My Darkest Rose

Chapter 18

Rose

The water was muddy from the rain and it was hard to see what exactly was floating in the water. It could have been moss. In fact, he was pretty sure it was moss, until he got close enough to see its color. It wasn't forest green, as he hoped. It was black.

He stepped closer to shore and looked for something he could use to prod it. There were sticks and limbs everywhere from years of storms, so he chose one at random that looked long enough. He tapped the water, sending ripples out to where the thing floated. It bobbed in the water like a dead fish.

Up close it was smaller than he first thought, about the size of a squirrel. He used the stick to try and roll it over, but only succeeded in pushing it underwater. Frustrated, he knelt down, and pushed the stick under water to try and flip it over.

Just as he caught sight of red, raw flesh on the underneath side of it, his foot slipped in the mud, his leg buckled, and he tumbled, knees-first into the water.

Unlike a normal lake, there was no graduation from the shore to the center. Moonwood Lake was a crater in the earth, its sides plunging deep below ground. One foot in and you were in deep water.

For Jack, who couldn't swim, it was like falling off the side of a cliff. He reached, frantically, for anything to grab onto. His hands grabbed fistfulls of mud and his feet scraped the rocky depths. He was able to keep his upper body out of the water, but in flailing about, he'd pulled the clump of hair closer. It bumped against his knee, rolled, and revealed its bloody contents.

It was Theodore, or once had been a part of Theodore. What was left in the water was only part of a cat. It looked like it had been torn off. A single paw floated in the water in a sort of pathetic wave.

Retching, he pulled his body out of the water where he laid in the mud, gasping for breath.

He didn't like cats, Mandy had been right about that, but Theodore had been more than a pet. He'd been a companion. And something had taken him.

Rolling away from the bank, he got to his feet and stumbled up the hill back to the house.

He didn't see her at first. He was too horrified by what he'd found in the lake to notice much of anything. But as he got closer to the house, he raised his head, and there she stood.

Rose. Naked, whole. She stood at the base of the steps as if she'd been waiting for him.

"Rose?" he said.

He thought she might not speak, that he was having some sort of post-traumatic hallucination, but then she said, "Jack?" and everything inside him stilled. He felt as if the earth had stopped spinning.

He reached for her, tentatively at first, and then when he felt her warm and solid beneath his hands, he clutched her to him. He could feel her breath on his neck, the butterfly kiss of her eyelashes on his skin.

Her breasts against his chest nearly undid him, threatening to return every ounce of pain he'd felt the past seven years into a single moment. She was as real as a spear through his heart.

He held her face and looked into her eyes. "How are you here?"

She shook her head, blinking. "I don't know."

He noticed she was shivering and realized he had to get her inside. He wanted to carry her, but he was covered in mud, so he took her hand, and led her up the stairs and into the back of the house.

Once inside, he held her close, smearing mud and lake detritus all over her bare skin. No words came to him, nor thoughts beyond his need to hold her. She was here. Her hair, dark like his. Her eyes, that strange golden color that seemed to absorb every bit of sunlight around her. Her lips, small, with that little freckle that blended between her lower lip and skin.