Believe Me (Shatter Me Book 6.5)

The small velvet box weighs heavy in my pocket, the right angles of which dig into my thigh as I sit here, at the edge of a short cliff, staring down at our very own graveyard. This area was built shortly after the battle—a memorial to all the lives lost.

It’s become an unexpected refuge for me.

Few people come through here anymore; for some, the pain is still too fresh, for others, the demands on their time too many. Either way, I’m grateful for the quiet. It was one of the only places to escape while Ella was in recovery, which meant I spent quite a bit of time acquainting myself with this view, and with my seat: a smooth, flat stretch of a massive boulder. The view from this rock is surprisingly peaceful.

Today, it fails to calm me.

I hear a sound then; a distant, faded trill my mind can only describe as birdsong. The dog lifts its head and barks.

I stare at the animal.

The dirty little creature waited for me outside the war room only to follow me here. I’ve done nothing to inspire its loyalty. I don’t know how to get rid of him. Or her.

As if sensing the direction of my thoughts, the dog turns to face me, panting lightly now, looking for all the world as if it might be smiling. I’ve hardly had a chance to digest this before it jerks away to bark once more at the sky.

That oddly familiar chirp, again.

I’ve heard birdsong more often lately; we all have. Castle, who’s always insisted all was not lost, claims even now that the animals had not died out entirely. He said that traditionally, birds hide during severe weather, not unlike humans. They seek shelter when experiencing illness, too, during what they believe to be the last moments of their life. He argues that the birds went into mass hiding—either from fear, or from sickness—and that now, with Emmaline’s weather manipulations gone, what’s left of them have come out of hiding. It’s not a foolproof theory, but lately it’s grown harder to deny. Even I find myself searching the sky these days, hoping for a glimpse of the impossible creature.

A cold wind barrels through the valley then, pushing through my hair, snapping against my skin. It is with some regret that I realize I left my coat in the war room. The dog whimpers, nudging my leg with its nose. Reluctantly, I rest my hand on what is no doubt its flea-infested head, and the dog quiets. Its thin body curls into a tight ball at my feet, tail tapping the ground.

I sigh.

The day had dawned bright this morning, the sun unencumbered in the sky, but each passing hour has brought with it heavier clouds and an inescapable chill.

Nouria was right; this night will be brutal.

Anxious as I always am to be apart from Ella, my impulses were blunted after meeting with Castle and Nouria. Confused. I wanted nothing more than to seek out Ella; I wanted nothing more than to be alone. I ended up here, in the end—my feet carrying me when my head made no decision—staring into a valley of death, circling the drain of my mind. This morning had been agitating but rewarding; full of irritation but hope, too. I hadn’t resented the ticking clock against which I’d been marking time.

In the end, the afternoon has proven empty.

My evening, cleared.

Save the myriad domestic and international disasters that remain unresolved, I’ve no reason to hurry anymore. I’d thought I was getting married tonight.

As it turns out, I’m not.

I tug free the velvet box from my pocket, clutching it in my fist a moment before taking a sharp breath, then carefully opening the lid. I stare at the glittering contents not unlike a child witnessing fire for the first time. Naive.

It’s strange: of all the reprehensible things I’ve known myself to be, I’d never thought I was stupid.

I snap the lid closed, tuck the box back into my pocket.

Nouria didn’t lie when she said my wedding wouldn’t happen tonight. She didn’t lie when she told me it was Ella’s idea to postpone. What I don’t understand is why Ella never mentioned this to me—or why she said nothing this morning at the dress shop. Perhaps most confusing of all: I’ve felt no hesitation from her on the matter. Surely, if she didn’t want to marry me, I’d have known.

I clench my jaw against the cold.

Somehow, despite the howling wind, the dog appears to have fallen asleep, its body vibrating like a small motor at my feet. I take a moment to study its patchy brown fur, noticing, for the first time, that there’s a piece missing from one of its ears.

I exhale, slowly, and rest my elbows on my knees, drop my head into my hands. The small box digs deeper into my flesh.

I’m trying to convince myself to get going—to return to work—when I feel Ella approach. I stiffen, then straighten.

My pulse picks up.

I sense her long before I see her, and when she finally comes into view my heart reacts, contracting in my chest even as my body remains motionless. She lifts a hand when she sees me, the single moment of distraction costing her a fight with a bramble. This area, like so many others, is carpeted in half-dead brush, ripe for a wildfire. Ella struggles to disentangle herself, yanking hard to free her shirt—and promptly frowns when she’s released. She studies what appears to be the torn edge of her sweater before looking up at me. She shrugs.

I didn’t really care about this sweater anyway, she seems to say, and I can’t help but smile.

Ella laughs.

She is windswept. The gusts are growing more aggressive, whipping her hair so that it wraps around her face as she heads in my direction. I can hardly see her eyes; only glimpses of her lips and cheeks, pink with exertion. She swipes at her dark hair with one hand, pushing at overgrown weeds with the other. She is gently rendered in this light, soft in a nondescript sweater the color of moss. Dark jeans. Tennis shoes.

The light changes as she moves, the clouds fighting to hide the sun and occasionally failing. It makes the scene feel dreamlike. She looks so much like herself in this moment that it startles me; it’s almost as if she’s stepped out of some of my favorite memories.

“I’ve been looking for you everywhere,” she says breathlessly, laughing as she collapses beside me on the boulder. She smells like apricot—it’s a new shampoo—and the scent of it fills my head.

She pokes me in the stomach. “Where’ve you been?”

“Here.”

“Very funny,” she says, but her smile fades as she studies my face. I find it difficult to meet her gaze.

“Hey,” she says softly.

“Hi,” I say.

“What’s wrong?”

I shake my head slowly. “Nothing.”

“Liar,” she whispers.

I close my eyes.

I feel myself change when she’s near me; the effect is powerful. My body unclenches, my limbs grow heavy. All the tension I carry seems to melt away, taking with it my resolve; I become almost lethargic with relief.

I take a shallow breath.

“Hey,” she says again, touching her cool fingers to my face, grazing my cheek. “Who do I have to kill?”

I pull away, smiling faintly at the ground when I say, “Did you tell Nouria you wanted to postpone our wedding?”

Ella’s horror is immediate.

She sits back and stares at me, fear and shock and anger coalescing into a single, indistinguishable mass of feeling. I avert my eyes as she processes my question, but her reaction does quite a bit to ameliorate my headspace. Just until she says—

“Yes.”

I go unnaturally still.

“But Nouria wasn’t supposed to tell you that.”

I look up at her then. Ella is trying to hide her panic from me. She looks away, looks into her hands. I don’t understand what’s happening, and I say this out loud.

Ella can’t stop shaking her head. She clasps her hands tight. “Nouria wasn’t supposed to tell you that. That wasn’t—she wasn’t—”

“But it’s true.”

Ella meets my eyes. “It’s technically true, yes, but she shouldn’t have— She shouldn’t have been the one to say that to you. Nouria and I discussed this a couple of days ago. I’d said that if we couldn’t—if we couldn’t pull things together in time, that maybe, maybe we could wait—”

“Oh.” I squint up into the sky, searching for the sun.

“I was going to tell you myself,” she says, more quietly now. “I was just waiting to know . . . more. About how today might turn out. There were some unexpected setbacks this morning, which cost us a lot of time, but I was still hoping we’d be able to figure everything out. Everyone has been working really hard—Kenji told me there was a chance we could still pull it all together today, but if Nouria—”

“I see.” I push a hand through my hair, drag it down my neck. “So you discussed this with everyone? Everyone but me.”

“Aaron. I’m so sorry. This sounds horrible. I hear it—I hear myself saying it, and I hear how horrible it sounds.”

I take a deep, shaky breath. I don’t know what to do with my arms, or my legs. They feel prickly suddenly; all pins and needles. I want to tear them off my body.

I’m staring at the ground when I say, “Have you changed your mind? About marrying me?”

“No,” she says, the word and the emotional force behind it so potent I’m compelled to look up. I see the anguish in her eyes, and I feel it, too; she seems racked with guilt and resignation, an unusual combination of feelings I can’t parse. But her love for me is palpable. She takes my hands and the feeling magnifies, flooding my body with a relief so acute I want to lie down.

Something seems to unclench in my chest.

“I love you,” she whispers. “I love you so much. I just want to do this right—for both of us. I want you to have a beautiful wedding. I think it matters more to you than you think.”

“It doesn’t,” I say, shaking my head. “I don’t care, love. I don’t care about any of it. I just want you. I want you to be my family.”

She doesn’t argue with me. Instead, she squeezes my fingers as her emotions spiral, compound. I close my eyes against the force of it. When I finally look up again, her eyes are shining with unshed tears.

The sight drives a stake into my heart.

“No,” I whisper, brushing the backs of my fingers along her jaw, the skin there cold and silken. “Postpone the wedding for as long as you want. We can get married whenever you want, I don’t care.”

“Aaron—”

I move slowly at first, kissing her cheek and lingering there, pressing my face to the softness of her skin. There’s no one here but us. No thoughts but hers and mine. She touches my chest in response, sighing softly as she trails a hand up the back of my neck, into my hair.

My body responds before my mind has had a chance to catch up.

I take her face in my hands and kiss her like I’ve wanted to for days. Weeks. I nudge her mouth open and taste her, running my hands down her body now, drawing her closer.

Her desires consume me as they evolve, leaving me slightly intoxicated. It’s always a heady cocktail, experiencing her like this, feeling her emotions in real time. The harder I kiss her the more she wants, the more desperate her needs become. It’s dangerous; it makes it hard to think straight, to remember where we are.

She makes a sound when I kiss her neck, a soft moan followed by the whisper of my name, and the combination incites a riot in my body. My hands are under her sweater now, grazing the satin of her skin, the clasp of her bra, and she’s reaching for me, for the button of my pants, and I can hear, but choose to ignore, the distant voice in my head telling me that there has to be a better place for this— somewhere warmer, somewhere softer, somewhere that isn’t a graveyard—

The dog barks loudly, and Ella breaks away from me with a startled cry.

“Oh my God,” she says, clutching a hand to her chest. “I didn’t— Oh my God. Has the dog been here this whole time?”

I struggle to catch my breath. My heart is pounding in my chest. “Yes,” I say, still staring at her.

I pull her back into my arms, claiming her mouth with a single-minded focus that renders the moment surreal, even for me. She’s surprised for only a second before she goes soft in my arms, breaking open, kissing me back. I haven’t touched her like this in so long—we haven’t been together like this in so long—

Something registers in the back of my mind.

I break away, struggling once more to breathe, hoping the muted warning bell in my head was a mistake.

“What’s wrong?” Ella says, her hands going to my face. She’s still languid with pleasure, her thoughts undiluted by the noise that plagues me always. She kisses my throat, soft and slow. My eyes close.

“Nothing,” I whisper, wishing more than ever that we had a bedroom—or even a proper bed. “Nothing. I just thought I heard—”

“Oh my God. This is where you guys have been hiding?”

I go suddenly solid, ice chasing away the heat in my veins so fast I almost shudder.

“Crap,” Ella whispers.

“You two have no shame, huh? You were just going to desecrate a graveyard? Can’t even keep your clothes on in this freezing weather?”

“Kenji,” Ella says quietly. The word is a warning.

“What?” He crosses his arms. “I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: gross. I think I need to go bleach my eyes.”

I help Ella to her feet, drawing an arm around her waist. “What do you want?” I say to Kenji, entirely unable to rein in my anger.

“Nothing from you, buddy, thanks. I’m here because I need Juliette.”

“Why?” Ella and I ask at the same time.

Kenji blows out a breath, looking away once before looking back at Ella. Cryptically, he says, “I just need you to come with me, okay?”

“Oh.” Her eyes widen a fraction. “Okay.”

“What’s wrong?” I ask. “Do you need help?”

Ella shakes her head. I feel her apprehension, but she pastes on a smile. “No, it’s nothing—just boring stuff out on unregulated turf. We actually managed to track down one of the pre-Reestablishment city planners in this area, and he’s coming by to discuss our ideas.”

“Oh,” I say.

Ella is hiding something.

I can feel it—can feel that she’s not being entirely truthful. The realization provokes a sinking feeling in my gut that scares me.

“You won’t miss me, right?” Her smile is strained. “I know you always have a ton of stuff to do.”

“Yes.” I look away. “There’s always a great deal to accomplish.”

A pause. “So—I’ll see you tonight?”

“Tonight?” I glance at Ella, then the sun.

There are still hours left before nightfall, which means she intends to be gone for all of them. My mind is overrun with doubt. First our wedding, now this. I don’t understand why Ella isn’t being honest with me. I want to say something to her, to ask her a direct question, but not here, not in front of Kenji—

Ella’s emotions take a sudden turn.

I look up to find her staring at me now with concern, with a palpable fear—for me.

“Or I can stay here,” she says more quietly. “I don’t have to go anywhere.”

“Uh, yes, princess, you do—”

“Be quiet, Kenji.”

“We need you out there,” he insists, throwing his arms wide. “You have to be there—we can’t just deci—”

“Aaron,” Ella says, placing a hand on my chest. “Are you going to be okay?”

I stiffen, then step back.

The question inspires in me a reaction I do not admire. I bristle at the sympathy in her voice, at the thought that she might think me incapable of surviving a few hours on my own.

Understanding hits me with the force of a sledgehammer:

Ella thinks I am broken.

“I’ll be fine,” I say, unable to meet her eyes. “I have, as you said, a great deal to do.”

“Oh,” she says carefully. “Okay.”

I can still feel her studying me, and though I don’t know what she sees in my face, my expression appears to have convinced her that I won’t turn to dust in her absence. An approximation of the truth.

A tense silence stretches out between us.

“All right, great,” Ella finally says, all false brightness. “So, I’ll see you tonight? Or sooner— I mean, depending on how quickly I can—”

Kenji makes a sound; something like a choked laugh. “Yeah, if I were you, I’d clear my schedule.”

“Love,” I say quietly. “Are you sure everything is okay?”

“Absolutely,” she says, straining to smile wider. She squeezes my hand, kissing me briefly before pulling away. “I promise. I’ll be back as soon as I can.”

Ella is still lying. It hits me like a blow.

“Hey, sorry about the wedding, man,” Kenji says, making a face. “Who knew the downside of overthrowing a corrupt government was that we’d have absolutely no free time?”

I swallow, hard, ignoring the fresh vise around my chest. “I see everyone already knows about that.”

“Yeah, I mean, it was J’s idea to postpone. There’s just so much to do, and trying to have the wedding at night was going to be really complicated, and she thought it would be better to jus—”

“Kenji,” she says sharply. She shoots him a look I can’t entirely decipher, but her anger surprises me.

“My bad, princess.” Kenji holds up both hands. “My bad. I didn’t realize it was controversial to let the groom know what was happening with his own wedding, but I guess I just don’t know how weddings work, do I?” He says that last part with an edge, irritation souring his expression.

I have no idea what’s going on between them.

Ella rolls her eyes, more frustrated with Kenji than I’ve ever seen her. She practically stomps toward him, hugging herself against the cold. I hear her mutter, “You’re going to pay for that,” before they’re off, the two of them disappearing into the distance without a backward glance.

Without me.

I stand there for so long after they’re gone that the sun finally moves toward the horizon, taking with it any lingering warmth. I shiver slightly as the temperatures plummet, but I can ignore the cold. I cannot, however, seem to ignore the dull ache in my chest.

When I woke up this morning I’d thought this would be the happiest day of my life. Instead, as the day approaches dusk—

I feel hollow.

The dog barks suddenly, a series of sharp yaps in a row. When I turn to face the creature it makes an altogether different sound, something like a growl, and jumps up enthusiastically, lifting its paws to my pant leg. I give the animal a firm look, indicating with my index finger that it should disengage immediately. It sinks, slowly, back onto its feet, tail wagging.

Another bark.

I sigh at the sight of its eager, upturned face. “I suppose I shouldn’t be ungrateful. You seem to be the only one interested in my company today.”

A bark.

“Very well. You may come with me.”

The dog rises up onto all four legs, panting, tail wagging harder.

“But if you defecate on any interior surface—or chew up my boots, or urinate on my clothes—I will put you right back outside. You will hold your bowel movements until you are a considerable distance away from me. Is that clear?”

Another responding bark.

“Good,” I say, and walk away.

The dog chases after me so quickly its snout bumps my heels. I listen to the sound of its paws hitting the ground; I can hear it breathing, sniffing the earth.

“First,” I tell it, “someone needs to give you a bath. Not me, obviously. But someone.”

The dog gives an aggressive, eager yap at that, and I realize with a start that I’m able to get a bead on its emotions. The reading, however, is imprecise; the creature doesn’t always understand what I’m saying, so its emotional responses are inconsistent. But I see now that the dog understands essential truths.

For some inexplicable reason, this animal trusts me. More perplexing: my earlier declaration made it happy.

I don’t know much about dogs, but I’ve never heard of one that enjoyed being bathed. Though it occurs to me then that if the animal understood the word bath, it must once have had an owner.

I come to a sudden stop, turning to study the creature: its matted brown fur, its half-eaten ear. It pauses when I do, lifting a leg to scratch behind its head in an undignified manner.

I see now that it’s a boy.

Otherwise, I have no idea what kind of dog this is; I wouldn’t even know how to begin classifying his species. He’s obviously some kind of mutt, and he’s either young, or naturally small. He has no collar. He’s clearly underfed. And yet, a single glance at its nether regions confirmed that the animal had been neutered. He must’ve once had a proper home. A family. Though he likely lost his owner some time ago to have been reduced to this half-feral state.

I’m compelled to wonder, then, what happened.

I meet the dog’s deep, dark eyes. We’re both quiet, assessing each other. “You mean to tell me that you like the idea of taking a bath?”

Another happy bark.

“How strange,” I say, turning once more down the path. “So do I.”