Imagine Me (Shatter Me, #6)

by Tahereh Mafi

Warner’s eyes go flinty. Electric. That scary kind of crazy. “Every single time you claim to understand even a fraction of what I’m feeling, I want to disembowel you. I want to sever your carotid artery. I want to rip out your vertebrae, one by one. You have no idea what it is to love her,” he says angrily. “You couldn’t even begin to imagine. So stop trying to understand.”

I imagine love, I imagine wind, I imagine gold hair and green eyes and whispers, laughter

“Your thoughts are very loud,” Warner says, still staring out the window. “Oh my God, I’m so sorry,” I say, feigning shock. “I’d turn the volume down, but I’d have to die in order for my brain to stop working.” “A problem easily rectified,” he mutters. “I heard that.” “I meant for you to hear that.”

“You know, sometimes I wish I could remove the part of my brain that stores the things you say to me.”

He smiles and I stare—two dimples, straight teeth, shining eyes. A sudden, incomprehensible heat rushes across my skin, sets me aflame. I feel violently hot. Sick with fever. Finally, he says: “So you are in there.”

And this time, when I look up, I see his face. “Aaron,” I gasp. He drops to his knees.

To the world, she is formidable. To me? She is the world.