“You’re right,” he says. “Because you wouldn’t return my texts. You wouldn’t even have a conversation with me. You’re... you’re fucking me up, Tate.”
My heart aches at his words. This isn’t good for him, this sort of emotional shrapnel. He needs time, and if I’m honest, he probably needs distance. Even when I’m trying to make things better for him, I make it worse. I can’t hold his gaze.
“Forget I said anything,” I murmur, and stand up from the chair.
“No,” he snaps. “You don’t get to do that. You don’t get to just throw words out there and then try to take them back. What do you expect me to do with this information? What did youwantme to do?”
“I don’t know.”
“Sure you do. What did you think would happen?”
I don’t want to admit it because it makes me seem manipulative, but I can’t lie to him again. “I thought you’d tell me you love me too,” I admit.
Wes stares at me, and I’m at once exposed and hopeful. He licks his lips, his dimples deepening, and then he shakes his head.
“That’s not how this is going to go, Tatum,” he says coolly. “I’m sorry.”
It’s like a pile of bricks drops on my chest, but I nod, trying not to look as bowled over as I feel. Wes has every right to reject me, especially now. This is the way it was always supposed to end, with him moving on. I have to let him.
“I’m sorry,” I say again, and turn to cross through the library.
The girl who’d been watching us smiles as she texts something into her phone. I can’t help but wonder what she’s saying about us. And then there’s a small voice that says maybe she wasn’t watching for gossip.
Maybe she was watching us for The Program.
I go to my locker, fighting back tears. What started as empowering feels more like devastation, and I deserve all of it. I should have been clear from the start or avoided him. Instead, I’ve strung Wes along. Why should he believe me at this point? The only Tatum he knows is a liar.
I lean my head against the cool metal of my locker. In the quiet hallway, I try to retreat into a happy memory of the two of us. Wes’s arms around me. His lips at my ear, whispering that he would do anything for me. How pure it felt.
But are any of those memories even real, or have they all been strategically placed by an Adjustment? I squeeze my eyes shut, the idea too disturbing. I just want to go back, go back to before the doctors took it all. The good, the bad. I want to remember. I just want somethingreal.
There’s an itch, a pinhole of pain in my temple that suddenly and violently expands. I straighten, startled by it, but the hallway begins to tunnel, my vision blurs. I groan and push the heel of my palm against the side of my head.
The world is smashed like a ceramic plate, and I fall backward... and into a memory.
•••
And I was standing in the leisure room of The Program, wearing stiff lemon-yellow scrubs.
CHAPTER TWO
“ARE YOU GOING TO PLAYor not?” Michael Realm asked, a pretzel rod bit between his teeth. “It’s your turn.”
The leisure room swam around me, and I didn’t see how it could be my turn when I wasn’t even playing their game. But the drugs Nurse Kell had given me made everything seem heightened, surreal. Like I was walking through a dream.
I sat down at the table, and Realm tossed me some cards, which I fanned out. I hadn’t played bullshit since middle school, but I remembered the basic concept.
“I’ll go,” the guy next to me said.
“No, Derek,” Realm said, pulling out the pretzel rod to point it at him. “We always let the pretty girls go first.” Realm smiled at me, but I didn’t return it. I kept watching him, sensing something off.
Derek groaned, and when I turned to him, he peeked at me as if from behind a curtain. I got the sense that he was faking—faking sick or faking well, I couldn’t decide. But his dark eyes scanned me, and I didn’t like their predatory nature. The way they paused where they shouldn’t.
“Fuck off,” I said under my breath. He had a spark of anger, glancing once at Realm before going back to his cards. Realm’s glare was deadly.
“Oh, shit,” the kid next to Derek said, motioning across the room.
“What’s up, Shep?” Realm asked reluctantly, putting the pretzel back in his mouth.
