The Wanted

The shadows of the trees curled around us, protecting us, and gave us this time to absorb each other’s lost days. It was so much more than I’d realized.

His face got sadder and longer with every day he went through.

After hours of listening, questioning, he reached the part of the story I had been dreading.

“She offered me a way to forget, and I took it. I was selfish, stupid, drunk. None of that is a good enough excuse, but that’s the truth.”

“And it was just a kiss?” I winced, anticipating the answer to a question I shouldn’t have asked.

“Rosa, I’m so sorry. It was a kiss that would have led to more if Rash hadn’t stopped us.” He wrung his hands out, squeezing the last bit of blood and tears onto the soaked ground. “I’d like to think I would have stopped, it all felt so wrong, but if I’m honest, I just don’t know.”

I knew. “You would have stopped.”

His laugh sounded like a sorrowful hiccup. “I can’t believe you have faith in me after everything I’ve put you through.” His lips were set hard with harsh memories of the past. “I killed people, men with families like me. And whether or not it was in self-defense, I’m not sure it matters. Every time I closed my eyes, I saw you dead in front of me, then I’d blink and they joined you, this pile of people I’d hurt, killed, left behind. When I did what I did, it was because I couldn’t stand myself. I didn’t want to see your face and their faces anymore. It was killing me. I needed you and you weren’t there and it was my fault.”

He poured his bad dreams out. They landed in the mud for me to inspect and maybe to bury. And because I still loved him, I felt awful that I hadn’t been there to help him through it.

My head collapsed in my hands, and I stared into the fire. “Don’t get me wrong, I’m really angry about what you did, but you’re not a bad man, Joseph. You’re messed up, not bad. You need to understand that not everything is your fault. Some things just happen.”

I wished I had a higher horse to stand on, a step, anything. But after all the mistakes I’d made, the promise I’d broken, all I could do was look him in the eye and try to understand.

He put his hand over mine and although my instant reaction was to snatch it away, I let it stay. I let his warmth soak into me. It lifted me even as I fought against it.

I floated outside of my body, my mind begging for perspective because it seemed unreal. My Joseph couldn’t have done this. But with every passing second, I understood, as I watched his grief-stricken body heave in breaths he didn’t think he deserved, that my Joseph was broken and I couldn’t walk away from him.

JOSEPH

I’m trying to convince myself it’s a dream. A fast, hollow dream. Because I hurt her. I hurt us. And I should have been better than this.

She didn’t cry much. She was holding herself together, holding herself away from me as if I were a fire and she needed to lean away from the heat.

She listened, nodded, and shifted.

My words felt like knives, cutting me first and then her.

The world slept and soon, we caught up with it. Slowly, she unraveled. Her body loosened from exhaustion, from everything I’d just put her through. She turned towards me, her face flushed from the fire, and put her hand on my leg. I stalled, scared I’d frighten her, when all I wanted was to press her to me and never, ever let go. Then all her angles and sharpness melted as she crawled into my lap, pulling my arm over her like a blanket and laying her head in arms. I felt her tiny weight, draped across my legs, her hair waving over my arm and tickling my skin, and absorbed every detail I could. She glanced at me briefly, a look of love behind confusion, and closed her eyes.

I flipped my head to the sky. I wouldn’t sleep tonight. If this was all she was going to give me, I wasn’t going to miss one second.

I stroked her dyed hair and wondered what they did to her. And stopped. One thing at a time. “You were in the sky. Now you’re in my arms.” I sighed like I might perish. She was in my arms.

Her lips fell open as she dozed off. My fingers burned to touch them, but I didn’t.

I fed the fire.

I wasn’t sure I even blinked for fear she’d disappear.

Her eyes opened slowly to the dawn. She coughed, and I tightened my grip on her. She moaned, snuggled closer, and my chest started to open. I smiled, my face feeling waxy and dry from the fire. She smiled back quickly, a flash across her face.

“Morning, sleeping beauty,” I said, in agony from all the words I wanted to say, and all the parts of her I couldn’t reach.

She stretched out her limbs, and I cracked my stiff neck. I’d hunched over her like a shelter all night, and my body felt like stone.

“Morning,” she yawned. And then, as if she suddenly remembered, her face creased and she started to wiggle out of my arms.

“Rosa.” She froze, scowled, and stayed half in my lap and half out.

She picked up the last of the wood and threw it on the fire. “Why did you tell me? You could have lied. Kept it to yourself,” she asked, pi

I swallowed my dread and answered. “I don’t know. It was selfish, I guess. Do you wish I hadn’t?” I risked a hand to her hair and shuddered with relief when she didn’t jerk away from me again.

She was quiet for a long minute. I listened to her breathing, heard her thinking in the silence that only Rosa could sustain.

“No and yes,” she said, finitely, straightening her back. “It’s a weird kind of feeling. I wish you hadn’t, but I’m glad you did. It would have come out eventually. And lies grow like cancer, don’t they?”

I nodded. “They do.”

Her voice was low, sad, punctuated by my actions. “It would have poisoned us.”

I leaned towards her desperately, forgetting myself. “Rosa, I promise it will never happen…”

She leaned back from my intensity and put her hand up to my face, her fingers grazing my open mouth. “Don’t. I don’t need you to. I know it won’t.”

I sat up straight and clasped my hands together, mostly because I didn’t know what to do with them. I didn’t deserve to touch her. I didn’t deserve… her.

She narrowed her eyes, and I prepared for venom. “Joseph. Stop looking at me like that.”

I raised my eyebrows in surprise. “Like what?”

“Like you think I will disappear. Like you think it’s over.”

My heart started beating so fast I must have been ru

“It’s never over.” Slowly, she brought her hands to my face, wincing when she touched me. How could a touch feel like guilt and redemption at the same time? Her eyes fell to my lips, and I sensed the pain, the reluctance. “I still love you.”

My stupid face, my stupid eyes, started crying. A tear ran down my cheek and over her finger. She stared at it curiously. I wanted to say, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry until the words had lost their meaning, but I knew she didn’t want to hear it anymore.

My voice cracked all over the place as I said, “You’re it for me. Don’t doubt it. That never changed. The only thing that changed was how much I hated myself.”

She dropped her hand and bowed her head, playing with the sleeves of my shirt, which hung so far over her little fingers. The milky light of the morning filtered through the trees and lit her face, shining over her eyelashes and making it hard for me to breathe normally.

“Okay,” she mumbled, her toes touching, her knees pressed together. She was so small and so strong.