Shatter-Me-PDF-Shatter-Me-Series-Shatter-Me-Shatter-Me-1-Tahereh-Mafi (1)

I scared him away.
I close the door behind me and my hands are shaking as I
unfurl the familiar papers bound together by old glue. I flip
through the pages to make sure they’re all there and my
eyes land on my most recent entry. At the very bottom there
is a shift. A new sentence not written in my handwriting.
A new sentence that must’ve come from him.
It’s not what you think.
I stand perfectly still.
Every inch of my skin is taut with tension, fraught with
feeling and the pressure is building in my chest, pounding
louder and faster and harder, overcompensating for my
stillness. I do not tremble when I’m frozen in time. I train my
breaths to come slower, I count things that do not exist, I
make up numbers I do not have, I pretend time is a broken
hourglass bleeding seconds through sand. I dare to believe.
I dare to hope Adam is trying to reach out to me. I’m crazy
enough to consider the possibility.
I rip the page out of the small notebook and clutch it close,
actively swallowing the hysteria tickling every broken
moment in my mind.
I hide the notebook in a pocket of the purple dress. The
pocket Adam must’ve slipped it into. The pocket it must’ve
fallen out of. The pocket of the purple dress. The pocket of
the purple dress.
Hope is a pocket of possibility.
I’m holding it in my hand.
Warner is not late.
He doesn’t knock, either.
I’m slipping on my shoes when he walks in without a single
word, without even an effort to make his presence known.
His eyes are falling all over my frame. My jaw tightens on its
own.
“You hurt him,” I find myself saying.