Unravel Me: The Juliette Chronicles Book 2

it.”
    And I realize something. “Your arm,” I breathe, astonished. He wears no sling. He moves with no difficulty. There’s no bruising or swelling or scars I can see.
    His smile is brittle. “Yes,” he says. “It was healed when I woke up to find myself in this room.”
    Sonya and Sara. They helped him. I wonder why anyone here would do him such a kindness. I force myself to take a step back. “Please,” I tell him. “My notebook, I—”
    “I promise you,” he says, “I never would’ve kissed you if I didn’t think you wanted me to.”
    And I’m so shocked that for a moment I forget all about my notebook. I meet his heavy gaze. Manage to steady my voice. “I told you I hated you.”
    “Yes,” he says. He nods. “Well. You’d be surprised how many people say that to me.”
    “I don’t think I would.”
    His lips twitch. “You tried to kill me.”
    “That amuses you.”
    “Oh yes,” he says, his grin growing. “I find it fascinating.” A pause. “Would you like to know why?”
    I stare at him.
    “Because all you ever said to me,” he explains, “was that you didn’t want to hurt anyone. You didn’t want to murder people. ”
    “I don’t.”
    “Except for me?”
    I’m all out of letters. Fresh out of words. Someone has robbed me of my entire vocabulary.
    “That decision was so easy for you to make,” he says. “So simple. You had a gun. You wanted to run away. You pulled the trigger. That was it.”
    He’s right.
    I keep telling myself I have no interest in killing people but somehow I find a way to justify it, to rationalize it when I want to.
    Warner. Castle. Anderson.
    I wanted to kill every single one of them. And I would have.
    What is happening to me.
    I’ve made a huge mistake coming here. Accepting this assignment. Because I can’t be alone with Warner. Not like this. Being alone with him is making my insides hurt in ways I don’t want to understand.
    I have to leave.
    “Don’t go,” he whispers, eyes on my notebook again. “Please,” he says. “Sit with me. Stay with me. I just want to see you. You don’t even have to say anything.”
    Some crazed, confused part of my brain actually wants to sit down next to him, actually wants to hear what he has to say before I remember Adam and what he would think if he knew, what he would say if he were here and could see I was interested in spending my time with the same person who shot him in the leg, broke his ribs, and hung him on a conveyor belt in an abandoned slaughterhouse, leaving him to bleed to death one minute at a time.
    I must be insane.
    Still, I don’t move.
    Warner relaxes against the wall. “Would you like me to read to you?”
    I’m shaking my head over and over and over again, whispering, “Why are you doing this to me?”
    And he looks like he’s about to respond before he changes his mind. Looks away. Lifts his eyes to the ceiling and smiles, just a tiny bit. “You know,” he says, “I could tell, the very first day I met you. There was something about you that felt different to me. Something in your eyes that was so tender. Raw. Like you hadn’t yet learned how to hide your heart from the world.” He’s nodding now, nodding to himself about something and I can’t imagine what it is. “Finding this,” he says, his voice soft as he pats the cover of my notebook, “was so”—his eyebrows pull together—“it was so extraordinarily painful.” He finally looks at me and he looks like a completely different person. Like he’s trying to solve a tremendously difficult equation. “It was like meeting a friend for the very first time.”
    Why are my hands trembling.
    He takes a deep breath. Looks down. Whispers, “I am so tired, love. I’m so very, very tired.”
    Why won’t my heart stop racing.
    “How much time,” he says after a moment, “do I have before they kill me?”
    “Kill you?”
    He stares at me.
    I’m startled into speaking. “We’re not going to kill you,” I tell him. “We have no intention of hurting you. We just want to use you to get back our men. We’re holding you hostage.”
    Warner’s eyes go wide, his shoulders stiffen. “What?”
    “We have no reason to kill you,” I explain. “We only need to barter with your life—”
    Warner laughs a loud, full-bodied laugh. Shakes his head. Smiles at me in that way I’ve only ever seen once before, looking at me like I’m the sweetest thing he’s ever decided to eat.
    Those dimples .
    “Dear, sweet,