THIRTY-SEVEN
“You didn’t tell me what you thought of my plan.”
Warner and I have just stepped back into his room and he still hasn’t said a word to me. He’s standing by the door to his office, his eyes on the floor. “I didn’t realize you wanted my opinion.”
“Of course I want your opinion.”
“I should really get back to work,” he says, and turns to go.
I touch his arm.
Warner goes rigid. He stands, unmoving, his eyes trained on the hand I’ve placed on his forearm.
“Please,” I whisper. “I don’t want it to be like this with us. I want us to be able to talk. To get to know each other again, properly—to be friends—”
Warner makes a strange sound deep in his throat. Puts a few feet between us. “I am doing my best, love. But I don’t know how to be just your friend.”
“It doesn’t have to be all or nothing,” I try to tell him. “There can be steps in between—I just need time to understand you like this—as a different person—”
“But that’s just it.” His voice is worn thin. “You need time to understand me as a different person. You need time to fix your perception of me.”
“Why is that so wrong—”
“Because I am not a different person,” he says firmly. “I am the same man I’ve always been and I have never tried to be different. You have misunderstood me, Juliette. You’ve judged me, you’ve perceived me to be something I am not, but that is no fault of mine. I have not changed, and I will not change—”
“You already have.”
His jaw clenches. “You have quite a lot of gall to speak with such conviction on matters you know nothing about.”
I swallow, hard.
Warner steps so close to me I’m actually afraid to move. “You once accused me of not knowing the meaning of love,” he says. “But you were wrong. You fault me, perhaps, for loving you too much.” His eyes are so intense. So green. So cold. “But at least I do not deny my own heart.”
“And you think I do,” I whisper.
Warner drops his eyes. Says nothing.
“What you don’t understand,” I tell him, my voice catching, “is that I don’t even know my own heart anymore. I don’t know how to name what I feel yet and I need time to figure it out. You want more right now but right now what I need is for you to be my friend—”
Warner flinches.
“I do not have friends,” he says.
“Why can’t you try?”
He shakes his head.
“Why? Why not give it a chance—”
“Because I am afraid,” he finally says, voice shaking, “that your friendship would be the end of me.”
I’m still frozen in place as his office door slams shut behind him.
THIRTY-EIGHT
I never thought I’d see Warner in sweatpants.
Or sneakers.
And right now, he’s wearing both. Plus a T-shirt.
Now that our group is staying in Warner’s training facilities, I have a reason to tag along as he starts his day. I always knew he spent a lot of time working, but I never knew how much of his time was spent working out. He’s so disciplined, so precise about everything. It amazes me.
He starts his mornings on a stationary bike, ends his evenings with a run on the treadmill. And every weekday he works out a different part of his body.
“Mondays are for legs,” I heard him explain to Castle. “Tuesdays I work chest. Wednesdays I work my shoulders and my back. Thursdays are for triceps and deltoids. Fridays are for biceps and forearms. And every day is for abdominals and cardio. I also spend most weekends doing target practice,” he said.
Today is Tuesday.
Which means right now, I’m watching him bench-press three hundred and fifteen pounds. Three forty-five-pound plates on each side of what Kenji told me is called an Olympic bar, which weighs an additional forty-five pounds. 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.
Kenji pulls up next to me. Nods at Warner. “So this gets you going, huh?”
I’m mortified.
Kenji barks out a laugh.
“I’ve never seen him in sweatpants before.” I try to sound normal. “I’ve never even seen him in shorts.”
Kenji raises an eyebrow at me. “I bet you’ve seen him in less.”
I want to die.
Kenji and I are supposed to spend this next month training. That’s the plan. I need to train enough to fight and use my strength without being overpowered ever again. This isn’t the kind of situation we can go into without absolute confidence, and since I’m supposed to be leading the mission, I still have a lot of work to do. I need to be able to access my energy in an instant, and I need to be able to moderate the amount of power I exert at any given time. In other words: I need to achieve absolute mastery over my ability.
Kenji is also training in his own way; he wants to perfect his skill in projecting; he wants to be able to do it without having to make direct contact with another person. But he and I are the only ones who have any real work to do. Castle has been in control of himself for decades now, and everyone else has fairly straightforward skills that they’ve very naturally adapted to. In my case, I have seventeen years of psychological trauma to undo.
I need to break down these self-made walls.
Today, Kenji’s starting small. He wants me to move a dumbbell across the room through sheer force of will. But all I’ve managed to do was make it twitch. And I’m not even sure that was me.
“You’re not focusing,” Kenji says to me. “You need to connect—find your core and pull from within,” he’s saying. “You have to, like, literally pull it out of yourself and then push it out around you, J. It’s only difficult in the beginning,” he says, “because your body is so used to containing the energy. In your case it’s going to be even harder, because you’ve spent your whole life bottling it up. You have to give yourself permission to let it go. Let down your guard. Find it. Harness it. Release it.”
He gives me the same speech, over and over again.
And I keep trying, over and over again.
I count to three.
I close my eyes and try to really, truly focus this time. I listen to the sudden urge to lift my arms, planting my feet firmly on the floor. I blow out a breath. Squeeze my eyes shut tighter. I feel the energy surging up, through my bones, my blood, raging and rising until it culminates into a mass so potent I can no longer contain it. I know it needs release, and needs it now.
But how?
Before, I always thought I needed to touch something to let the power out.
It never occurred to me to throw the energy into a stationary object. I thought my hands were the final destination; I never considered using them as a transmitter, as a medium for the energy to pass through. But I’m just now realizing that I can try to push it out through my hands—through my skin. And maybe, if I’m strong enough, I might be able to learn to manipulate the power in midair, forcing it to move whichever way I want.
My sudden realization gives me a renewed burst of confidence. I’m excited now, eager to see if my theory is correct. I steel myself, feeling the rush of power flood through me again. My shoulders tense as the energy coats my hands, my wrists, my forearms. It feels so warm, so intense, almost like it’s a tangible thing; the kind of power that could tangle in my fingers.
I curl my fists.
Pull back my arms.
And then fling them forward, opening my hands at the same time.
Silence.
I squint one eye open, sneaking a look at the dumbbell still sitting in the same spot.
Sigh.
“GET DOWN,” Kenji shouts, yanking me backward and shoving me face-first onto the floor.
I can hear everyone shouting and thudding to the ground around us. I crane my neck up only to see that they’ve all got their hands over their heads, faces covered; I try to look around.
Panic seizes me by the throat.