Forget Me Not

by Stacey Nash

  “Ready?” Jax says.

  “Yes.”

  “One, two, three.”

  Throwing every bit of strength into the pull, I heave. He issues an agonizing groan which brings tears to my eyes. He slides forward. I rise up onto my knees, shuffle backward, and pull when Jax counts again. Will slides forward a little more. Now his arms, head, and shoulders are through. His other arm cradles his middle. We pull again, and something clicks, loud and terrifying, like we’ve broken a bone. He lets out a huge, pain-filled cry.

  I wince, biting down on my lip, and tears trickle down my face. “I’m so sorry, Will. One more and you’re through.”

  He doesn’t respond. His body feels limp under my hands.

  “I think he’s passed out,” I say.

  “Probably easier for him.”

  I rise onto my haunches and give one final heave at the same time Jax shoves. Will’s through—passed out, but through. I push his blond hair out of his closed eyes. I’m so sorry.

  Jax scrambles through the fence, eyes him, then turns to me. “Can you ride a bike?”

  “I know how.” Controlling the motorcycle with this leg might be tricky.

  He dips his hand into Will’s pocket and retrieves the keys, jangling them at me. “Help get him on behind me. He’s not going to be able to hold on.”

  Heaving a big sigh, I nod. Will’s going to be okay. We’ll get him home okay. He has to be okay.

  Jax unbuckles his belt. My gaze flies to his hands as he works to pull it free. Heat rises in my cheeks, and I can’t look away. It comes free of his pants in one long yank. He bends down and unbuckles Will’s belt too. Oh my God.

  “What the heck are you doing?” I ask Jax.

  Will’s eyes flutter open, but they’re rolled back in his head, showing only bloodshot whiteness. Jax buckles the two belts together and hands them to me with the smirk I love. Smiling, I raise a questioning brow.

  “Strap us together when he’s on.”

  I nod, then crouch down beside Will. “Will.” I pat his shoulder. “I know you’re in pain, but you have to help us get you on the bike. We need you to stand.”

  He groans, and the hand cradled against his chest moves to clutch his side. I sigh, my throat aching again. “I’m so sorry.” I slide my hands under his back, and Jax grabs his free arm. We exchange a quick glance. Jax nods, then I push and he pulls, raising Will off the ground. Once he’s on his feet, swaying, trembling, blindly moving forward, we guide him to the bike. Jax climbs on. I push Will from behind, and he heaves himself up, his free arm closing around Jax.

  He’s on.

  I take the long belt and wrap it around them both, ducking under Jax’s arm to secure it at his front. When it’s done, I take a step back and meet Jax’s sure smile. Will leans against him, eyes closed, and a pained expression marring his face.

  I climb on Will’s sleek road bike and follow Jax home.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  THE SHORT, SHARP RAP of knuckles on the door startles me awake.

  “Come in,” Will’s croaky voice answers.

  I lift my head from its resting place on the side of his bed, stretch my arms out in front of me, and arch my back like a cat. Stiff from sleeping slumped over in the chair where I’ve spent the past twenty four hours. He never woke up on the trip home. Once we put him in bed, Lilly’s mom and healing mentor, Martha, kicked me out. For what felt like hours, I paced the hall listening to his screams. When she emerged, I darted back inside, but unconsciousness had claimed him again. So I sat. And waited.

  Now he’s awake. A grin spreads across my face, and I grab his hand, squeezing. “Will.” He grimaces, and I loosen my eager grip.

  “Hey.” He returns my smile.

  “Ahem.” Lilly stands in the door. Sun shining through the small window highlights particles of dust dancing in the bright rays, making her look like a fairytale princess. Her black hair shines in the sun. A wooden tray balances on her hip with one arm, the other in a sling tied behind her neck. “A hand, please?” She moves toward me and swings around so the tray is right in front of my face.

  The smell of onions, eggs, and sausage hit me, turning my mouth to liquid. I fold a leg down on either side of the tray and lift it from her hand, placing it over Will’s lap. “How’s the shoulder?” I ask her.

  “Still a bit sore from where Mom popped it back in. I hope your dad appreciates it.”

  An empty shell. Manvyke’s words haunt me. I sigh, worried it’s the truth. I need to drag myself away from Will’s side and see him. Knowing he’s safe, but being uncertain at Will’s state, I haven’t made that venture yet. Maybe I’m scared.

  Lilly moves around to the far side of the bed. “When Jax told me to port with him, I really didn’t think I’d be able to get away from that woman.”

  “Her name was Bia,” I say. An image of the woman, sprawled on the floor, twisted like a broken contortionist, darkens my mind. “I didn’t hear Jax tell you to port.”

  She taps her head with her finger. “How’s the patient?” she asks, plonking herself on the end of his bed.

  “Hurts to breathe.” He grits his teeth against her jostling.

  “Martha says he needs to give the ankle a few days to knit, and then she needs to cast it. Afterward he can get up and move around—so long as he doesn’t put weight on it.” I repeat Martha’s instructions. Will blanches, but colors up again.

  Three broken ribs, a fractured ankle, and a shattered kneecap—all damage I inflicted on him when I activated the Tarlequin. In saving Jax I hurt Will. I wish I could go back and prevent it, but I couldn’t really change it. Or maybe I could, somehow. I’m not sure. Not saving Jax would never be an option.

  “So what now? Are you both going home?” Lilly asks.

  Will looks to me, and I shake my head, saying, “Him, yes. Me, no.”

  “What?” Will says.

  “As soon as you’re better, Beau can run you into the city.” I pause and glance at him. “I can’t go home yet. Dad—”

  He looks away, and Lilly glances down too. A moment passes, then Will chuckles. “You’re safe. I’ll go home, but I’m not staying away. I’ve got to come back for our punishment.”

  Lilly raises her head and smiles. “It’s hardly punishment. I think he’s secretly proud, but just wants to make out like he has some authority.”

  “All of us?” I ask.

  “Yep.” She smiles.

  “Scanner duty every night. A month each.”

  Will laughs, then clutches his side. “Oww. The punishment hardly fits the crime.”

  “I know, right?” she says, her smile widening into a grin.

  “Fun. Scanner duty sounds awesome. I’m definitely hanging around for that.” He pops a forkful of scrambled eggs into his mouth. “How’s Al?”

  “Getting better,” Lilly says. “He and Bertie are bickering like siblings, so I guess it means things are getting back to normal.”

  My stomach tightens. “I feel so bad for what happened to them. I used the cover-up in their home that day to get Al’s attention.” I twist my fingers through the knitted blanket.

  “It’s not your fault.” Will’s hand finds mine and closes over it. “We didn’t know what would happen.” His expression is sincere as his eyes beg me to go easy on myself.

  “I know, but when they got home, agents were waiting.”

  Lilly turns to meet my gaze. “They tortured Al and Bertie because of tech, but not because of the one piece they didn’t have. If they didn’t have so much, their memories would’ve just been altered and the tech confiscated, but there was heaps. The Collective aren’t stupid. Obviously Al and Bertie are resistance. Torture, well, it’s what happens.” Her expression darkens. “Al said they questioned him for days.”

  “What about Jax?” I ask, picking a loose thread on the blanket.

  Her eyes turn to ice, her voice cold and hard. “Dad says he can stay. He’s not a threat.” She glances out the window.

  Will
and I exchange a troubled look. He changes the mood by using his good foot to nudge her off the bed. She grabs the linen to stop herself from toppling off, and we both giggle.

  The happiness in his face while he’s laughing is as contagious as ever, making the three of us instantly happy. When our laughter dies down his face straightens to a happy expression that’s filled with sadness at the same time. I hold his gaze with a slight frown for a few moments. We haven’t had enough fun times lately. I miss the old Will. I miss our time together. I miss being carefree.

  Lilly shuffles her weight, and I turn my gaze to her. “Guess we should leave you to rest,” she says.

  She’s right. Now he’s awake, I feel free to leave, free to see Dad. I get up and move to the door, pausing before I step out. “I’ll come by later.”

  “That would be nice.”

  I pull the door closed.

  * * * *

  Sucking down a deep breath to try to relieve the pain in my chest, I walk toward the vegetable garden. Dad’s bent over a patch of spring onions, his broad shoulders hunched as he digs them from the ground with a small trowel. Beau squats beside him, his eyes reflecting the sunlight as he stares at the ground, pulling weeds from the rich, brown dirt.

  “Hi,” I say.

  Beau looks up, inclines his head, and smiles. Dad spins around, and his grey eyes crinkle at the corners as they meet mine. “Annie.” He jumps up and pulls me into a hug that nearly makes us both fall over.

  I swallow against the lump in my throat. “Dad, it’s Mae.”

  He drops his hands like I’m a hot rock and pulls back, clearly confused.

  Beau shoots me a sad smile. I pull away and wonder how Manvkye knew her. The feeling deep inside me tells me she’s not Collective.

  “Tell me about Annie,” I say, uncertain where this will lead.

  “Annie. Poor, sweet Annie. They wouldn’t allow us to be together, so she left everything behind, her family and her life and her world.” He turns over clumps of dirt. Maybe she was Collective once, but I’m not sure. Just like we’re not sure what happened to her.

  He looks up at me, his eyes sparkling. “Did you know we have a daughter?” He pulls out a spring onion and waves it in front of my face.

  The lump in my throat explodes in a burst of sharp pain, and everything goes blurry. Of course he has a daughter. He shouldn’t be telling me this. He should be holding me tight, telling me I’m the daughter he loves. The one he’ll never let go.

  “I’m harvesting the onions. Want to help?” His voice is too cheery.

  “Sure,” I choke out. For a while I dig at the soft soil while warm salty tears roll down my cheeks.

  Beau lays a hand on my shoulder. “We think the memory loss will eventually wear off.”

  “How soon?”

  “I don’t know. We haven’t come across anything like this before.” He looks to the chickens pecking at the dirt under a tree laden with apples.

  An empty shell. It’s not far from the truth. It’s like dementia. Like he’s only half there. There’s pain in the back of my throat, like it’s been rubbed raw.

  We work side by side in silence, the smell of dirt and onion keeping me grounded. But that doesn’t keep the tears or pain at bay. I wish Jax stood beside me now, lending me strength with his presence. But I’m not sure he’s even still here or where he’d go if he left. Or worse, if Beau forced him away.

  “Lilly said you’ve finished questioning Jax.” I look at the onion I dug from the earth, playing it cool in case it’s not okay to ask.

  Beau cuts straight to the point. “From what I can gather, he holds a great deal of resentment toward his father. He tells me he didn’t inform on us willingly, and we found traces of sodium pentothal in his blood.”

  “Sodium pentothal?”

  “It’s a truth serum. They used it to force him to answer their questions.” Beau’s black and grey-peppered hair moves as he shakes his head.

  “Forcing him? They used something to force him to do what they wanted.” I meet Beau’s gaze.

  His face floods with sympathy. “I suspect it’s a combination of the serum with another drug I am not familiar with. Jax has an extremely strong will. Lilly tells me he fought hard to overcome it.”

  I nod, remembering the trembling, the bulging vein on his neck, the words which didn’t match his actions. Even through all that I knew he wouldn’t put me in danger.

  “It took him two years to be comfortable enough here to treat the place like home. Now, though, I suspect he is more one of us than one of them,” Beau says.

  “The thought of betraying you probably scared him.” I sit back on my haunches while I watch Dad dig in the dirt. “You’re going to let him stay, then?”

  “This is his home. We are his family.”

  Beau walks away, leaving me alone with my dad and my thoughts.

  * * * *

  I push the door open and walk into my room, exhausted. A pile of magazines and an ancient radio sit on my bed, a thick pink ribbon holding the pile together. A slip of paper is tucked under the bow. I pull it out. In beautiful, loopy writing I see the words: Thought you might need a distraction. Lilly Xx.

  I set the radio on the window seat and spin the dial until the fuzzy noise turns into music, a pop song blaring through the speakers. Grabbing a teen fashion magazine on the top of the pile, I throw myself onto the bed tummy first. After only flicking through a few pages, a knock sounds on the door. It swings open, and Jax strolls into the room like he owns it. He pushes the radio to the side and slouches in the window seat. “How’s your leg?”

  “Better. The cream Lilly used, whatever it was, didn’t hold up. The wound is healing so much better since she stitched it.” My fingers rub over the lump made by the bandage under my new jeans.

  “You up for a walk?” His words pour out too quick.

  Blinking, I struggle to make out what he said. “Sure, I think.”

  The days are so much cooler now than when I first arrived, so I grab my coat from the back of the armchair. We descend the stairs and go out the front door in silence. I breathe in the pure, clean air of the country while we walk across the yard and into the long grass. Unanswered questions about his past consume my thoughts, but I don’t voice them. He wants to spend time with me. Now’s not the time to attack his walls. I sneak a glance at him from the corner of my eye. The sun glints off his unkempt hair. The reddish brown waves sitting in a perfect mess steal my breath. I want to know him. I want him to want to tell me all about himself, to share past and present and future. Maybe it’s best to start somewhere safe, somewhere away from him.

  “What are the Keys of Power?” I ask. “And the Tarla-thingy, what’s that?”

  He lets out a long sigh. “I don’t know much about either. We learned Collective history at school; the Keys of Power were gifted to the ancients. According to history, the keys aren’t ordinary pieces of tech. They each have a unique power in addition to their standard power that can be accessed in a special way. The keys are made up of several ancient artifacts lost long ago. If one person is in possession of all three pieces….” A shaky sigh rattles his lips. “It wouldn’t be good.”

  “What happened when I jumped in front of you? Why did the tarl—the tarle.” I can’t get my tongue around the strange word. “Why did the cover-up’s other power activate?”

  “I have no idea. Perhaps we can test it to try and find out. Marcus would love to be in on that.”

  We come to the thick woods leading to The Ring. The warmth of fuzzy, good feelings consumes me, making my heart flutter. He remembered I wanted to come back here with my camera. I’ll have to take a trip home and collect it. I don’t understand how he can be that man’s son. Manvyke. It’s only a small jump from great power to cartoon super villain. “Enough power for an individual to gain dominion over the world?”

  “Perhaps. I don’t really know.”

  We enter The Ring. I stand in the center and gaze up at the trees above, awestr
uck by their beauty. The long, dark trunks curve upwards, their tips entwining to create the domed canopy which gives the place its name. The Ring is man-made, but the trees are tall, and their trunks are old and thick. It would have taken years to grow them that way. How long has this war been going? Did the resistance grow the trees to create the ring, or is it older than them?

  The desire to twine my fingers through his, just like the trees twisting together, loosens my reservations and my tongue.

  “Your family….”

  He sits on the huge, hollow fallen log in the center of The Ring and leans back on his arms. “I don’t really want to talk about it, Mae.”

  Yep. Wall’s still there. It probably always will be. He’ll never let me in. Silence hangs between us. Birds chirp and sun splashes down through the canopy. Sighing, I slide onto the log beside him so close our knees touch. It’s a shame it’s not so easy to close the gap between our hearts.

  “Umm, Joshua.” I feel a small smile creep onto my lips.

  “No. I’m not Joshua. My mom always called me Jax.” There’s a waver in his voice. It’s not right. He’s never uncertain of himself. “Don’t call me that, please. Manvyke is the only person who has ever called me by that name. Jax is short for Joshua Maxim. I’d prefer you use that.” He tosses a stone at a nearby boulder.

  Wow. Shocked, my teeth worry my bottom lip. He refuses to call him Father or Dad, or even by his first name. Jax’s real name pulses through my mind on repeat, and I want to feel it on my tongue. “Joshua Maxim Manvyke…,” I say with a small smile. “Sounds like a Marvel villain.”

  “Evil does run in the family.” The hint of a joke touches his eyes, and he smirks.

  My shoulders relax, and warmth flows through me. This is the Jax I’ve come to know, and the Jax I want to know better. “Belfry was Mom’s name before she married.”

  “What was she like?” I meet his gaze.

  He looks away, staring at a small, grey bird in the tree, preening its feathers in the sun. His Adam’s apple rises as he swallows, making him look a little nervous. He shuffles the stones around in his hands like a set of zen balls. His eyes glazed over with another time. “She was beautiful and kind, and she loved me enough to protect me from him.” He stands and paces around the outside of The Ring, tossing stones at random tree trunks.