He takes a deep breath, his body shifts and tenses and his eyes open. We’re inches apart. He smiles. He reaches out and pushes a strand of hair from my cheek, rests his hand against my neck.
I want to savor this moment, to hold it close like a memory. But then a darkness begins to creep around the edges of my bliss. I think about how I was kissing Elias when I was supposed to be with Cira. How if I’d been there maybe I could have talked her out of trying to infect herself.
I sit up, rubbing my sleep-puffed eyes with my fists, the ache of her being gone still too fresh and new. I push to my feet, grab a canteen and start walking down the path, needing some time to myself to think.
Elias stands behind me. “Gabrielle, wait,” he calls out after me.
I don’t even bother to turn back. “No,” I tell him, waving my hand at him to stay behind.
My thoughts are a storm as I tread down the path, not caring where I go so long as it’s away from Elias and my mother and Harry. Cira’s necklace rests heavy on my chest and I suddenly feel trapped, pinned in. As though the fences are too close, the sky too low. My muscles bunch and tense, painfully tight, and I shake my arms trying to let go.
I stumble over a rock, throwing myself off balance. I let myself fall to my knees and roll onto my back, my canteen flying. I’m not hurt but even so I just lie there staring up into the watery gray dawn. I don’t move. I try not to think. I ignore everything around me.
Pink streaks into the sky mingling with a hue of purple when I hear the steps. At first I think it must be Elias coming after me and then I realize that they’re coming from the wrong direction. Dread fills my stomach. I reach for my knife but it’s not there, left behind with the others where I slept.
I roll slowly to my stomach and press my body against the ground, pushing myself to my feet as silently as possible. The steps are uneven. My first thought is that it’s Mudo trailing us from the village but then I realize that there are no moans. My body breaks out in sweat as I wonder if the Recruiters were able to get through the village. If they’ve already found us.
I grab a rock in each hand and crouch, waiting. I see the shadow before the person and I hold my breath. The figure walks around the bend in the path.
“Catcher!” I yelp, relieved to see his familiar face, to know that he’s okay.
He stops and stands there staring at me. His eyes take a moment to adjust. “Gabry,” he says, his face breaking into a smile.
I scramble toward him but before I get close enough to touch him he wavers on his feet. There’s something wrong. I reach for him but he holds out his hand, pushing me away.
“Catcher, what’s going—” I start to say. But then I notice the scrapes along his arms speckled with blood.
My eyes go wide, fear starting to tingle somewhere deep inside. I take another step toward him but he says, “Don’t,” and I stop.
He bows his head, the muscles along his jaw clenching and releasing.
“Go back to the others, Gabrielle.” His voice is hoarse.
“No,” I tell him, my chest fluttering anxiously. “Not until you tell me what’s going on.” I clench my fists, dig my nails into my palms. I wish I hadn’t dropped the rocks. What if the infection is taking over him? What if he’s starting to turn? What if the blood isn’t his but someone else’s?
He shakes his head and stumbles again.
I rush to him, trying to help him stand. He tries to physically push me away but he’s too weak. “Gabry, please,” he says.
“Don’t.”
I take his arm in mine just as he falls to one knee. There are more gouges along his back, his shirt ripped.
“What happened?” I ask, trying to keep the worry out of my voice. I bend over his shoulder, trying to get a better look but he pushes me away again, this time causing me to stumble backward.
“Catcher, you’re hurt,” I tell him. I can’t understand why he keeps pushing me away. “What happened?”
He looks at me, the pain a haze around the edges of his eyes. “I know,” he says softly. “Running through the Forest—brambles,” he mutters. “Branches.” He blinks a few times as if he’s having a difficult time focusing. Sweat drips down his cheeks and neck. He looks gaunt, his wrists too thin.
“Have you been eating? Drinking?” I ask him. He shakes his head. “Catcher,” I say, my voice a mix of desperation and exasperation. “You have to take care of yourself,” I whisper. “Let me clean these cuts.”
I don’t know what will happen to him if he loses too much blood—when they die the Infected always turn, and I can only assume the same thing will happen to Catcher—that if he dies he’ll Return. I have no idea how long he’s been starving himself but he looks weak and dizzy. Just like Cira when I found her in the Council House. I press my lips together, realizing just how dangerous Catcher could be right now.
“No,” he whispers. “I’m infected, Gabrielle,” he says. “Don’t you understand? I won’t let you risk touching my blood. I won’t risk infecting you.”
I narrow my eyes. “But you don’t know if that would even do anything,” I tell him. “Plenty of people have been infected and bled on other people and nothing’s happened.” I think about the boy in the amphitheater who sacrificed himself to the Soulers. How he was bleeding and the Souler woman still touched him.
“That’s different,” he says. “I’m different. Unless I can know for sure I won’t infect you I don’t want to take that risk. I can’t be the one to hurt you.” His eyes go wide and roll back in his head slightly as he loses his balance and throws his arms out to catch himself.
I jump forward, grabbing him. He pushes me back, his hands on my shoulders. “Please,” he says. “Please. I can’t take it if something happens to you.”
I stretch out my fingers for his face but my arms aren’t long enough. I can’t reach him.
“I’m going to take care of you, Catcher.” The fear in my voice burns into anger. “You should know that by now. I’m not giving up on you.”
He closes his eyes, his breathing shallow, and I wonder if I should call out to the others for help. Or for a weapon.
Finally he nods and I peel his shirt away from his body. I have to clench my teeth as the smell of blood hits the air. I tense, waiting for the Mudo on either side of the fence to react. Waiting for their moans to pitch higher, their scrambling to intensify. But nothing happens. Another reminder of how different Catcher is.
How he can pass as one of them.
I grab the canteen and dribble a few drops of water onto a scrap from my skirt and dab at his wounds. Then I hold the water to his lips and watch his throat as he drinks.
“It’s the best I can do for now,” I tell him, wishing I could do more. Not just for the cuts on his back but for the pain I can see in his eyes. The guilt and self-loathing. “You have to promise me you’ll eat and sleep. Stop pushing yourself so hard. Stop punishing yourself.”
He reaches out and touches my cheek, the pad of his thumb skimming the path of the tears I didn’t even realize I was crying. We stare at each other, all the eroding possibilities flickering between us.
And then he pushes himself to his feet, wobbling just a bit but already looking stronger. I hold out a hand, press it to his chest to steady him. I suck in my breath as the heat of him invades my flesh. The familiarity of how hot his skin is, how his touch scorches. I can’t resist curling my fingers against him.
He leans closer and my body mimics his until the barest of nothing separates us. The fire of him spreads through me. I raise my other hand to his chest and move it down and around to his side, feeling the ridges of his ribs. His muscles twitch under my touch.
“Gabry.” His voice is low, a warning. I know he wants me to be the strong one; the one to step away and leave him behind. But I’ve never been the strong one.
I press myself closer to him. Wanting to remember what it was like before. That moment—the instant—before everything changed.
He raises his fingers to my lips. He traces them slowly. I reach out my tongue, touching his thumb. He groans surrender low in his throat and reaches his hand to the back of my neck, grabbing me and pulling.
But then he stops just as his mouth almost reaches mine. He breathes through clenched teeth, panting with effort. We stand that way, so close to a kiss but the distance impossible. He whimpers but doesn’t come any closer. “Gabrielle,” he says, this time my name a plea.
I close my eyes at the sound of it, at the feel of his anguish. I push my hand up his chest and along his throat and then I tilt his chin up, pressing my lips along his jaw. I want to prove to him that he’s alive. That he’s not a monster. That he’s still who he’s always been.
He catches his breath again and again as I touch my mouth to his skin. It burns against my lips, the heat between us almost unbearable.
He trails his own finger down my back, along the edge of my shoulder blade, trailing a line under my arm and along my chest.
I close my eyes and press myself against him. “Catcher,” I whisper. Our hearts beat against each other, the blood rushing through our veins. I feel light and dizzy, as if the world’s spinning fast enough that it can change time—take us back to the before.
Back before the Forest and Elias and my mother and Daniel and the Recruiters and Cira. Just one memory—one reminder—of what could have been.
Suddenly his arms wrap around me, pulling me tight, his mouth at my throat, at the edge of my shirt, along my collarbone, at my ear.
And then his lips almost close over mine but he stops. I lean in, trying to erase the space between us but it’s as if there’s too thick a wall of air between us. I can almost feel the outline of his lips; I can just barely feel their heat. But I can’t touch them.
A wail begins to build inside me. We’re so close. We’re almost there. Just this once I want to kiss him the way we did before. Please, why can’t he understand this? That if our lips can just touch, if we can just replay that moment, that maybe we can close the gap between then and now. That we can take it all back.
In that moment we are almost Catcher and Gabrielle, standing at the base of the coaster at the amusement park. There’s no infection. There was no change. I want to cry with the want and the need of it all, just beyond my reach.
But then he pushes me away, snapping the possibility of the moment. He gasps for air as he stumbles backward. I feel the need, the overpowering desire begin to break through me. His face is awash with horror and shame. He raises his hand to his mouth, pushes his fingers to his lips. Lips that my mouth never touched. His other hand he holds out as if to ward me off. He’s shaking his head, tears already falling from his eyes, already burning down my face.
“No,” he says as if he can take it all back.
“Catcher,” I say. I step toward him, desperate. “It’s okay.” Please, I just need him to be who he used to be. Because that means I get to go back to being who I used to be as well.
“No!” he screams. I wince at the sound of it. At the meaning of it. The finality. Birds explode from a bush in the Forest and he stares at them as they twist into the air. “It’s not okay,” he yells at me. “It will never be okay!”
He lunges toward me and a spike of fear digs into my spine. He’s never been violent with me. He’s never raised his voice and I feel little and small and nothing in the face of it.
He grabs the front of my shirt and pulls me against him, his face hovering over mine. I cringe, no longer sure of what he will or won’t do.
“Don’t ever touch me again, Gabrielle,” he growls. The intensity in his eyes terrifies me. He shakes me and then pushes me back and I fall to the ground, dazed. He stands over me, hands clenched into fists at his sides.
I throw an arm in front of me and cringe, his rage so palpable that I’m afraid he might lash out. He’s like a horrifying monster, nothing like the person I know. “Catcher, don’t!” I cry out, hoping that my voice will break through whatever’s happening to him.
Chapter 43
Catcher stops. His face drains of color. He takes a step back, his eyes dazed as if he’s just woken up. His mouth opens and closes. “Gabry,” he breathes. He shakes his head, the moment of vulnerability gone. His eyes go flat, empty. The muscles along his neck tremble as he swallows again and again.
“You have to go tell the others,” he finally says, his voice soft. Everything from before—the rage and pain—gone. “The Recruiters are coming closer. They’ll make it through the village.” And then he turns and runs down the path, pushing against the fence for support when he stumbles.
I sit on the ground feeling ashamed and alone and stupid and miserable. It tunnels inside me, spreading darkness like a cloud over the ocean. I want to drown in the feeling, curl up in it and let it pull me away. To wallow in the absolute emptiness. To know that I can’t be drained anymore, that I can’t be hurt. Because there’s nothing left.
It’s not that Catcher can’t be with me. It’s that he doesn’t want to be with me. He used to make me feel like the most amazing person in the world and now he makes me feel like the worst. Like I’m not worth anything at all.
Sobs suffocate me until I press my arm over my mouth and bite into my flesh, trying to hold it all in. But I can’t and I strain at the hurt of it all.
I can’t go back to being who I was before. To wanting what I wanted before. It will never be the same. Catcher will never be better. He’ll always be infected. Cira will always be Mudo. I will never know my birth mother. Elias will always be elusive. Even my mother now has Harry.