He’s wearing nothing but his slacks and a pair of socks, his shirt and belt discarded. He’s standing in front of his desk, clinging to something in his hands—something I can’t quite see.
“What are you doing here?” he says.
“The door was open.” What a stupid answer.
He stares at me.
“What time is it?” I ask.
“One thirty in the morning,” he says automatically.
“Oh.”
“You should go back to bed.” I don’t know why he looks so nervous. Why his eyes keep darting from me to the door.
“I’m not tired anymore.”
“Oh.” He fumbles with what I now realize is a small jar in his hands. Sets it on the desk behind him without turning around.
He’s been so off today, I think. Unlike himself. He’s usually so composed, so self-assured. But recently he’s been so shaky around me. The inconsistency is unnerving.
“What are you doing?” I ask.
There’s about ten feet between us, and neither one of us is making any effort to bridge the gap. We’re talking like we don’t know each other, like we’re strangers who’ve just found themselves in a compromising situation. Which is ridiculous.
I begin to cross the room, to make my way over to him.
He freezes.
I stop.
“Is everything okay?”
“Yes,” he says too quickly.
“What’s that?” I ask, pointing to the little plastic jar.
“You should go back to sleep, love. You’re probably more tired than you think—”
I walk right up to him, reach around and grab the jar before he can do much to stop me.
“That is a violation of privacy,” he says sharply, sounding more like himself. “Give that back to me—”
“Medicine?” I ask, surprised. I turn the little jar around in my hands, reading the label. I look up at him. Finally understanding. “This is for scars.”
He runs a hand through his hair. Looks toward the wall. “Yes,” he says. “Now please give it back to me.”
“Do you need help?” I ask.
He stills. “What?”
“This is for your back, isn’t it?”
He runs a hand across his mouth, down his chin. “You won’t allow me to walk away from this with even an ounce of self-respect, will you?”
“I didn’t know you cared about your scars,” I say to him.
I take a step forward.
He takes a step back.
“I don’t.”
“Then why this?” I hold up the jar. “Where did you even get this from?”
“It’s nothing—it’s just—” He shakes his head. “Delalieu found it for me. It’s ridiculous,” he says. “I feel ridiculous.”
“Because you can’t reach your own back?”
He stares at me then. Sighs.
“Turn around,” I tell him.
“No.”
“You’re being weird about nothing. I’ve already seen your scars.”
“That doesn’t mean you need to see them again.”
I can’t help but smile a little.
“What?” he demands. “What’s so funny?”
“You just don’t seem like the kind of person who would be self-conscious about something like this.”
“I’m not.”
“Obviously.”
“Please,” he says, “just go back to bed.”
“I’m wide-awake.”
“That’s not my problem.”
“Turn around,” I tell him again.
He narrows his eyes at me.
“Why are you even using this stuff?” I ask him for the second time. “You don’t need it. Don’t use it if it makes you uncomfortable.”
He’s quiet a moment. “You don’t think I need it?”
“Of course not. Why . . . ? Are you in pain? Do your scars hurt?”
“Sometimes,” he says quietly. “Not as much as they used to. I actually can’t feel much of anything on my back anymore.”
Something cold and sharp hits me in the stomach. “Really?”
He nods.
“Will you tell me where they came from?” I whisper, unable to meet his eyes.
He’s silent for so long I’m finally forced to look up.
His eyes are dead of emotion, his face set to neutral. He clears his throat. “They were my birthday presents,” he says. “Every year from the time I was five. Until I turned eighteen,” he says. “He didn’t come back for my nineteenth birthday.”
I’m frozen in horror.
“Right.” Warner looks into his hands. “So—”
“He cut you?” My voice is so hoarse.
“Whip.”
“Oh my God,” I gasp, covering my mouth. I have to look toward the wall to pull myself together. I blink several times, struggle to swallow back the pain and rage building inside of me. “I’m so sorry,” I choke out. “Aaron. I’m so sorry.”
“I don’t want you to be repulsed by me,” he says quietly.
I spin around, stunned. Mildly horrified. “You’re not serious.”
His eyes say that he is.
“Have you never looked in a mirror?” I ask, angry now.
“Excuse me?”
“You’re perfect,” I tell him, so overcome I forget myself. “All of you. Your entire body. Proportionally. Symmetrically. You’re absurdly, mathematically perfect. It doesn’t even make sense that a person could look like you,” I say, shaking my head. “I can’t believe you would ever say something like that—”
“Juliette, please. Don’t talk to me like that.”
“What? Why?”
“Because it’s cruel,” he says, losing his composure. “It’s cruel and it’s heartless and you don’t even realize—”
“Aaron—”
“I take it back,” he says. “I don’t want you to call me Aaron anymore—”
“Aaron,” I say again, more firmly this time. “Please—you can’t really think you repulse me? You can’t really think I would care—that I would be put off by your scars—”
“I don’t know,” he says. He’s pacing in front of his desk, his eyes fixed on the ground.
“I thought you could sense feelings,” I say to him. “I thought mine would be so obvious to you.”
“I can’t always think clearly,” he says, frustrated, rubbing his face, his forehead. “Especially when my emotions are involved. I can’t always be objective—and sometimes I make assumptions,” he says, “that aren’t true—and I don’t—I just don’t trust my own judgment anymore. Because I’ve done that,” he says, “and it’s backfired. So terribly.”
He looks up, finally. Looks me in the eye.
“You’re right,” I whisper.
He looks away.
“You’ve made a lot of mistakes,” I say to him. “You did everything wrong.”
He runs a hand down the length of his face.
“But it’s not too late to fix things—you can make it right—”
“Please—”
“It’s not too late—”
“Stop saying that to me!” he explodes. “You don’t know me—you don’t know what I’ve done or what I’d need to do to make things right—”
“Don’t you understand? It doesn’t matter—you can choose to be different now—”
“I thought you weren’t going to try and change me!”
“I’m not trying to change you,” I say, lowering my voice. “I’m just trying to get you to understand that your life isn’t over. You don’t have to be who you’ve been. You can make different choices now. You can be happy—”
“Juliette.” One sharp word. His green eyes so intense.
I stop.
I glance at his trembling hands; he clenches them into fists.
“Go,” he says quietly. “I don’t want you to be here right now.”
“Then why did you bring me back with you?” I ask, angry. “If you don’t even wa
nt to see me—”
“Why don’t you understand?” He looks up at me and his eyes are so full of pain and devastation it actually takes my breath away.
My hands are shaking. “Understand what—?”
“I love you.”
He breaks.
His voice. His back. His knees. His face.
He breaks.
He has to hold on to the side of his desk. He can’t meet my eyes. “I love you,” he says, his words harsh and soft all at once. “I love you and it isn’t enough. I thought it would be enough and I was wrong. I thought I could fight for you and I was wrong. Because I can’t. I can’t even face you anymore—”
“Aaron—”
“Tell me it isn’t true,” he says. “Tell me I’m wrong. Tell me I’m blind. Tell me you love me.”
My heart won’t stop screaming as it breaks in half.
I can’t lie to him.
“I don’t—I don’t know how to understand what I feel,” I try to explain.
“Please,” he whispers. “Please just go—”
“Aaron, please understand—I thought I knew what love was before and I was wrong—I don’t want to make that mistake again—”
“Please”—he’s begging now—“for the love of God, Juliette, I have lost my dignity—”
“Okay.” I nod. “Okay. I’m sorry. Okay.”
I back away.
I turn around.
And I don’t look back.
THIRTY-THREE
“I have to leave in seven minutes.”
Warner and I are both fully dressed, talking to each other like perfect acquaintances; like last night never happened. Delalieu brought us breakfast and we ate quietly in separate rooms. No talk of him or me or us or what might’ve been or what might be.
There is no us.
There’s the absence of Adam, and there’s fighting against The Reestablishment. That’s it.
I get it now.
“I’d bring you with me,” he’s saying, “but I think it’ll be hard to disguise you on this trip. If you want, you can wait in the training rooms—I’ll bring the group of them straight there. You can say hello as soon as they arrive.” He finally looks at me. “Is that okay?”
I nod.
“Very good,” he says. “I’ll show you how to get there.”
He leads me back into his office, and into one of the far corners by the couch. There’s an exit in here I didn’t see last night. Warner hits a button on the wall. The doors slide open.
It’s an elevator.
We walk in and he hits the button for the ground floor. The doors close and we start moving.
I glance up at him. “I never knew you had an elevator in your room.”
“I needed private access to my training facilities.”
“You keep saying that,” I tell him. “Training facilities. What’s a training facility?”
The elevator stops.
The doors slide open.
He holds them open for me. “This.”
I’ve never seen so many machines in my life.
Running machines and leg machines and machines that work your arms, your shoulders, your abdominals. There are even machines that look like bikes. I don’t know what any of them are called. I know one of these things is a bench press. I also know what dumbbells look like, and there are racks and racks of those, in all different sizes. Weights, I think. Free weights. There are also bars attached to the ceiling in some places, but I can’t imagine what those are for. There are tons of things around this room, actually, that look entirely foreign to me.
And each wall is used for something different.
One wall seems to be made of stone. Or rock. There are little grooves in it that are accented by what look like pieces of plastic in different colors. Another wall is covered in guns. Hundreds of guns resting on pegs that keep them in place. They’re pristine. Gleaming as if they’ve just been cleaned. There’s a door in that same wall; I wonder where it goes. The third wall is covered in the same black, spongelike material that covers the floors. It looks like it might be soft and springy. And the final wall is the one we’ve just walked through. It houses the elevator, and one other door, and nothing else.
The dimensions are enormous. This space is at least two or three times the size of Warner’s bedroom, his closet, and his office put together. It doesn’t seem possible that all of this is for one person.
“This is amazing,” I say, turning to face him. “You use all of this?”
He nods. “I’m usually in here at least two or three times a day,” he says. “I got off track when I was injured,” he says, “but in general, yes.” He steps forward, touches the spongy black wall. “This has been my life for as long as I’ve known it. Training,” he says. “I’ve been training forever. And this is where we’re going to start with you, too.”
“Me?”
He nods.
“But I don’t need to train,” I tell him. “Not like this.”
He tries to meet my eyes and can’t.
“I have to go,” he says. “If you get bored in here, take the elevator back up. This elevator can only access two levels, so you can’t get lost.” He buttons his blazer. “I’ll return as soon as I can.”
“Okay.”
I expect him to leave, but he doesn’t. “You’ll still be here,” he finally says, “when I return.”
It’s not exactly a question.
I nod anyway.
“It doesn’t seem possible,” he says, so quietly, “that you’re not trying to run away.”
I say nothing.
He exhales a hard breath. Pivots on one heel. And leaves.
THIRTY-FOUR
I’m sitting on one of the benches, toying with five-pound dumbbells, when I hear his voice.
“Holy shit,” he’s saying. “This place is legit.”
I jump up, nearly dropping the weights on my foot. Kenji and Winston and Castle and Brendan and Ian and Alia and Lily are all walking through the extra door in the gun wall.
Kenji’s face lights up when he sees me.
I run forward and he catches me in his arms, hugs me tight before breaking away. “Well, I’ll be damned,” Kenji says. “He didn’t kill you. That’s a really good sign.”
I shove him a little. Suppress a grin.
I quickly say hi to everyone. I’m practically bouncing I’m so excited to have them here. But they’re all looking around in shock. Like they really thought Warner was leading them into a trap.
“There’s a locker room through here,” Warner is telling them. He points to the door beside the elevator. “There are plenty of showers and bathroom stalls and anything else you might need to keep from smelling like an animal. Towels, soap, laundry machines. All through here.”
I’m so focused on Warner I almost don’t notice Delalieu standing in the corner.
I stifle a gasp.
He’s standing quietly, hands clasped behind his back, watching closely as everyone listens to Warner talk. And not for the first time, I wonder who he really is. Why Warner seems to trust him so much.
“Your meals will be delivered to you three times a day,” Warner is saying. “If you don’t eat, or if you miss a meal and find yourself hungry, feel free to shed your tears in the shower. And then learn to set a schedule. Don’t bring your complaints to me.
“You already have your own weapons,” he goes on, “but, as you can see, this room is also fully stocked and—”
“Sweet,” Ian says. He looks a little too excited as he heads toward a set of rifles.
“If you touch any of my guns, I will break both of your hands,” Warner says to him.
Ian freezes in place.
“This wall is off-limits to you. All of you,” he says, looking around the room. “Everything else is available for your use. Do not damage any of my equipment. Leave things the way you found them. And if you do not shower on a regular basis, do not come within ten feet of me.”
Kenji snorts.
/>
“I have other work to attend to,” Warner says. “I will return at nineteen hundred hours, at which time we can reconvene and begin our discussions. In the interim, take advantage of the opportunity to get situated. You may use the extra mats in the corner to sleep on. I hope for your sake you brought your own blankets.”
Alia’s bag slips out of her hands and thuds onto the floor. Everyone spins in her direction. She goes scarlet.
“Are there any questions?” Warner asks.
“Yeah,” Kenji says. “Where’s the medicine?”
Warner nods to Delalieu, who’s still standing in the corner. “Give my lieutenant a detailed account of any injuries and illnesses. He will procure the necessary treatments.”
Kenji nods, and means it. He actually looks grateful. “Thank you,” he says.
Warner holds Kenji’s gaze for just a moment. “You’re welcome.”
Kenji raises his eyebrows.
Even I’m surprised.
Warner looks at me then. He looks at me for just a split second before looking away. And then, without a word, he hits the button for the elevator.
Steps inside.
I watch the doors close behind him.
THIRTY-FIVE
Kenji is staring at me, concerned. “What the hell was that?”
Winston and Ian are looking at me too, making no effort to hide their confusion. Lily is unpacking her things. Castle is watching me closely. Brendan and Alia are deep in conversation.
“What do you mean?” I ask. I’m trying to be nonchalant, but I think my ears have gone pink.
Kenji clasps one hand behind his neck. Shrugs. “You two get into a fight or something?”
“No,” I say too quickly.
“Uh-huh.” Kenji cocks his head at me.
“How’s Adam?” I ask, hoping to change the subject.
Kenji blows out a long breath; looks away; rubs at his eyes just before dropping his bag on the floor. He leans back against the wall. “I’m not gonna lie to you, J,” he says, lowering his voice. “This crap with Kent is really stressing me out. Your drama is making things messy. He didn’t make it easy for us to leave.”
“What? But he said he didn’t want to fight back anymore—”