ًًً

“You’re so lovely when you’re blushing,” Warner says to me. “But I really wish you wouldn’t waste your affections on someone who has to beg for your love.” He cocks his head at Adam. “How sad for you,” he says. “This must be terribly embarrassing.”

Killing my father has instilled in me an extraordinary serenity. It’s a perverse, horrible thing to celebrate, but to murder my father was to vanquish my greatest fear. With him dead, anything seems possible. I feel free.

He looks at Warner. “Do you?” “Do I what?” Warner asks. “Do you care about any of us? About our survival—our well-being?” “No.”

A betrayal that somehow seemed impossible. That she would leave me for a robotic, unfeeling idiot like Kent. His thoughts are so empty, so mindless; it’s like conversing with a desk lamp.

“I’m nineteen, by the way.” “Excuse me?” “I’m nineteen years old,” he clarifies. “I’m a fairly impressive specimen for my age, I know.”

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“I want to be the friend you fall hopelessly in love with. The one you take into your arms and into your bed and into the private world you keep trapped in your head. I want to be that kind of friend,” he says.

Aaron Warner Anderson, chief commander and regent of Sector 45, son of the supreme commander of The Reestablishment. He has a soft spot for fashion.

“I am nothing,” I say to her. “If I manage to be anything, it is only because of you.”

“I have never slept so well in my entire life,” he says softly. He grins, eyes still closed. Dimples on both cheeks. “I feel so strange.”

“I love you, Ella,” I whisper. “I will love you for the rest of my life. My heart is yours. Please don’t ever give it back to me.”

“Please don’t shoot me for this.”

“Idiots are highly flammable, love. Let them all burn in hell.”

“I want to hurt people all the time,” he says. “Sometimes I can’t sleep at night because I’m thinking about all the people I’d like to murder.”

“Come back to life, love. I’ll be here when you wake up.”

“It’s not charity,” I snap. “He cares about me—and I care about him!” Warner nods, unimpressed. “You should get a dog, love. I hear they share much the same qualities.”

“I want you to know,” he says, pulling on the zipper holding this suit together, “how much I value your friendship.”

The reason he had to keep wiping their memories was because it didn’t matter how many times he reset the story or remade the introductions— Aaron always fell in love with her. Every time.

And I realize then, in a moment that terrifies me, that I want this, forever. I want to spend the rest of my life with her. I want to build a future with her. I want to grow old with her. I want to marry her.

“Lift your hips for me, love”