Ignite Me (Shatter Me, #3)

by Tahereh Mafi

I’ve never felt so safe or so relieved to be beside him. I never thought I could feel this way with him.

“God, the only reason I’m not going to kill Kent for this is because I know it would only upset you more.”

“I don’t think you’re crazy.” The world is blurring away as I watch it through the window. “And I don’t think you’re a psychopath. I also don’t think you’re a sick, twisted monster. I don’t think you’re a heartless murderer, and I don’t think you deserve to die, and I don’t think you’re pathetic. Or stupid. Or a coward. I don’t think you’re any of the things people have said about you.” I turn to look at him. Warner is staring out the windshield. “You don’t?” His voice is so soft and so scared I can scarcely hear it. “No,” I say. “I don’t. And I just thought you should know. I’m not trying to fix you; I don’t think you need to be fixed. I’m not trying to turn you into someone else. I only want you to be who you really are. Because I think I know the real you. I think I’ve seen him.” Warner says nothing, his chest rising and falling. “I don’t care what anyone else says about you,” I tell him. “I think you’re a good person.”

And Warner, to me, is no longer something to be afraid of.

It was always him. All along.

Of course I thought I was in love.

Maybe we both fell in love with the illusion of something more.

“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—”

“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.”

“I think you need a girlfriend.” “Nah,” he says. “I just need a hug. From my friend.”

“I am doing my best, love. But I don’t know how to be just your friend.”

I can’t stop staring. I don’t think I’ve ever been more attracted to him in all the time I’ve known him.

“Oh,” he says, surprised. “No. Though I’ve always been very good at everything I do.”

Warner actually laughs. Out loud.

And yeah, Adam is a good guy. He really is. But just because he’s a good guy doesn’t make him the right guy for me.”

“I want Adam to be happy, Kenji, I really do. But he and I would end up like water going nowhere.” “What do you mean . . . ?” “Water that never moves,” I say to him. “It’s fine for a little while. You can drink from it and it’ll sustain you. But if it sits too long it goes bad. It grows stale. It becomes toxic.” I shake my head. “I need waves. I need waterfalls. I want rushing currents.”

“You really want me to hurt you?” I ask him, eyes narrowing. “I don’t think you can,” he says. “I think you’re pretty cocky about that.” “Prove me wrong, love.” He raises an eyebrow at me. “Please.”

“Focus, love.”

And I’m so surprised that for a moment I don’t know what to do. I’m caught in his eyes.

I finally look away, catching a glimpse of Adam in the process. He looks pissed.

Good. Screw Adam 🤬

I miss him.

“Aaron?” “Yes, love.”

“It’s the only gift,” he says, “anyone has ever given to me.”

“Watch your legs, love,”

He smiles at the ground.

Warner is late.

Uh oh.

His face is the picture of so much pain. I almost can’t breathe. An earthquake hits my heart then, cracks it right down the middle. And I think here, in him, there is more feeling than any one person should ever have to contain.

I hold my fingers to my mouth, still so afraid to speak. I do so much with these lips, I think. I taste and touch and kiss and I’ve pressed them to the tender parts of his skin and I’ve made promises and told lies and touched lives all with these two lips and the words they form, the shapes and sounds they curve around. But right now my lips wish he would just read my mind because the truth is I’ve been hoping I’d never have to say any of it, these thoughts, out loud.

“I do want you,” I say to him, my voice shaking. “I want you so much it scares me.”

“I love you,” I whisper. “I love you exactly as you are.”

Stop. Stop time. Stop the world. Stop everything for the moment he crosses the room and pulls me into his arms and pins me against the wall and I’m spinning and standing and not even breathing but I’m alive so alive so very very alive

“Lift your hips for me, love,”

He’s on his knees.

It’s the kind of kiss that inspires stars to climb into the sky and light up the world. The kind that takes forever and no time at all.

“I think,” he says, “my heart is going to explode,” and I wish, more than ever, that I knew how to capture moments like these and revisit them forever. Because this. This is everything.

I feel like I’ve been split open and stuffed with sunshine. I’ve never seen a sleepy Warner before. Never woken up in his arms. Never seen him be anything but awake and alert and sharp. He looks almost lazy right now. It’s adorable.

“Good morning, sweetheart.”

God, he looks so good without his clothes on.

And just because you’re bound by blood does not make you a family.

“Don’t feel bad,” he says, serious so suddenly. “You can have anything of mine you want. You can have all of it.”

Warner’s hand is on my back. He leans in, whispers, “How easy is it to take this thing off?” and I force myself not to look at him and the smile he’s surely enjoying at my expense. I hate that he can still make me blush.

“Aaron?” “Yes, love.”

“I will be here every night,” he whispers, his words so soft, so tortured, “to keep you warm. I will kiss you until I can’t keep my eyes open.”

I want you to make a list of all of your favorite things, and I want to be on it.

“That all of this,” he says, “these moments, will be confirmed as some kind of extraordinary dream? But then I hear you speak to me,” he says. “I see the way you look at me and I can feel how real it is. I can feel the truth in your emotions, and in the way you touch me,”

“Aaron,” I whisper. “I love you,” he says.

h e l l i s e m p t y a n d a l l t h e d e v i l s a r e h e r e

“Breathe, sweetheart.” He stands in front of me, slips his hands around my face. His eyes are bright, intense, steady, and so full of confidence. In me. “You are magnificent. You are extraordinary.”

“Ignite, my love. Ignite.”

“Juliette, love,” he says to me, still holding my eyes. “You have just started a war.”