The Wanted (The Woodlands Series Book 4)

by Lauren Nicolle Taylor

  My eyes landed on the chopper. I moved sideways, keeping my legs as sturdy as steel beams. The shadow of a person somehow shone behind the rear of the black angel.

  The air around him was brighter, shining, pulsing like golden brushstrokes. Joseph.

  JOSEPH

  She looked thinner, her eyes ringed with dark, her clothes an odd combination of a delicate dress, torn to shreds as it reached her upper thighs, and a thick, grey wool jacket. I remembered that jacket. The way she had cursed the gate for giving her rust stains. I wondered for a second if she was an apparition, a memory, but then I would never imagine her with dyed hair. What was she doing here?

  “It’s her. Let’s go,” Pelo urged, pushing me forward.

  But I froze, my feet stationed, burning a hole in the ground. Her eye’s fell on me. They ripped me open and cut me a million times with every dusty-lashed blink.

  What does she see?

  I am broken.

  ROSA

  He looked the same. His beard scruffy, his hair knitted over his brow in that delicate balance. But when he looked up at me, his eyes were deep green, ringed with sadness.

  What does he see when he looks at me?

  I am broken.

  JOSEPH

  I forced my legs forward. Something stronger than any shame, stronger than any fear I had of what she might say or do when she met me, pulled me towards her and suddenly, I was running.

  She was here. That was all that mattered.

  ROSA

  “There,” I said as I pointed to the group of Survivors who were now approaching us carefully as the people of Pau Brazil spilled around them in scattered lines. Except for Joseph, who was flat out sprinting.

  I handed Rosa-May to Gwen and helped them climb down. Slipping through the cracks, something snagged my leg, tearing my dress even further. I pulled my jammed leg out and scrambled down, holding Rosa-May’s hand, keeping us connected. Her wide eyes were open to the chaos. She sniffed, but she didn’t cry.

  “You’re so brave,” I said, patting her head. Her gaze did something strange to me. Her eyelashes stuck together with salt water, her brown eyes, my mother’s brown eyes, blinking up at me like I was the one. The only one she trusted. It filled me with hope.

  I took a deep breath and crossed my arms over my chest. Something pulled at my body, elastic getting tighter and tighter. I found him. He was here. I was broken, but I could still run. My feet hit the frozen grass and my body surged towards him, my hand still wrapped around Rosa-May’s as I dragged them with me. I wasn’t in control anymore. He was here, here, right here in front of me. My heart. My hands ached for him; everything I wanted was wrapped in a green shirt and a dark jacket.

  “Joseph,” I whispered, as if it were my last breath. My first breath.

  JOSEPH

  If she knew of my crimes, she didn’t seem to care. And I wasn’t sure I cared either. She was here. Impossibly. She ran towards me as fast as a heartbeat. As strong as warrior. My Rosa.

  My brain couldn’t take in anything other than her tiny form streaking across the muddy land with Gwen and the child behind her. Nothing could slow us. She was five feet away from me, her face dirty, her hair wrong, her mouth open and panting. “Jose…” she started, letting go of the child’s hand for a moment.

  I reached out and grabbed her, pinning her to me. Squashing our bodies together and hoping they would never part. I wanted to feel her heart against my own.

  “I found you,” I said.

  She gasped as I squeezed her tighter, her face buried in my chest. Forcing her face upwards, she blinked up at me.

  “I think I found you,” she said stubbornly, her voice like ringing bells in my ears. I had wanted to hear her voice forever.

  ROSA

  Joseph’s chest rattled with a chuckle. It felt old and new at the same time, like he hadn’t used it in a while. I let the vibration fill me, let the cymbals crash against us both, the sparks fly. I felt his lips press down on the top of my head, felt him breathe me in. Every brush of his skin was killing me. We were ending and beginning. There was so much more to do but right then, the force of what we had wanted, the stretching sound and the feel of our hearts being sewn back together, was as painful and pleasurable as any emotion I’d ever felt, would probably ever feel. It was all I could feel.

  “Say it,” I said, my teeth glistening whiter than the ice, my smile too big for my face.

  He grinned. “All right, all right, you found me.” Talk forever, never stop.

  I was done being apart from him.

  JOSEPH

  “Jooosssephh!” A woman’s scream managed to fight its way through the crowd. I lifted my head from where I was staring at the part in Rosa’s hair like it was the map to my heart. Rosa leaned back from my embrace and turned in the direction of the screams. She waved her hand, calling someone over to us.

  “Oh yeah, and I found your parents too,” she said, her eyes crinkling in the corners in the most perfect way.

  “You’re my hero,” I said softly, my smile cracking me open.

  You save me over and over again.

  ROSA

  I knew conversations had to happen. Big, serious conversations. But right then, all I wanted to do was make myself flat as a piece of paper, slide under his shirt, and live against his chest.

  Joseph flapped a clean sheet in front of my face. It pushed scents of clean skin and smokiness that never washed out of your hair sailing towards me. I inhaled deeply.

  A knock on the door disrupted my roaming thoughts. I moved through this stranger’s house we’d commandeered, scared to touch possessions that didn’t belong to me and had their own lost history.

  A ratty hall runner rug gritted under my bare feet. I opened the door, and a gust of rust and smoke met my nose.

  “Here.” Gwen pushed an armful of children’s clothes towards me gently. “A woman had these in her bag for her… but she doesn’t need them anymore.” She sniffed, and I knew the rest. “Anyway, you might as well take ’em for the kid.”

  “Thank you.” I grasped the clothes from her cold hands. “How’s it going out there? And how are you?” I asked, motioning to the gaping hole and the glow of hundreds of campfires outside the wall. Sad murmurs echoed into the blank sky.

  I’d wanted to sleep under the trees too, but it was crowded out there. Most of the citizens were too afraid to step back inside, despite our assurances the rest of the town was not going to sink into the ground. Weirder still was the fact that they were looking to us for answers.

  Gwen grimaced. “It’s settling down, I guess…” She hesitated and then said, “I’m good. I’m back with my people. Best feeling ever!” She put her thumbs up, though her eyebrow arched sarcastically. We both knew it would take time for both of us to be ‘good’. “The news of the Superiors’ deaths has caused a lot of mixed emotions. Superiors…” she scoffed. “More like inferiors, idiots, imbeciles… uh… Matthew said I have to stop calling them names in front of the newbies,” Gwen said, winking, her cheeks flushed and pinched with new freedom as she rolled her eyes at the word ‘newbies’. She amazed me.

  “You can call them anything you like in front of me,” I said warmly.

  “I know,” she replied, gazing at her feet, still wearing my mother’s shoes.

  Whispers of Este and Grant’s deaths had grown quickly to loud truths, rolling over the huddles of people like galloping clouds. It caused relief, fear, and displacement. I felt little relief. My own hand shivered from the cold of being dipped in Grant’s blood. I stared down at it, and Gwen dipped her head lower to make eye contact.

  “Anyway…the soldiers, Gus and the others disarmed have corroborated our story of the video the Superiors wanted to make and the purpose of it. Man. I think I kept hoping it wasn’t going to happen, that they wouldn’t go through with it, and then… boom.” She made an exploding gesture with her hands, and I flinched. “There were other ways, you know?” she muttered, her voice cracking under the weight
of it all.

  “I know,” was all I could say.

  “Matthew says this kind of grief, this massive loss of life, will not be easy to overcome. It’s going to take time and help. I’ll help.” Sadly, thousands of displaced, scared, and grieving citizens was a familiar situation for us.

  “Do you want to come in and rest for a minute?” I asked as I yawned a hole in my body.

  “Nah, I’m good. I have accommodation. You two deserve and need some time alone,” she said, a slight edge of concern underlining the word ‘need’.

  “Oh okay,” I replied doubtfully. “Thanks for the clothes.”

  “S’ok. Rosa. I’m sorry about your mother,” she said as she walked backwards down the path.

  A thread of ice worked its way through my heart, and I shuddered. “It wasn’t your fault.”

  She frowned, her cheeks dimpling, her eyebrows working. “It’s just what you say, when there’s nothing else you can say,” she said, giving me a sad smile.

  I choked on a weird laugh that wanted to escape. “Thanks.”

  I waved as she strolled quickly down the street like she owned it. My eyes tracked her down the road and up the path of another home, a few doors down. The world was inverted, Survivors on the inside and Woodlands’ citizens on the outside.

  “Grace!” she shouted.

  “Huh?”

  “It’s a song. Look it up… but later.” She shut the door. I pocketed the name, knowing it would tear me open—a song for another time when I had the chance and space to grieve.

  Passing Rosa-May sleeping on the couch, I placed the clothes at her feet. I sucked in a sharp breath at the memory of my mother. There one second, her face determined, some fight still in her. Then gone. It hurt, but the weight of responsibility to my sister was a round, smooth thing, a warm reminder that kept me from sinking. I pictured her with Orry and it made me smile. It made me frown too. My mother should have been there to meet him. I hugged my body and returned to Joseph.

  He glanced up from tucking the sheets in, lifting the mattress with one arm like it was made of cardboard. I was made of cardboard. A cut-out of myself. Everything overwhelming. Feelings clashing, crushing me flat. My body mushy with hugs, sharp with betrayal, on fire with desire, and shivering with worry.

  “Who was at the door?” he asked, his beautiful eyes pulled back with distance. Too, too far away.

  “Gwen.”

  “Oh.”

  After his parents, my parents, everything. He hadn’t said much. But then, neither had I. I gulped down my pain in one lump as I recalled telling Pelo about Mother. Hurt and reassurance as I understood that he truly loved her, and now it was too late.

  Joseph ran a calloused hand over the sheets and patted them once. He moved to where I stood frozen in the doorway, caught in a memory.

  “You looked tired,” he said, eyes glowing. He put his hands on my shoulders and assessed me, words trembling on the edge of his lips. “Are you all right?” His eyes darted away when his gaze reached my injured fingers. I shoved them behind my back. He wasn’t ready for those answers. The ones that came with screams, ice, beggars, and fear.

  I shook my head. “I’m fine.” I wasn’t sure I’d ever be fine.

  His shoulders slumped. He knew I was lying. I knew he wasn’t fine either.

  “Do you still have it?” I asked, my eyes searing holes in his pockets.

  A distant rumble of a laugh echoed in his chest because he knew exactly what I was asking for. He fished my handheld from his pants pocket, and I snatched it from him hungrily. My palms dipped with the weight of it, heavy with my promises. I turned so we could both see it, nestling the back of my head into his chest. He brought his hand under mine, holding the screen up closer to our faces, and when our fingers touched, my skin hummed golden songs.

  The red light blinked an answer to my question. Joseph leaned down and whispered in my ear, his lips grazing my hairline.

  “There he is.” He pointed to the red dot resting in one place. Goosebumps rose on my skin.

  I tried to nod but I was too torn, too eager to run out of the door and into the forest, climb a mountain, whatever I needed to do to get back to Orry.

  “I know he’s okay,” Joseph said, putting both of his warm hands on my shoulders and spinning me slowly to face him. I put my fingers to his chin, running over the stubble. He leaned into my hand and closed his eyes. “Just like I knew you’d survive. I never doubted it,” he whispered without looking at me. My finger ran over his lips. His posture was relaxed and guarded at the same time and I wished I could dive into his head to know what he was thinking.

  JOSEPH

  I couldn’t look at her. The damage to her hands, the hollowness of her eyes. Torture ran all over her face in messy lines. I knew what she wanted. I wanted it too, but I was afraid of her lips. Or I was saving them. I wasn’t sure. All I knew was those lips would undo me to the point where a confession was all I was, and I wasn’t ready.

  ROSA

  I wrapped my arms around his waist and put my ear to his heart, the beat unsteady.

  “You know me,” I quipped. “Stubborn to the last.”

  He chuckled hollowly, and I felt it was the wrong thing to say.

  “Always,” he replied.

  He turned off the handheld and put it away. We couldn’t do anything tonight. We rocked back and forth, holding each other, the floorboards creaking rhythmically. On the wall, a cross-stitched picture of a house with the words Home Sweet Home sewn underneath it glared at me.

  “I’m sorry,” I said to his shirt.

  “I’m sorry too.”

  The reasons behind the apologies were too long and too numbered.

  He gathered me up, my bones sagging in my skin, my energy sapped. I ate for the first time in twenty-four hours just before, and it had stretched my shrunken stomach.

  “Sleep,” he ordered, laying me down on the bed and folding the sheets and blanket around me. He stroked my horrible hair from my face, his expression conflicted.

  Kiss me.

  My eyelids fluttered from pure exhaustion as I tracked him walking slowly around the bed. I felt a moment of peace that I held onto. He was here with me.

  I was asleep before he had even crawled into the bed.

  Just before dawn, I woke. My heart stuttering in my chest as the events of the last few weeks collided in my head. I closed my eyes, and my fingertips pulsed with twinges of pain. I curled them under into a light fist. The insides of my eyelids were a screen, projecting bursts of blood, instruments glinting on a tray, pins, and shiny black doors.

  I drifted off to sleep after my momentary panic only to be woken minutes later. Joseph’s hulking body seized next to me, flinging my hand from his sweat-soaked side. He screamed once, low and strangled, and then his body went slack.

  It reminded me that we were not a magic cure for each other. There were things I needed to tell him and words he must have for me. I was scared of those words, but I wouldn’t be able to avoid them.

  ROSA

  The world wants a piece of me, I know. But until I have my son in my arms, it’s like tugging on a curl of steam.

  I’m insubstantial.

  Ineffectual.

  Three pieces out of four.

  The white rays of a cold dawn piercing the thin curtains of the bedroom shed unwelcome light on our situation.

  So much confusion. So much to do.

  I stretched out and the cold, empty place beside me sent a shot of fear through my body. My hand wavered over the cool sheets and for a second, I thought I was back in the Superiors’ compound, but then I heard Joseph in the lounge, talking to Rosa-May. I padded out of the bedroom, but hung back, resting against the peeling hall, and listened to their conversation.

  “So you don’t like toast?” Joseph squatted down with his back to me, hanging his arms over couch. Rosa-May shook her head, gazing at the floor. “What about toast with…” He got up, moving out of my sight to the kitchen cupboards. Jars
clunked against each other, boxes scuffed the shelves. “I know. Toast with detergent?”

  Rosa-May perched on the back of the dusty pink couch like a monkey ready to jump, her watchful eyes twinkling but her lips set in distrust. She shook her head, her mouth tugging into a very brief smile.

  “No. Okay, what about toast with…” He shook a box. “Dried pasta? With drawing pins? Ouch, that’d hurt. Um… sardines?” With each ridiculous suggestion, her face relaxed a little more, her smile growing as she watched him dance around the small kitchen.

  She lifted her hand and pointed. “Jam.”

  “Jam. Really? Well, it seems a little unorthodox, but jam it is,” Joseph said as I pulled around the corner and met his eyes. His gaze dropped to my bare feet, his fingers flexing at his sides, a jar of strawberry jam in one hand. He seemed to check himself, cracking his neck to one side, and then took a deep breath. Stepping towards me awkwardly, he swept me into his arms and held me close. He breathed in my hair as if he were memorizing me, saving me, like I would disappear. I felt bendy and squeezed of air in his arms, but happy.

  The jam jar knocked the back of my skull with a light clunk. I felt Rosa-May’s eyes on us. “Ouch!” I exclaimed, though it didn’t really hurt, and he broke our embrace, leaving me wobbly and rubbery, liable to bend to the ground.

  “Sorry if I woke you,” he said, his eyes running over my body slowly. I couldn’t quite work out what he was doing. Or thinking.

  “You didn’t,” I replied politely. In agony. Rosa-May clambered over the back of the couch and ran to my side, wrapping her arms around my legs like a vice. I bent down and smoothed her hair, feeling a grief-coated lump rising in my throat.