Believe Me (Shatter Me Book 6.5)

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.”

The sound of his voice is a strange lifeline.

The more he speaks, filling my head with easily digestible nonsense, I feel my heart rate start to slow, the iron fist around my lungs beginning, slowly, to unclench.

I force my eyes open, and the scene briefly blurs in and out of focus, the pounding of my heart still loud in my head. I glance at Kenji, who is staring straight ahead, his face at rest as if nothing is amiss. This helps ground me, somehow, and I manage to pull myself together long enough to look down the petal-dusted aisle.

“So Juliette’s dress is, um, like, really glittery, but also really soft-looking? Winston and Alia had to come up with a new design on such short notice,” Kenji explains, “but they were able to repurpose some gown you guys got at the Supply Center yesterday. There was lots of, like, sheer fluffy fabric, I don’t know what it’s call—”

“Tulle.”

“Yes. Tulle. Yes. Whatever. Anyway Alia spent all night, like, first of all, making it nicer, and then sewing these little glittery beads all over it—but, like, in a nice way. It’s really nice. And it’s got, like, these little tulle sleeves that aren’t really sleeves—they sort of fall off the shoulder— Hey, is this helping?”

“Yes,” I say, drawing in a full breath for the first time in minutes.

“Great, so—nice sleeves, and, and um, you know, it’s got a long fluffy skirt— Okay, yeah, I’m sorry, bro, but I’m kind of out of descriptions for Juliette’s dress, but— Oh, hey, here’s a fun fact: Did you know that Sonya and Sara used to be, like, young virtuosos, way back in the day, pre-Reestablishment?”

“No.”

“Yeah—yeah, so they started playing violin when they were fresh out of diapers. Pretty cool, huh? Nazeera helped us confiscate the violins they’re using today from old Reestablishment holdings. They’re playing this song from memory. I don’t know what it’s called, but I’m pretty sure it’s something fancy, from some old dead dude—”

“Of course you know what it’s called,” I say, still staring straight ahead. “Everyone knows it.”

“Well I don’t know it.”

“This is the work of German composer Johann Pachelbel,” I explain, struggling not to frown. “It’s often called Pachelbel’s Canon in D, because it was meant to be played in the key of D major. Do you know nothing about music?”

“Yeah, I don’t even know what the hell you just said.”

“How can y—”

“All right, shut up, no one cares—the music is changing, do you hear that? When it goes high like that? That means she’s going to come out any second now—”

The audience rises almost at once, a rush of breaths and bodies clambering to their feet, craning their necks, and for a moment, I can’t see her at all.

And then, suddenly, I do.

Relief hits me like a gust, leaving me so suddenly unsteady I worry, for a moment, that I might not make it.

Ella looks spun from gossamer, glowing as she glitters in the soft light. Her gown has a corseted, glimmering bodice that flows into a soft, decadent skirt, her arms bare save delicate, off-the-shoulder scraps of tulle that graze her skin.

She is luminous.

I’ve never seen her wear makeup, and I have no idea what they’ve done to her face, except that she is now so beautiful as to be unreal, her hair in an elegant arrangement atop her head, a long veil gracing her shoulders, flowing with her as she walks.

She does not look like she belongs in this world, or in this dingy backyard, or in this dilapidated neighborhood, or on this crumbling planet. She is above it. Above us all. A spark of light separated from the sun.

A dangerous heat builds behind my eyes and I force myself to fight it back, to remain calm, but when she sees me, she smiles—and I nearly lose the fight.

“I told you it was a nice dress,” Kenji whispers.

“Kenji.”

“Yes?”

“Thank you,” I say, still staring at Ella. “For everything.”

“Anytime,” he says, his voice more subdued than before. “This is the beginning of a new chapter for all of us, man. For the whole world. This wedding is making history right now. You know that, right? Nothing is ever going to be the same.”

Ella glides toward me, nearly within reach. I feel my heart pounding in my chest, happiness threatening to destroy me. I’m smiling now, smiling like the most ordinary of men, staring at the most extraordinary woman I’ve ever known.

“Believe me,” I whisper. “I do.”