The last thing Kayla did before the jump was bury her head in Steve’s chest. An instant later they both felt that the shift had happened again, not just because they felt sick to their stomachs, but also because they were suddenly freezing. Steve flinched in the sudden chill as Kayla gasped her first of the cold night air as the jump effect passed.
“That didn’t take long,” Steve said fighting the urge to stutter.
Feeling normal again, the first thing Kayla noticed other than the cold was the old brick estate behind them. Her left hand was caressing Steve’s neck, and she wondered how it got there. Then she realized that that’s what her body must have been doing before her consciousness jumped into it.
She felt the hay beneath her and saw it in her peripheral vision and knew where she was. “Steve,” she smiled. We’re on our hayride.” She couldn’t take her eyes off the man who wasn’t actually her husband yet. “It’s New Year’s Eve 1987. The year I married—”
“I know what year it is, Sweetness.” Steve looked into eyes so luminous he could see through them in the moonlight. “Are we –,” he swallowed, “are we … ok?” he asked solemnly, the very brief but intense last jump fresh in his mind.
Guilt crept into Kayla. “Of course, we’re ok,” she said softly. “You were right. I was so happy in our house,” she shrugged resignedly, “that I … I think I was looking for someone to blame when we were ripped away.” Steve blew warm air into his fists and smiled sadly at her. “What I said to you …” Kayla looked down, so upset with herself for snapping at him in the elevator. “The look on your face … I don’t blame you for the r-ra—“
“Shh,” Steve put the tips of his fingers to her lips. “Shh. No more. Kiss me.”
Steve tilted Kayla’s chin up to him and kissed her with a passion that warmed him from the inside out. He smelled her lavender soap scent and remembered being with her in the stolen New Years Eve moonlight like it was yesterday; the bliss was short-lived that night, but it was heaven while it lasted. Kayla remembered the first time they did this when Steve climbed into the cart after her and could barely contain himself before he was on her with abandon. Their memories fueled them, and soon the feelings they took with them from their unhappy jump to the elevator were all but forgotten.
Steve grabbed Kayla’s hands to warm them in his own when he felt something unfamiliar. At the loft, the house, and even in the elevator, Kayla felt familiar to him in every way. There was nothing about her that didn’t ring true to all five of his senses. Until now. He pulled back and looked down at her hands. That’s when he saw it.
“What’s wrong?” Kayla asked.
“What’s this?”
“What’s what?
“Oh,” Steve said. “Right.”
“What?” Kayla was confused. “Is something wrong?”
“Your – this ring. The one you wore when you were …” he breathed a sigh, “married to Jack.”
Kayla looked down at her hand and felt a shiver go down her spine. She couldn’t say if it was from the cold or from the look of that long-forgotten ring reminding her of the biggest mistake of her life. The large marquis stone looked foreign on her finger, and she suddenly felt that sense of dread one gets when they don’t know where they put something very important, like a passport or their wallet or … their wedding ring.
“It looks so strange, doesn’t it? It’s not my ring.”
“It is at the moment,” he said, frustration creeping into his voice.
Steve started to feel cold again. He’d hoped he’d left this mistake back in the elevator, but this jump was reminding him of the same time all over again, just as her kisses had started helping him forget it.
Kayla saw this and put her arms around his neck. “It never meant anything to me but regret. It never even felt real. I married him, I said I do. And I wore this,” she said, running her fingers over the unwanted diamond. “But it always felt wrong on my finger. As wrong as that marriage was.” Kayla looked over at her husband and saw anxiety beginning to flood his features. “Steve, it’s ok. I’ll just take it off.”
“And put it where, Kayla?” He was upset now.
“Well I have a pocket, or something,” she said feeling around her person for a place to put the ring as his leather jacket squeaked around her shoulders.
“Yeah, and then what? People are going to notice it’s gone.”
Kayla looked at him cautiously. “What are you saying? You want me to … you want me to go back in the house?”
“No, I don’t want her to go back in the house!” But he didn’t know what the alternative was. “But if you don’t then someone’s gonna come out here lookin’ for you, Kayla! You’re not – we’re not – together – here.”
“Yes, we are,” Kayla said as she grabbed the front of his shirt, almost as if she were hanging on to him.
“But no one knows that yet! And if you don’t go in that house in about five more minutes you’re going to be missed. Hell, you may have already gone in there by now, I’m not sure.”
“No, Steve, I am not going back!”
“Listen, I know it’s hard,” he grabbed her hands feeling that terrible ring, “but that’s what you do, you go back in there –”
“How can I?”
“How can you not, Kayla?
“Knowing what we know now? Easily.”
Damn it, it’s happening all over again! “Why did we jump here, goddammit? What are we supposed to be doing here?! Going and playing house with a man you don’t love so that we can go through the hell that happened after? What does that put right? Nothing, Kayla, not a damn thing!”
“Then I can’t go back in that house, now, can I?”
“Well, what are you supposed to do, just not show up? Say, ‘Hey, Jack, I realize you don’t know this, but I’ve done this once before and know how it all turns out, so I’m not coming home?’”
“I don’t know,” Kayla said actually mulling that possibility over, “maybe?” Steve shot her a look that said hell no. “Well, maybe we won’t be here long enough to worry about it. I mean, we were in the elevator for about two minutes.”
“Yeah, but we were in 1990 for a whole day. Who’s to say this won’t last a week this time?”
Kayla sat back against the hay bale and crossed her arms. “Then you’re saying you want me to go in there to Jack, then.”
“I’m saying I don’t know what we do next, Kayla!” he shouted. “And I’m saying I want that damned ring off your finger, baby. I know I’m saying that.”
“Shh, someone’s going to hear you.”
“Well, good, then, that sure would make our decision for us, now, wouldn’t it?” he said lowering his voice slightly as he grabbed her left hand in his and twisted Jack’s ring off her finger. Kayla didn’t say anything as she watched him lose it over seeing another man’s ring on her finger. Then she looked on slack-jawed as he hurled it in anger into the trees.
“Feel better?” she asked with a fair amount of relief to have it gone, but also pining for her own beautiful solitaire.
“Yeah,” he retorted arrogantly, “As a matter of fact I do.” Then he looked over at her with amusement. “And you do, too,” he undid the snap of the leather jacket, then brought his hand to the mesh front of her dress, running his palm up to caress her neck. “You know you do.”
Kayla chuckled. “I do,” she smiled. “I don’t know where we go from here, but I do.”
The cold was starting to get to Steve, but a stirring in his groin started to warm him as he looked at her in this unique moonlight illuminating the snow in her hair. “I know somewhere we can go,” he said.
Kayla gave him a sexy smile then moved his cold hand down from her neck to her warm breast. “Good,” she said with a sexy voice that beckoned more from him. “Take me there.”
Steve brought his lips to the alabaster skin of her neck and placed wet kisses from there to her ear, making her sigh. He draped his left leg over her and thrust his hips toward her while his left hand fondled her firm breast. There were no walls of uncertainty here, just yearning for the pleasure they wanted to take in each other. The love they wanted to show each other. The need they felt to be together. Kayla brought his face up to hers and kissed him, exploring his mouth with needy sounds of gratification.
That was when Steve heard a rustling just behind him and pulled himself away abruptly to look over at the source of the noise.
“Do you hear someone,” Kayla whispered, realizing that she really was worried that Jack or someone else would catch them. That apprehension bothered her, actually. Why should I care? How real is this whole thing? Very real, she realized for the first time. This was wonderful and amazing, but also scary and completely uncertain, too. She understood, now, why Steve thought that maybe she should go back in the house. Because not doing so would change things, and she didn’t have the slightest idea how to take control of that kind of unknown.
“Yeah, baby,” Steve whispered. She could tell he was thinking something over, straining to remember something important. “I think there’s someone in the trees over there.”
Kayla bit her bottom lip. “Jack? Do you think it’s Jack?” Kayla looked over his left shoulder to try to see who was there.
“No,” he said, turning her face to look at him. “Keep your eyes on me, Kayla. I don’t want to tip him off that we know he’s there.”
“That who is there?”
“Ya know those pictures that sent Jack over the edge back then? They were taken here on this little hayride of ours. I think whoever took them is lurking in the trees where I just threw that ring.” He thought about that added wrinkle for a minute. “That probably made things worse, actually,” he said. Then he got an idea that almost made his head spin. “Keep kissin’ me, here, baby, I’ve got an idea.”
“What?” She asked between smacks, craning her neck to see the photographer.”
“Cut that out,” he said as he kissed her. “Eyes on me.”
“Mm,” she agreed, “What … what are … what’s your idea?” “In about ten seconds, I’m gonna go over there so quick he won’t know what hit him and make damned sure those pictures never see the light of day.”