I'm flying.

Kissing her, all over. I'm tethered to the ground only by her touch, her soft, beautiful lips on mine.

My breathing is ragged, urgent. I need her. I want to take her and envelop her, ignite her.

She can feel it. The desperation, the ache, the need growing between us. I know because I can feel her every thought. The frayed edges of her heart are reaching out to me, knitting themselves with the jagged edges of my own. I'm consuming her desire and it is bursting out of me at the seams.

I've never felt anything like it. There have been other women. Meaningless encounters driven by lust or a need to escape. But suddenly I can't remember who or why. This feeling is completely new. There is no one else in the entire world. It is me and her. And I barely remember my own name. All I can think about is surrendering myself completely to her pleasure. She fills me with charge of electricity I have never known.

She is clinging to me, hands clenched behind my neck. I kiss her everywhere. I want to taste every inch of her. Ecstasy. I feel impervious, euphoric, indestructible. This time it has nothing to do with Juliette's power, and everything to do with her hands threading through my hair as she kisses me.
Bliss. I've rarely enjoyed more than a few brief moments of happiness in my life, which were short-lived and soon subdued by the harsh reality of my life. Nothing has ever come close to this. My soul is pulling her feelings from her, combining them with my own love. The few walls I had left around my heart have crumbled, nothing holding it inside me anymore. I am giving it to her, every beat, for the rest of my life. Completely vulnerable. I look at her and it must be written on my face.

"Juliette."

She closes her eyes, a rush of pleasure shooting from her heart to mine.

"I don't want you to call me Warner anymore. I want you to know me. I don't want to be Warner with you. I want it to be different now. I want you to call me Aaron."

Time freezes as I fill my heart with this moment, steal it from eternity. Love has overwhelmed me, shut down my defenses. I can feel her longing, her elation, it is overwhelming as I drink her in, my heart

Building,

Soaring,

Bursting…

Falling.

Ripping.

"Adam," she whispers.

Shattering.

Agony.

My arms ache as the weight of her presence lifts away from me, out of reach.

Hatred, self-loathing, despair.

My thoughts are not my own. My feelings are not my own.

She has reached inside me and I can't breathe. I can't stop drinking her in, her anguish. I can't break this connection with her and it is killing me.

My heart is shuddering and I clutch my hand over it, searching for the knife that must have been driven into me.

I try to stand, but I am shaking. I'm being consumed by the combination of her pain and my own, drowning underneath it. We were meshed so closely I can't seem to separate her feelings from mine, and I feel my heart ripping from my chest. I must be dying.

I'm shaking my head, trying to get her out of it. Her mind is being filled with a new pain, a new want. Every cell on my body is on fire, my skin is prickling with agony. It is shredding me, destroying me.

I stare at my hands, unsure whether I am still alive.

"What is happening to me?" I whisper. "Am I dreaming?"

I reach out to her with my soul, frantic to restore a piece of myself. She is floundering in confusion and heartbreak mirroring my own.

But

I feel it. Regret, resolve.

"You're choosing him?" I am going to collapse under the hurricane that just passed through me. My heart was so intertwined with hers that it has fractured, a part has died. "Is that what just happened? You're choosing Kent over me?" I'm panicking, trying to find any semblance of myself but I can't hold on, I've given all of the pieces away. "Because I don't think I understand what just happened and I need you to say something. I need you to tell me what the hell is happening to me right now."

Just when I thought I couldn't fall further into the sinking pit of reality, her words pull me deeper. "No. No, I'm not choosing anyone—I'm not—I'm n-not—"

"Why? Because he's the safer choice for you? Because you think you owe him something? You are making a mistake," My tone is rising too fast and I am afraid for how much I sound like my father. "You're scared. You don't want to make the difficult choice and you're running away from me."

"Maybe I just d-don't want to be with you."

"I know you want to be with me!" I explode, the world crashing around me.

"You're wrong."

The words strike me harder than my father ever has. She's lying. I shake my head, trying to clear it. She had wanted me, right? Had I wanted this so badly I had imagined her feelings for me? I stare into her eyes, trying to read her, not trusting myself.
I step closer. "Really?"

"Y-yes," she stutters. Another lie. Because I feel the desire in her even now. My anger is set to implode and I take a deep breath and another step towards her.

"So I'm wrong." I whisper, "I'm wrong that you want me. That you want to be with me." I run my fingers down her body and she is trembling with longing, a need I know I can fill in her. "Tell me something, love. Am I blind, too?" Her ragged breathing fills the silence between us.

"I will not be your clown!" I pull away, rubbing my eyes, willing myself to wake up from this nightmare. She knew how I felt about her. Did she want to see how far I would go, how close I would allow her to become? Was she looking for the thrill of a bad boy before she ran off to her perfect Adam? "I will not allow you to make a mockery of my feelings for you! I could respect your decision to shoot me, Juliette, but doing this—doing—doing what you just did—" She has broken me. I can feel it, a fissure cracking the part of me that makes me who I am. Because I had given her everything, every part of me. I had unlocked my heart and given her the key and she had used it as a weapon against me.

She doesn't want Adam. She can't. I've never been so wrong about a person's feelings before. She wants me and is scared of what that means.

I feel like my head is going to explode, I'm losing my mind. "It's the play of a coward. I thought you were so much better than that."

"I'm not a coward—"

"Then be honest with yourself!" I choke on the lump building in my throat. "Be honest with me! Tell me the truth!"

Anger. "The truth is that I never know what to think of you! Your actions, your behavior—you're never consistent! You're horrible to me and then you're kind to me and you tell me you love me and then you hurt the ones I care most about!"

The ones I care most about. Adam. Not me.

"And you're a liar," she is moving further away now, distancing herself from her mistake. "You say you don't care about what you do—you say you don't care about other people and what you've done to them but I don't believe it. I think you're hiding. I think the real you is hiding underneath all of the destruction and I think you're better than this life you've chosen for yourself. I think you can change. I think you could be different. " A knot forms in my stomach. I'm not good enough for her. Deep down, I knew this, but I thought she had seen something no one else could.

I stand slack jawed, as she paces in a tight circle in front of me, waving her hands wildly. "And I feel sorry for you! I'm sorry for your horrible childhood. I'm sorry you have such a miserable, worthless father and I'm sorry no one ever took a chance on you. I'm sorry for the terrible decisions you've made. I'm sorry that you feel trapped by them, that you think of yourself as a monster who can't be changed. But most of all… most of all I'm sorry that you have no mercy for yourself!"

I cringe. I knew she was different from all the others in her lack of hatred. But I thought… I assumed…

This was worse.

"You pity me," The words seem so strange coming out of my mouth. No one has ever pitied me and it hates how weak it makes me feel. She couldn't possibly imagine the terrible crimes I've committed, has no way to know how little I deserve anyone's sympathy. "You think I'm some kind of broken project you can repair."
She is standing frozen now. Regret. She regrets letting me in here, allowing me to kiss her. She can't wait to get back to Kent. "No—I didn't—"

"You have no idea what I've done!" I'm trying to keep my voice controlled, but my fury is leaking out. "You have no idea what I've seen, what I've had to be a part of. You have no idea what I'm capable of or how much mercy I deserve. I know my own heart. I know who I am. Don't you dare pity me!"

I pause, speaking mostly to myself. "I thought you could love me for me," I want to laugh at the ridiculousness of it now. How could she ever love me? She just felt bad for me, felt it was her duty to try and fix me. "I thought you would be the one person in this godforsaken world who would accept me as I am! I thought you, of all people, would understand." I knew she had also hated herself, the words in her journal were so strikingly similar to my own mind. But she thinks I'm weak, that she can fix me. And I thought she actually wanted to be with me. "I was wrong. I was so horribly, horribly wrong."

I pull away, shaking with anger, mostly at my own stupidity. My shirt is lying on the floor and I am tempted to laugh at how quickly this night had turned against me, how incredibly naïve and confident I had been when I walked into this room.

I'm heading to the door when her touch sears my arm. "Please—that's not what I meant—"

I spin around, "I do not want your sympathy!"

"I wasn't trying to hurt you—"

And she wasn't. She was honestly telling me how she felt, which made it all worse. "The truth is a painful reminder of why I prefer to live among the lies." I look into her eyes, searching her face. How was I so wrong about her feelings for me? I have crashed so hard into reality and I have never felt so alone. Before, I didn't know what I was missing, but now I have held her in my arms and felt so blissfully happy and it feels like the small piece of myself I have shielded from the world all these years is gone. Now I'm just the empty shell of the monster my father has created, no facade of a heart remaining.

I glance at the door and pain washes over me. Even now, after she has chosen another, truly destroyed me, I know separating myself from her will tear a hole in me that can never be filled.

Am I really going to leave her here to die in a hopeless battle? I still want to save her, even if she can't be mine. I open my mouth to say something before pressing my lips together. She isn't mine to protect, she is Kent's. There is nothing left for me to say, no words will make her mine again.
My chest is so tight it almost doesn't allow me to take a breath and I turn back towards the door. "Good-bye, Juliette."

I try to block it out her sizzling energy. I don't want to know what she is feeling about me now. Her words stop me before I reach the exit. "I won't see you again."

I'm suffocating because she is my oxygen and I am in short supply. I glance up to her wide, distraught eyes but turn away, unable to look at what I thought I'd had. Never seeing her again might be a life sentence, but I think if I am faced with her once more it might be worse than death. My voice trembles as I stare at the wall, "I certainly hope not."

And I walk out the door.

A/N: Well that was incredibly painful to write!

"Adam" - The most heartbreaking word ever!

Like I've said before, I plan to write this through to the end of Unravel Me. So we will see where Warner goes before he is called back to his mom's house.

Let me know what you think! Every comment/fav/follow motivates me to keep writing!