The Program by Suzanne Young

Author:Suzanne Young [Young, Suzanne]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi, pdf
Tags: Juvenile Fiction / Love & Romance
ISBN: 9781442445802
Publisher: Simon Pulse
Published: 2013-04-29T08:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER TWELVE

I’M SOBBING AS I STUMBLE FROM DR. WARREN’S office. She doesn’t bother to help me. Instead she tells me that it’s okay for me to cry. I swear at her and run my hand along the wall as I head toward the leisure room.

James. James. James. I know these are my last minutes to remember him, and I stop, letting myself slide down the wall to sit on the floor. I rest my head on my bent knees and hold on to what I can.

I see James, smiling broadly as he rakes his fingers through his wet hair. “Come on, Sloane,” he calls from the water. He’s shirtless, the sun glistening off his skin as he stands in the river. I sit on the grass and shake my head.

James walks out of the water, dripping, as he approaches me. He collapses on the blanket, the cool skin of his thigh pressed against my shorts. “One day,” he says, his eyes squinted against the sun, “I’m going to teach you how to swim. And then we’re going to the ocean.”

“Never.”

“Never?” James repeats, sounding amused. He pulls me down next to him and traps me in his arms. His skin is cold, but hot underneath. “Never?”

I giggle and shake my head.

“And what if I want to get married on the beach?” he asks. “You still say no?” He bites on his lip, leaning closer to me. “You’ll refuse to marry me?”

Tingles race over me, and not just because he’s close but because I’m overwhelmed with how much I love him. How he’s the other half of my heart. “I’ll never refuse you,” I whisper.

James smiles and then kisses me softly, trailing his mouth to my neck before returning to my lips again. “It’s me and you,” he says. “Madly in love until the end.”

And the words echo in my head as I collapse on my side in the hallway, drowning in my pain.

• • •

I feel something next to me, but my body is heavy and I can’t move. I try to turn, but my hands are locked at my side. My eyes fly open. A face looms over me, and I start to scream when his hand covers my mouth.

“Shh . . . Miss Barstow,” Roger whispers. “We wouldn’t want to draw attention to ourselves, would we?”

I twist my hands again and realize he has me in the restraints. I know I’m not completely helpless. I can bite down on his hand, scream out. But then what? They’ll restart me in The Program—making sure I don’t remember anything that I’m not supposed to.

I shake his hand off my mouth. “What do you want?”

He smiles, his eyes gliding over my body under the sheets. “I think you’d be a little too feisty to trust with any of my naked parts now,” he says. “So I’m not offering a trade anymore.”

I furrow my brow. “Then what?”

“I want Michael Realm out of here. But first, I want to watch him squirm.”

The vulnerability of my situation crashes down on me.

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