Never Forgotten

by Stacey Nash

  Mae finally breaks the silence. “What happened with Cynnie? She seems kind of shifty, eying off Will and Lilly all the time as if she doesn’t trust them.”

  “She wasn’t exactly accepted up north,” I say. “They knew she was Collective and didn’t trust her, no matter what I said. There was a guy who tried to kill her and after what she went through with . . .” His name gets lodged in my throat. “. . . when I came across Cynnie, my brother was trying to kill her.”

  “Wow,” Mae says. “So she left them?”

  “Yeah.”

  Mae flips her hand over and slides her fingers between mine making my heart jump. “I’m glad she did. Cynnie isn’t one of them, any more than we are. And gosh, I hope we’ve done the right thing by bringing Annie here.” She glances down at our hands. “I mean, I know she’s good, but there’s so much I don’t know, like why she left us to live with the Collective. I hope it doesn’t come back to bite us.”

  “I think bringing her here was right. He had her in a damn cage. I don’t know how I missed that.” I drag my free hand through my hair.

  “You are not a bad person, Jax.” Her other hand presses against my cheek. “The fact you care about what happened to Nik, that we’re even having this conversation proves that you’re not like them. You’re nothing like them. You’re a good person and I love you.”

  For a moment I just stare at her. Love, did she say love? She loves me?

  “Don’t bother trying to argue with me, you are.”

  She’s still talking, but the words blur because my mind is hung up on what she said minutes ago. “Shh,” I say, pressing a finger to her lips. “Back up a minute. What did you say?”

  She frowns, her eyes flicking up to the left and the expression is so damn adorable.

  “I said you’re nothing like them.”

  “No. After that.”

  Her lips curl. “You’re a good person.”

  “After that, too.”

  Now she’s full on grinning. “I love you.”

  With those three words, my heart does this funny little slip and my mouth crashes into Mae’s. She kisses me back immediately, her lips moving against mine like I’m air and she’s suffocating. My hands slide to her hips and her arms wrap around me and somehow, I’m not sure when or how, Mae’s back is pressed against the wall. This can’t be happening, she really does want me . . . does love me. I pull back just a little, until our faces are barely touching, but Mae brushes her mouth over mine. At first it’s tentative, like she’s not sure, and it takes everything in me to hold back from consuming her.

  She needs to be certain, I need her to be.

  She tugs me toward her until our bodies are flush and slips her hand up the back of my neck and that’s all the confirmation I need. I return her kiss with everything I’ve been holding back all this time. Mae’s lips give and she deepens our kiss until we’re both gasping for air.

  Long after the sun has fled, I break away, pulling back just an inch and resting my forehead against hers. “Tell me again.”

  “I love you, Jax.”

  I know I should say it back, but I can’t tell her when my body’s instinct is to show her. So that’s exactly what I do; show her just how much I love her with another soul-consuming kiss.

  Chapter Thirty-two

  Mae

  Walking along the downstairs corridor, I hear them before I even reach the door. The rumble of Beau’s voice is hard to decipher, but my mother’s pitch is much clearer.

  “I’ve already told you, and when Al gets here he’ll verify that I’m telling the truth. There’s not much more I can say.”

  Nothing more than a mumble, Beau’s response is impossible to make out. I grab the handle ready to enter, but my mother’s voice sounds again, this time more demanding. “I want to see my family. Where are they?”

  My hand shakes a little on the knob and Lilly gives my shoulder a reassuring squeeze.

  Okay, it’s doable. It’s just her . . . just my mother. I draw in a deep breath. After everything Annie did to help Jax and I get away from Manvyke, this shouldn’t be scary. She must care about me, but not knowing a darn thing about her makes me all kinds of nervous and, truth be told, slightly angry. She’s missed a huge part of my life—our lives—she can’t just waltz back in like everything’s right as sunshine. She owes Dad and me answers and lots of them.

  “Go,” Lilly urges.

  Right, I can do this. I push through the door and my mother is on her feet, trailing her finger along the books on the wall-length case. She spins around at the sound of the door opening, and her gaze lingers on me for entirely too long before anyone speaks. She looks different than she did when last I saw her at the Collective stronghold. Now her shorn hair has started to grow out, and stands up in a three inch messy halo. The color, I’m surprised to notice, is almost identical to my own—a rich golden-brown—and, without the hooded cloak of a sensor, her fine frame is full of womanly curves in jeans and a fitted sweater. She’s kind of beautiful. Way more beautiful than I remember. But I was only eight when she left us.

  My shoulders tense.

  Eight.

  Who abandons their eight-year-old kid?

  She holds out her arms like she wants me to run into them. Not likely. I turn to Beau. “Jax told you what happened?”

  Of course I know he already did, but I need to say something, anything.

  “He did,” Beau answers.

  I keep my eyes trained on him, all the while feeling hers on me, but Beau doesn’t continue. Damn, that was supposed to lead into conversation.

  “And what did you do with the Torith?” Annie says, her voice just like I remember: soft in pitch, but almost commanding in delivery.

  “The what?” I swing around to face her. “Is that the sword?”

  “Yes, it’s the patriarchal key known as the sword.”

  “It’s somewhere safe,” Beau drones from his chair.

  “I’m not sure safe is good enough,” I say. “We might have two of the three keys, but this is a reprieve. Manvyke will come for them and when he does we need to be ready.”

  “And we will be,” she says.

  “We will be. You won’t be.” Beau pulls off his colorful hat and scrunches it in his hand. He’s got a good point. How can we trust her to help?

  My fists clench by my thighs. “How do we even know you’re not one of them?”

  “Anamae . . .” I instantly feel like a disappointment, but I hold my ground, glaring her down. She’s the disappointment, not me.

  “Well, are you Collective?”

  She straightens as if her whole body is at alert as she turns toward the door, her eyes huge and shining while she totally ignores my question. The most important question I have for her.

  “Refugee status.” Beau slides his hat back over his head then he crosses to the door. “Don’t abuse it, Annie.”

  “What does that even mean?” I direct my voice to Beau. At least he cares.

  A soft knock sounds on the door.

  “It means she’s here as a guest, and if she steps out of line or tries to enter forbidden areas, her status will be redefined as prisoner.”

  My mother taps her fingers on the wooden cabinet. “It means I can’t do a darn thing, but I don’t care. I just want to see my family. I know he’s on the other side of that door, Beau. Open it already.”

  He grips the handle and gently opens the door, revealing Dad standing on the other side. I haven’t seen a lot of him lately. With everything that’s gone on, I’ve been kind of busy, so the recognition in his expression is almost stifling. A wide grin spreads across his face like this is a freaking reunion and he hasn’t spent the past nine months barely remembering his own name.

  Beau slips out of the door, closing it behind him, and even though I’m still angry at her, I’m grateful for the privacy he’s granting.

  “Drew,” she says and Dad freezes, now a tad confused, as his attention flips to me. I’d forgotten she called hi
m that.

  I move to his side, placing a hand on his arm. “You all right, Dad?”

  “It . . . for a second I thought . . . she looks like Annie, only not. Is my mind playing tricks again?”

  “Richard . . . my Andrew . . .” She moves toward us, her arms pinned to her sides, but her gaze practically devouring him.

  “No,” he says, “it’s not her.”

  I level a glare at her as I issue a warning. “The Collective robbed him. Take it easy.”

  Her eyes grow wide in understanding and she holds a trembling hand out which he takes. The contact must spark something within him, because my father pulls her into his chest, his other arm engulfing her in a hug.

  An unwelcome lump springs into my throat, but I will not cry at the vision of my parents reunited, when she was quite possibly the one who tore them apart in the first place. They cling to each other for so long standing here as a bystander becomes uncomfortable. Finally, she pulls back and Dad steps away, his eyes unfocused just like he was back at the farm. Damn it. She must notice too, because she looks at me and with a thick voice asks, “Manvyke?”

  I nod. “He didn’t wipe you too. I was scared he was going to . . .”

  She huffs out a condescending sound. “He never would.”

  “How long?” Eyes shimmering with unshed tears, she gestures toward Dad, who’s pulled a book out of the case and flips through it. “How bad?”

  “Almost nine months ago now and pretty bad. Way worse than Jax or I.”

  “Well, it’s probably the same, only deeper. He wouldn’t have wanted to wipe your entire identity and general knowledge. I think he had a plan for the two of you, but with Drew it sounds like it was more than just surface memory.”

  He looks up at his name, and throws a wide smile at us. “I’m in the room, Anamae. No need to talk about me like I’m not here.”

  I grin back at him. He has come such a long way and it feels so darn good when he says my name properly.

  Annie continues in a lower voice, which cracks with emotion. “There are ways to bring it back. The human mind is a wonderful thing. It doesn’t want to forget.”

  How she knows all this is a mystery. One that reminds me she never answered my question, and screw her, we deserve to know why our lives were ripped out from beneath us. “Are you Collective?” I demand.

  Once again, she doesn’t answer.

  “Well,” I ask, “are you?”

  “Am I what, Anamae?”

  “Are you Collective?”

  “It’s a long story.”

  “We’ve got all night, right, Dad?”

  She clenches her jaw, her expression hard as it bores into mine. “This is not a conversation for right now.”

  “I think we deserve to know why you left us for nine years, without so much as letting us know you were still alive. Dad knew you weren’t dead, but I couldn’t even say your goddamn name in front of him or he’d lose it. He was so freaking broken and Grammy . . . oh my gosh, Grammy, she died convinced you’d been chopped up into little pieces and buried in the forest by some axe murderer. I don’t think she ever got over your disappearance. You were the daughter she never had, but always wanted. Did you know that?”

  I wait for her to answer, but the only response is the fall of tears that have been brimming since she realized Dad isn’t himself. Not that she has any right to cry. “Do you know what it’s like to grow up without a mother? What Dad went through every day, just waiting for you to come home?”

  Tears glide down her face, but her rigid body and set jaw resemble a stony statue.

  “There were reasons.”

  “Why did you leave us?”

  She glances at Dad who has now moved away, then crosses the room and raps on the door. Beau pokes his head in and Annie says, “Those few minutes weren’t long enough, but I think we’ll need to take this slowly.”

  Beau nods in complete understanding that the slowness is not for her, it’s for Dad. “You ready, Richard?”

  Dad crosses the room, never dropping his eyes from her even as he walks through the door. The minute it closes behind them, Annie turns to me.

  “I was protecting you and in time, I will tell you the story.”

  Epilogue

  Annie

  Being reunited with one’s family after eleven years should be different, better. Not so. It’s been three days with no Anamae, no Drew, no one but Beau and another lousy lockdown. Despite my lazy sprawl across the hard sofa, my stiff back aching, my kicked up legs a display of false ease, because here I am again.

  Waiting.

  Muffled voices echo outside the open door. That would be the guard. An actual armed man standing watch over me, despite the fact Beau and I were once friends. That I was once a trusted member of his team.

  Yet, here he comes again.

  To ask the same questions again.

  There’s not much to do other than wait. Focusing on the lone branch swishing against the window pane, I drop my head onto the couch’s backrest, the picture of indifference.

  “Shut the door.” Gruff, curt, to the point. He’s taking the hard road today.

  After all these years the same crazy hat covers his balding head, its bright colors now faded to match his long shorts. He drags an armchair right up in front of where my feet rest on the low table and sits back, his arms forming a bar across his broad chest.

  “Why was Manvyke holding you?” Here we go once more.

  Dragging one leg over the top of the other, I answer in the best way I can. “To lure in my daughter.”

  Not the absolute truth, but I’m not about to get into Sander’s and my long, personal history.

  “The man clearly finds you interesting . . .”

  I shrug. “The man is insane.”

  “Yes, well, we have two of the keys, so once we find the third, his fanatical plans will be wiped off the table.”

  Always so cocky. Pity he has no idea.

  “You don’t understand how passionate we are about—”

  I drop my feet to the floor, leaning forward to look my one-time friend in the eye. “No, Beau, what you don’t understand is that he already has the third key.”

  If I didn’t know the man as well as I did, I wouldn’t have noticed the slight widening of his eyes, the fade of color from his dark cheeks.

  “The Lazereth is the most powerful of the three. With it and the tech at his disposal Lysander Manvyke could crumble this building, this city, bring about the downfall of your entire resistance, time and again.”

  “Then why hasn’t he?”

  “That, I don’t know.”

  Acknowledgements

  I’d like to extend a huge thank you to Rochelle Fernandez and the team at HarperCollins Impulse for taking a chance on a debut author. I’m so glad that you saw potential in the Collective Series.

  Thanks to Anabel who always helps me get Mae’s thoughts out of my head and onto the page. ST Bende, my constant cheerleader and self-nominated lover of all things Jax, without your constant encouragement this book never would have made it past the first draft. Thank you for being my twisted pea. Sharon Johnston, I’m so grateful for you whipping my words into shape and bringing out the best in my storytelling. You three ladies are my Collective team; Mae, Will, and Jax wouldn’t be the same without any one of you.

  Lauren McKellar as usual, thank you for being my rock in the writing world and answering all my ‘what ifs’ and ‘maybe I should do this’ ideas. You’re the best partner in writing a girl could have.

  A special mention to my writers groups, HRW and Story Queens of Aus. Together with the Aussie Owned and Read team, you keep me on path with my goals.

  As always, thank you to my family for your love and support. Dave, you are my partner not only in life, but in this writing venture. Without your sound boarding support, I’d be lost.

  Most of all thank you to the bloggers and reviewers who have supported this series, to my street team and to you, my readers. Wit
hout all of you, more books would not be possible.

  About the Author

  Writing for the young and new adult market, Stacey's books are all adventure filled stories with a good dose of danger, a smattering of romance, and plenty of KISSING! Hailing from the Hunter Valley in New South Wales, she loves nothing more than immersing herself in the beauty and culture of the local area.

  Stacey’s novels include the Collective Series and the Oxley College Saga.

  To stay up to date with new releases and upcoming titles be sure to sign up for Stacey’s newsletter at www.stacey-nash.com

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  Copyright

  HarperCollinsPublishers

  First published in Australia in 2015

  This edition published in 2015

  by HarperCollinsPublishers Australia Pty Limited

  ABN 36 009 913 517

  harpercollins.com.au

  Copyright © Stacey Nash 2015

  The right of Stacey Nash to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her under the Copyright Amendment (Moral Rights) Act 2000.

  This work is copyright. Apart from any use as permitted under the Copyright Act 1968, no part may be reproduced, copied, scanned, stored in a retrieval system, recorded, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

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  ISBN 978 1 4607 0563 6 (ebook)

  National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication data