Awake (Book 3)

Twenty-One

I had been shot. I had been stabbed. I had fallen through a floor and dislocated my arm. I had burned my hands. I had been in a house that literally exploded, and succumbed to mild hypothermia. I had nearly died multiple times.

            That was why this did not make sense.

            August’s betrayal was not supposed to hurt more than any of those.

            But it did. Pain and depression curled me into a ball and furrowed my pathetic body beneath the heavy blanket. Shame drew tears from my eyes. Stubbornness ignored August’s protests and apologies. Eventually he stopped passing by my room. Stopped beating on my door. Stopped begging for me to understand.

            And I was alone.

            Like I should be.

            With nothing else to do, and nothing my body wanted to do, I was forced to ruminate. On everything. My fake hometown. My fake parents. Meeting August at Yale and parting ways, and returning to my hometown to find Jim . . .

            Who was probably waiting for you, not because Tia asked him to care for you, but because the government wanted him to keep an eye on you.

            And I wondered, did Jim and Esme ever really care? Did they ever really see me as anything other than an assignment?

            I recollected Jim’s warning about falling for August, and everything began to make sense. All the pieces began to fit together. He knew of our place, which wasn’t together, and tried to keep it that way. To divide us. To keep me ignorant and driven and inhumane.

            The facts were simple, and obvious to anyone looking on. August opened my eyes and shed light on my black soul, in more ways than one, and without him, I could succumb to the darkness. To the evil. Maybe it was sad, maybe it was evidence of a crucially-flawed soul, but that was just how it was. And everybody knew it.

            Even Jim. Even Esme.

            Everybody.

            “Ellie.”

            Her voice sent unwanted shivers down my spine.

            “Ellie.”

            “Go away.”

            “Ellie, we need to talk. We never finished our conversation.”

            An unladylike snort gurgled from my throat. “We didn’t have to. I learned all that I needed to know. Leave me alone.”

            I didn’t have to see her face to know she was growing impatient. “Open this door right now, or I will get someone to break it down.”

            “I’ll be waiting, then.”

            She tried to hide her exasperated sigh, but I definitely heard it. Silence followed, and then moments later the door slammed against the wall, and Liz’s agitating heels clopped into the room, resembling a freaking horse and grating at my nerves. “Well,” she huffed, wrenching the blankets away from my face. “That was unnecessary.”

            I pinned her with the most murderous glare I could muster in my depressed state, and rolled over.

            “Ellie, please. I need to check your wound, and we need to finish our conversation.”