This one’s for you
.
I am an hourglass.
My seventeen years have collapsed and buried me from the inside out. My legs feel full of sand and stapled together, my mind overflowing with grains of indecision, choices unmade and impatient as time runs out of my body. The small hand of a clock taps me at one and two, three and four, whispering hello, get up, stand up, it’s time to
wake up
wake up
“Wake up,” he whispers.
A sharp intake of breath and I’m awake but not up, surprised but not scared, somehow staring into the very desperately green eyes that seem to know too much, too well. Aaron Warner Anderson is bent over me, his worried eyes inspecting me, his hand caught in the air like he might’ve been about to touch me.
He jerks back.
He stares, unblinking, chest rising and falling.
“Good morning,” I assume. I’m unsure of my voice, of the hour and this day, of these words leaving my lips and this body that contains me.
I notice he’s wearing a white button-down, half untucked
into his curiously unrumpled black slacks. His shirtsleeves are folded, pushed up past his elbows.
His smile looks like it hurts.
I pull myself into a seated position and Warner shifts to accommodate me. I have to close my eyes to steady the sudden dizziness, but I force myself to remain still until the feeling passes.
I’m tired and weak from hunger, but other than a few general aches, I seem to be fine. I’m alive. I’m breathing and blinking and feeling human and I know exactly why.
I meet his eyes. “You saved my life.”
I was shot in the chest.
Warner’s father put a bullet in my body and I can still feel the echoes of it. If I focus, I can relive the exact moment it happened; the pain: so intense, so excruciating; I’ll never be able to forget it.
I suck in a startled breath.
I’m finally aware of the familiar foreignness of this room and I’m quickly seized by a panic that screams I did not wake up where I fell asleep. My heart is racing and I’m inching away from him, hitting my back against the headboard, clutching at these sheets, trying not to stare at the chandelier I remember all too well—
“It’s okay—” Warner is saying. “It’s all right—”
“What am I doing here?” Panic, panic; terror clouds my consciousness. “Why did you bring me here again—?”
“Juliette, please, I’m not going to hurt you—”
“Then why did you bring me here?” My voice is starting
to break and I’m struggling to keep it steady. “Why bring me back to this
hellhole
—”
“I had to hide you.” He exhales, looks up at the wall.
“What? Why?”
“No one knows you’re alive.” He turns to look at me. “I had to get back to base. I needed to pretend everything was back to normal and I was running out of time.”
I force myself to lock away the fear.
I study his face and analyze his patient, earnest tone. I remember him last night—it must’ve been last night—I remember his face, remember him lying next to me in the dark. He was tender and kind and gentle and he saved me, saved my life. Probably carried me into bed. Tucked me in beside him. It must’ve been him.
But when I glance down at my body I realize I’m wearing clean clothes, no blood or holes or anything anywhere and I wonder who washed me, wonder who changed me, and worry that might’ve been Warner, too.
“Did you . . .” I hesitate, touching the hem of the shirt I’m wearing. “Did—I mean—my clothes—”
He smiles. He stares until I’m blushing and I decide I hate him a little and then he shakes his head. Looks into his palms. “No,” he says. “The girls took care of that. I just carried you to bed.”
“The girls,” I whisper, dazed.
The girls
.
Sonya and Sara. They were there too, the healer twins, they helped Warner. They helped him save me because he’s
the only one who can touch me now, the only person in the world who’d have been able to transfer their healing power safely into my body.
My thoughts are on fire.
Where are the girls what happened to the girls and where is Anderson and the war and oh God what’s happened to Adam and Kenji and Castle
and I have to get up I have to get up I have to get up and get out of bed and get going
but
I try to move and Warner catches me. I’m off-balance, unsteady; I still feel as though my legs are anchored to this bed and I’m suddenly unable to breathe, seeing spots and feeling faint. Need up. Need out.
Can’t.
“Warner.” My eyes are frantic on his face. “What happened? What’s happening with the battle—?”
“Please,” he says, gripping my shoulders. “You need to start slowly; you should eat something—”
“
Tell me
—”
“Don’t you want to eat first? Or shower?”
“No,” I hear myself say. “I have to know now.”
One moment. Two and three.
Warner takes a deep breath. A million more. Right hand over left, spinning the jade ring on his pinkie finger over and over and over and over “It’s over,” he says.
“What?”
I say the word but my lips make no sound. I’m numb, somehow. Blinking and seeing nothing.
“It’s over,” he says again.
“No.”
I exhale the word, exhale the impossibility.
He nods. He’s disagreeing with me.
“No.”
“Juliette.”
“No,” I say. “No. No. Don’t be stupid,” I say to him. “Don’t be ridiculous,” I say to him. “
Don’t lie to me goddamn you
,” but now my voice is high and broken and shaking and “No,” I gasp, “no, no,
no
—”
I actually stand up this time. My eyes are filling fast with tears and I blink and blink but the world is a mess and I want to laugh because all I can think is how horrible and beautiful it is, that our eyes blur the truth when we can’t bear to see it.
The ground is hard.
I know this to be an actual fact because it’s suddenly pressed against my face and Warner is trying to touch me but I think I scream and slap his hands away because I already know the answer. I must already know the answer because I can feel the revulsion bubbling up and unsettling my insides but I ask anyway. I’m horizontal and somehow still tipping over and the holes in my head are tearing open and I’m staring at a spot on the carpet not ten feet away and I’m not sure I’m even alive but I have to hear him say it.
“Why?” I ask.
It’s just a word, stupid and simple.
“Why is the battle over?” I ask. I’m not breathing
anymore, not really speaking at all; just expelling letters through my lips.
Warner is not looking at me.
He’s looking at the wall and at the floor and at the bedsheets and at the way his knuckles look when he clenches his fists but no not at me he won’t look at me and his next words are so, so soft.
“Because they’re dead, love. They’re all dead.”