The look on Kayla’s face was sheepish at best as he shouted his sexual frustration at what they both knew damn well was just your average ordinary hotel room ceiling. She saw how much Steve wanted to consume her and felt his eye smolder upon her with an edge of annoyance when he lowered his gaze. She wanted to make him see why she had to stop what they were doing, but her own sexual need was so fierce that she was surprised she was thinking clearly enough to explain herself at all.
“Are you mad at me?” Kayla asked.
The look in Steve’s eye softened a bit as he mentally kicked himself. Steve was mad, alright, but it wasn’t for the reason she was alluding to. And mad wasn’t even the primary feeling he had at the moment. He was horny and aggravated and confused and plenty scared of what was out there and his balls hurt. And, yes, he was mad as hell at whatever was making all this happen to them. But the last thing Steve wanted was for Kayla to think that not having sex with him would make him mad.
He took his gentle hand firmly to the whole right side of her face and brushed his thumb across her swollen bottom lip. “I would never be mad at you for that.” He took a deep breath as he tried to stay his sexual anxiety. “I’m not gonna tell you I’m in a good place here, baby,” he said grabbing his erection that didn’t know what to do with itself trying to force himself to soften. “And I am mad, but not at you.”
“I’m sorry,” she replied, lightly squeezing his thigh in an attempt to soothe him.
“Don’t be sorry,” Steve said with an edge to his voice, “and touching me like that is only gonna make me wanna go at you more, here, baby—,“ he stopped short when he felt himself get stiff in his hand again resulting from her touch. “Dammit!” Steve jumped out of the bed and looked back at her.
“Steve, please don’t,” she said with the puppy dog expression that always made him do anything she wanted. “Come back.”
“Naw, baby, I don’t think so. These weird Dick van Dyke beds mean I can’t be in it without touching you, so you just need to give me a minute for Little Stevie to calm down, ok?”
In answer to the somewhat doubtful look on her face, Steve said, “Get that out of your head, Sweetness. I’m not mad. I could never be mad for that. He just wants to come out and play so bad is all,” he said with a smirk. Kayla didn’t react to the jibe. So he said more seriously, “Sweetness, remember what I told you when you were upset about your scar? When I’m with you but can’t have you … this happens,” looking down at his crotch then leering just his eye back up to meet hers.
A smile finally stretched across Kayla’s face, and she cocked her head in mock haughtiness. Steve took another deep breath as his unhappy penis began accepting that it wasn’t getting any right now.
“I want you just as badly as you want me, you know,” Kayla said. It took a lot of willpower to make me stop, and now I’m feeling all dressed up with no place to go, too.”
“Dressed up, baby?” he grinned knowing exactly what she was saying.
“Mmm-hmm.” She couldn’t stop herself. The thought of how wet she was for him made her lose her focus just like that. Her sultry eyes matched the smokey voice as she absently brought her own fingers to fondle her taut nipple. “It’s going to be a shame to waste how hot and wet I am.”
Steve was on her so fast she cried out. He crushed his mouth upon hers and invaded it with his ungentle, marauding tongue. Kayla clung to him, sucking on his tongue with desperation and digging her fingernails into his back as her wet folds licked the thigh he shoved into her center. You haven’t kissed these lips yet. “Steve,” she whimpered, doubt screaming at her. He answered her with two fingers parting the labia that were leaking her wetness down her thigh. “Oh, God, I’m going to come, Steve.” He slid his fingers as far into her as they would go.
“Come for me, baby! You come for me!”
The sensations were exquisite and euphoric. “Oh, please!” she screamed as his fingers played with her clitoris. You never had these fingers inside you.
Steve ground his now throbbing, engorged cock against Kayla’s firm thigh while he fingered her with his left hand and held her head aside firmly with the other so he could bite at the skin above her collarbone. “Sweetness you’re so beautiful,” he panted. He tasted the skin he was biting and wanted to lap up the wetness he knew was gushing between her legs. “And you taste … baby you taste so fucking good,” his pelvis thrusting even harder against her thigh.
Kayla’s heart raced. This tongue never tasted you. “Steve, I love you.” No more changes! “I want you so bad, but –“
Steve groaned at what was coming. “Sh*t …”
“But I’m scared!”
Steve pulled his fingers out of her with a tight sucking sound, and Kayla moaned from the sudden emptiness.
“Why?!” he roared as he pushed himself to the foot of the bed needing to put the physical space between them. “Because we didn’t do it here officially?”
“Yes!”
“But we wanted to! Doesn’t that count?! Kayla! I wanted to make love to you so bad then but our heads weren’t there yet. Now our heads are there, so why does it matter if these bodies did or didn’t or what?!”
“I can’t explain it, Steve! I just feel like we’ve already changed something—“
“Yeah, and then we jumped FARTHER BACK!”
“—and we don’t know what that’s going to mean in the future when we get there!”
“Oh, you’ve got our jump schedule, now? They print you an itinerary, Sweetness?” he snapped.
Hurt shown in Kayla’s eyes, especially because he used her pet name in that tone of voice. “If you want to snap at me, Steve Johnson, you go ahead, but don’t you dare call me Sweetness when you do it!” Steve immediately regretted the nasty comment. “Don’t you do that!” Tears were stinging the backs of her eyes.
Steve sighed deeply and reached out for her hand as he looked at her with apology. “Sweetness…,” he said tenderly. She took his hand in acceptance, and laced her fingers tightly with his.
“We don’t know what those changes will mean for us,” Kayla repeated softly as tears began to pool in her eyes. “And I just think we should be careful. We shouldn’t make any more changes or do anything really important that we didn’t do the first time. I could be wrong, maybe I’m worrying over nothing. But I just have this feeling that we’re not supposed to make love with bodies that aren’t already at that stage of our relationship.” When she blinked, a tear fell from her glassy, red-rimmed eyes, and an unsolicited memory popped into Steve’s head. A vision of Kayla at Helga’s while he held a towel up to her. She was beautiful, dripping wet, her hair a tangle of ringlets, and the look in her eyes hungry and terrified and a little lost. It was only now as he saw her looking at him with those same eyes that he realized … with disdain and contempt for whomever or whatever was causing all of this … that she was right.
Their heated exchange had cooled their desire. Still holding her hand, Steve looked at her and nodded. “Ok, baby,” then he gathered her up in his arms. “Ok. You win.” Kayla held onto him tightly for a moment, then she placed a light but loving kiss on his lips.
“I’m going to the bathroom to clean off,” she said as she gently pulled away from Steve.
“Clean off or get off, baby?” he asked sending a thrill through both of them.
“Yes,” she grinned teasingly.
Steve looked at her like the little devil she was. “You’re naughty, baby.”
“Have fun,” she said as she closed the door to the bathroom.
“Leave the door open!” he said seriously, all teasing gone from his voice.
Kayla opened the door back up and peered out at him. “Ok.”
And just like that they were solemn again. They both cleaned up and nothing more, and when Kayla emerged from the bathroom Steve took his turn to pee and get a good look at this face, the youngest one he’d jumped into so far.
When he came back out, Kayla was in her yellow robe sitting at the table where the room service had been waiting for them.
“Well, baby, this looks like something we’ve done before. What did I order for us, again?”
Kayla was starving and couldn’t wait when the aroma of the eggs, bacon, and coffee beckoned her. “Your omelets are better, but this is really good,” she said.
Steve put on a pair of jeans and sat down across from her. “Not sure when this body last ate, but I’m starving.” Kayla chuckled at the double entendre and scooped a large serving of breakfast food onto a plate for him. “Sweetness,” he said in a warning tone. “Don’t you start now, baby, that’s not what I meant, and I just got him calmed down.”
Kayla put up a hand in supplication and took a sip of her coffee.
They ate in silence for a long time, both lost in their own thoughts. Soon, Steve sensed something not right between them. He didn’t like it.
Kayla felt his eyes on her and looked up to meet his intense glare.
“What’s happening to us, Kayla?”
“I wish I knew,” she said.
“No. Us. What is happening to us?”
Her stomach turned slightly as she realized her husband’s meaning.
“Don’t disconnect.”
“I don’t mean to,” she said.
“You have to let me touch you. Don’t shut me out.”
“You feel shut out?” she asked stunned. Kayla let out a laugh of realization. “You know what this is?” she asked.
“What?”
“A role reversal. The last time we sat in these chairs eating this room service, I was saying these same kinds of things to you.”
“Well, you always were the smart one. Now take your own advice from the first time and stay with me, here.”
“Stay with you? Steve, I’m not going anywhere. You think I’ve checked out or something?”
“Kayla,” he chided a bit. “I can feel the wall you’ve put up between us here,” he gestured to the air above the table. “You came out of that bathroom, and suddenly I’m at arm’s length.”
“I’m sorry,” she said, frustrated. “I don’t want distance, I just want us to tread carefully, can’t you see that?” She reached out for Steve’s hand, and he grabbed it up into his own. “I’m just scared of what is happening to us. We haven’t really tried to figure it out.”
“Well, I don’t’ know how we do that, baby, I don’t see any yellow brick road to follow, here, do you?”
She got quiet, trying to find her words. Steve kept hold of her hand, knowing she was struggling to explain it to him; he needed her to, so he remained silent, letting her find her words. “I’m having fun, Steve. I’m enjoying this. These bodies, your body, being so much younger, knowing what we know now while in the past. And I’m easily forgetting that what’s happening is … wrong. It’s like blue food, it just doesn’t occur in nature. Blue food is man-made. And what’s happening to us? This time jumping … it has to be man-made, too.”
“Ever hear of a blueberry, Sweetness?”
“Yeah, mush it up and you get purple.”
“Blue corn chips.”
“Steve.”
“Blue slushies.”
“Those don’t occur in nature.”
“Taste natural to me.”
“Will you knock it off. I’m being serious, here.”
“Baby. What do you propose we do? Stop living?”
“I want to stop guessing. I want to know what is going on.”
Steve turned his head from her and worked the muscles in his jaw in exasperation.
“Oh, now who’s turning away.”
“You think I don’t want to know? You think I like feeling out of control? Well, I don’t, baby. But I won’t apologize for wanting to be with you while we’re here. So excuse me for guessing with you as my top priority, Kayla!”
She didn’t like Steve’s tone and now felt lost in the distance that, as Steve said, she put there. Now he was mad at her, and all she wanted to do was break through that brand new wall and get to him. Panic set in, and she suddenly had to be touching him or she was going to crumple.
Kayla sprung from her chair and straddled his lap facing him. She grabbed his face with her palms and placed kisses all over his face. It wasn’t sexual, it was emotional. Steve wrapped his arms around his wife’s waist in relief as she kissed him, taking every kiss she gave and absorbing them into his heart. She kissed his cheeks, his eye, the cool leather of his patch, his forehead, his chin, his nose, his lips, then she looked at him and said, “I’m just scared, that’s all.”
“Ok, Sweetness,” he embraced her and laid his head to her chest. “Baby,” he said from the warmth of her bosom, “I don’t know if there’s someone waving his abracadabra or if it’s cosmic or what.” He inhaled deeply and continued. “Just don’t disconnect us.”
“I won’t. I’m so sorry. I won’t.”
Then he reached his mouth over and kissed her breast gently through the thickness of her robe. “And forgive me if I can’t help it if your breasts end up in my mouth.”
Kayla giggled and said, “Ok, I’ll try to tell them to behave themselves.” Still on his lap, she lowered her head and kissed him deeply. His penis stirred and he fought not to press on.
“Now go back over there, and finish your breakfast I worked so hard to order, here.”
While Kayla ate a piece of bacon, Steve got an idea. “Remember Stockholm, baby? I remember it like it was yesterday.”
She looked at him with those intense blue eyes and recalled every moment. “I remember everything about it,” she said.
“Remember what we did at this table last time?” He reached his hand straight across the table with his palm facing down.
“Be careful or you’ll get burned,” she said.
Steve smiled and laughed a very Steve sounding laugh. It filled her heart and grounded her to hear it. I want to play 20 Questions, baby.” Kayla smiled and looked down at her plate. “Play with me, Sweetness.”
“Ok,” she said as she licked her lips and stuck another fork of egg into her mouth. “You go first.”
Steve smiled. “What’s your favorite food?”
“You,” she said quickly.
“What kind of answer is that?”
“It’s an answer,” she said confidently.
“Ok, next time you want a hot fudge sundae, I’ll remind you that what I’ve got is all you need.”
“M’kay,” she said unfazed.”
Ooh, his little devil was giving him a real game here. Bring it on, baby.
“What’s your favorite fantasy,” she asked.
“I lied last time, you know.”
“So fess up, Mr. Johnson.”
“Ok, Mrs. Johnson. You in a red dress splayed out on a pool table with your legs over my shoulders screaming my name as I fuck your brains out comes to mind.”
Kayla’s jaw dropped at the lustily explicit words coming out of her husband’s mouth, and she felt herself instantly drench in a new release of wetness.
“You asked,” he said as he took a sip of coffee like he’d just read her the latest stock prices.
Kayla composed herself and said, “the truth this time was much better than the lie last time.” Then she smiled. “I can’t wait to search my closets for a red dress,” she said as she very purposely licked her lips.
Steve’s cock was at full attention, but he ignored the strain against his jeans. “My turn,” he said as he plowed his hand through his hair. “How is it possible that you didn’t move on with anyone after I died?”
Kayla was not prepared for this question. “I don’t want to play this anymore.”
Steve was equally unprepared for that answer. And it bothered him. Especially when he saw the color drain right out of her face. “Why don’t you want to talk about that?”
“I just don’t,” she shrugged. “It hurts to think about.” Her eyes nervously darted around the room.
What was going on here? Steve pressed on despite the clear signals Kayla was sending him. “All those years, and you didn’t sleep with another single person, even though you thought I was dead?”
“I told you,” she said in a very small voice looking away from him, “there was one. Just one person I tried with. It didn’t work.” He studied her face very carefully as she paused and pursed her lips together. Her furrowed brow and evasive eyes made him uneasy. “It was a very bad decision. In every way.”
“Why?”
“Because I was still married to you in my heart. I took off my ring,” she said as she buried her face guiltily in her hands, “and it felt so much like cheating on you, but I really tried.” Kayla was over this mistake in her life a very long time ago, so why she was feeling the sudden and intense remorse over it now she didn’t know. Maybe because she never told him whom it was with. Maybe because she was too ashamed.
Her face was heavily flushed now, and Steve was alarmed at the agitation this question had caused. He continued to stay silent.
Kayla took a deep breath and with enormous difficulty looked him in the eye. “I only tried because losing you made me … insane. It was the worst kind of hurt when you died—when they took you. Thinking I’d never feel your body on mine, see the love in your eyes, grow old with you. The pain drove me mad. I was so self-destructive, it just makes me feel ashamed whenever I think about it.” Steve’s eye filled with unshed tears at the pain he saw in his wife’s face. “Stephanie was the only thing that kept me going. I looked at her and saw you, and one day I realized that was all I needed. You were with me. I didn’t want anybody else. I realized that I would be in love with only you forever and that I would never be able to move on from you, Steve. And so I stopped trying.”
“Not so much as one more date.” It was not a question.
“Not one.”
Steve paused for a moment letting her words sink in. You stayed lonely, Sweetness. For 16 years you stayed lonely. Steve never felt more cheated out of their future than he did at that very moment. “Ok, your turn.”
Kayla closed her eyes and tried to tuck away the pain that his question had so quickly brought to the surface. When she opened her eyes, he offered a sweet smile that she couldn’t help but return.
“Ok … let me think …,” she said as she pushed back from the table and adjusted herself to a more comfortable position in her chair. She struggled to find some question that would take them back to their lighthearted mood of a few moments ago, but despite her best efforts, there was something she had to know more. Lighthearted, however, it was not.
“How many women were you with during your time as Nick?”
“What?” he asked as his eye looked up at hers in disbelief. She didn’t want to know this. Did she? Steve stared at her for a moment hoping she’d think better of it and ask him something else. But the seriousness on her face showed him otherwise. He wanted to lie to her. He mentally grabbed at something to help soften the blow, but there was nothing there but truth. He had to answer her.
“Kayla,” he started with a heavy sigh. “You know that was a really rough time … and I’ve told you how it was for me. With Della … and the … others.” He waited before he continued, searching her face for understanding. Kayla’s expression was neutral and unwavering. He didn’t want to tell her. But he did. The words burned his throat as they formed on his lips. “Nine. I slept with nine women during that time. There were a few women when I was still Dimera’s soldier.” He purposely left out Ava’s name. A couple when I first … woke up as Nick. And then I met Della. And you already know we weren’t exclusive, so there were a few more.” Then Steve’s world fell apart as he watched the pain and hurt as it etched across his wife’s face and made its way to her eyes.
He hung his head in shame as tears of anger and guilt blurred his vision. Tell me it’s ok. Please tell me that you understand. And that you love me anyway. Please, baby.
Seeing her husband’s shoulders shake as he cried, Kayla bit back the hurt of his revelation and reached out for his hand. She brushed a loving thumb over his palm as she struggled to find her words. Her voice cracked when she finally spoke them.
“I won’t lie to you and tell you that it doesn’t make me sick to my stomach to imagine you with other women, Steve,” she choked out. “Truthfully, it breaks my heart. But,” she stopped short as she tugged on his hand. He slowly raised his cloudy eye to hers before she continued, “I know you didn’t choose to leave me. And you didn’t cheat on me.”
Steve exhaled a sob as the tears spilled down his face.
“I love you, nothing is ever going to change that.”
There’s a reason Steve chose never to think of those women. The pain of having been unfaithful to her in his own mind was too much for him. Now that he was forced to face it and put voice to it, he wept for the guilt of his infidelity, and wept more at her absolution.
“I’m so sorry, Kayla,” he sobbed. “I’m sorry!”
“Noooo, no, no, no, no, baby!” Kayla jumped into his lap for the second time that morning and forced him to look at her. He couldn’t face her. Instead, he shrunk into her arms as she sat in his and told her he loved her over and over. “Baby, please look at me,” she begged him. Slowly Steve raised his face to her, and she rained more kisses down upon it. “My turn to remind you. This was done to you. You weren’t unfaithful. You weren’t! Because you weren’t you!”
Steve slowly calmed as Kayla comforted him with the same kind of tender shushes that she used with their daughter several jumps ago. Steve’s patch had come completely away from its normal home and rested in a tangle at his hairline. She leaned her face down and kissed his scar and ran her hands soothingly through his hair and re-adjusted it for him. Then Steve tipped her chin toward him and kissed her tenderly with every bit of undying love he’d ever had for her.
“Thank you for loving me, Kayla,” he said with deep feeling.
“Thank you for coming back to me.”
Then wiping away the last of his tears with the pads of her thumbs, Kayla whispered, “your turn.”
Steve gave her a sad smile. “You want more after that, Sweetness?”
“I do,” she said.
Steve thought of a question immediately and hoped it would lighten things up considerably. “If you could choose where we jump next, where would you go? What time would you want to go back to?”
“Well, I would just check that itinerary they printed out for me,” she quipped.
Steve laughed, and it was music to Kayla’s ears. She closed her eyes and felt his laughter in her soul. When she opened her eyes, she knew without a doubt where she wanted to go.
“Remember when we were on the run after you shot Harper? I’d want to go to the honeymoon hotel with those heart-shaped beds,” she smiled.
“You know, we didn’t make love in that time, either, baby.”
“That’s not why I want to go there.”
“You sure, Sweetness? There were bananas and bubbles and everything there.”
Kayla was still coiled up comfortably in Steve’s lap. “You know what else was there, Steve?” He waited patiently for her to answer him. “Joy. And safety. And so much hope for what we could have. What we would have. Her eyes radiated the happiness that moment in time brought her. Steve’s heart swelled with so much love. “You just held me in that bed so tenderly until we fell asleep. It made me so happy to be in your arms. Even though somebody was chasing us, and I was scared, I knew in that moment laying in your arms that nothing could touch us. Nothing could hurt us. And I could see what our future could be.” She looked at him watching her so intently. “That’s where I would go,” she smiled. Steve looked deeply into the eyes she looked up from his lap at him with. Words were not needed. It was a beautiful answer. He patted the area above his heart with double taps in a heartbeat rhythm like he’d done all those years ago, and Kayla knew what she wanted to ask him next.
“Your turn, baby,” Steve said.
“Tell me when you fell in love with me.”
Steve liked this question. He didn’t need any convincing to think about loving her. “Baby, I don’t know the exact moment it happened, but I can definitely tell you the exact moment I first knew.
“Tell me,” she smiled.
“It was right here in Stockholm two days ago. In the storm drain.”
“The storm drain …,” she whispered.
“I thought we were going to die in that storm drain, Kayla. Right before the water stopped, I was about to tell you … that I loved you. I didn’t know it. But I realized it when I thought we weren’t going to make it. And when you came up out of there, that’s the moment I felt how much I loved you for the first time. That I was truly in love with you. I knew it as I walked us back to Helga’s.”
“You’ve never held me tighter than on that walk. I’ll never forget it”
“I was scared out of my head of these feelings, Sweetness, but I couldn’t help myself. What I was feeling for you there overwhelmed me. I had never felt that before for anyone.”
“Not even Britta?” Why did I just say that?
Steve bored a hole through her with his eye. “Not about anyone, Kayla. It was unbelievable to know what that kind of love was. And it was with you. And you almost died. I had never been so scared of anything.” He paused for a moment then continued. “Then when you had that dress on, and your hair was off your neck, baby … I just wanted to carry you in my arms all the way back to this hotel room and make love to you forever. I wanted to love every part of you.”
“Steve …,” Kayla breathed his name with such feeling.
Steve couldn’t help himself, his groin stirred with instinctive, longing need to consume her. He lowered his lips to her with a warm kiss filled with his love, then deepened it right away. Kayla moved to straddle him and wrapped her arms around his neck as her belly tingled with desire. Steve slipped his warm hand into her robe and under the nightshirt till he was firmly palming her breast. Her nipple peaked to a beaded pearl as he kneaded it, and Kayla moaned in pleasure. Even as their tongues dueled, they both knew this was a bad idea. But they couldn’t help themselves. “Baby,” Steve pleaded. Then he roughly pumped himself up at her while she started humping against him in equal measure.
“I’ve got to come, Kayla. What are we gonna do?” he panted.
“I don’t know … ah … maybe we …”
“Up.” He knew what they had to do. “You have to get up,” he moaned before clasping his hands to her head and angling it to his lips for a final hot kiss. Then he physically lifted her up by her sides. While his intention was to push her off of him, instead he tore at her robe, reached into her nightshirt, and brought her breast into his mouth. He sucked hard and bit at her nipple, making her whimper his name.
Kayla held his head to her breast and then stood up on shaky legs at the same time that Steve gave her a little push toward her chair.
“You’re killin’ me, baby. You’re killin’ me.”
“We need a break or I’m going to pass out, Steve.”
“Me first,” he said.
“I’m, ah, I’m going take a shower.”
“That’s a good idea, Sweetness, you go do that, I’ll stay here.”
“With the door open,”
“Right. Ah … what are you going to do?”
“I’m going to stay here and get myself off.”
“Oh,” she said ironically, “that’ll make me less horny for sure.”
“I’m sorry, baby, but I’m in pain, here.”
“No,” she smiled, “you do what you’ve got to do. But I’m not watching this time.” Kayla saw that there weren’t any clean towels. “Steve, can you see if the maid cart is out there, I need a towel.”
“Yeah,” he called. Steve opened the door and saw the cart two rooms down. He sprinted down with his erection rubbing painfully against his jeans and grabbed an armful of towels. As he turned back around, he felt the tug. Panic rose in him as he realized that Kayla was all the way in their room. Without a second thought, he dropped the towels and ran back toward her.
Back in the bathroom Kayla felt the jump effect begin and snapped her head around hoping to God Steve was there. He wasn’t. “Steve!” she screamed at the top of her lungs.
“Kayla!” he shouted back as he burst through the doorway. She ran into his arms.
In the next instant, Steve was surrounded by voices, music, and just plain noise. He was so dizzy that he knew he was going to vomit. It took everything he could muster to keep it together as he reached for her. This time he came up with nothing but the cold air he was standing in. He whipped his head around looking for her, and an unbridled cold panic set in when he realized she wasn’t there.
Kayla left her raging horny body in Stockholm, and the next thing she was aware of was a nasal female voice having just asked her a question. “Ste—“ she tried to call for him, but she had to swallow hard instead.
“Mrs. Deveraux, do you think your husband’s going to win?”
“Who?” Kayla asked as she felt the cold and saw the people and had a sick, disgusting feeling about where she’d jumped to.
“Oh,” Angelica laughed snootily. “I guess you’re the Mrs. Deveraux she’s referring to.”
“Angelica?” Kayla asked in astonishment.
“Um, nooooo,” Angelica answered like Kayla was a first-grader. “That would be you, Kayla, dear.” Kayla darted her eyes around the pier, struggling to remember exactly what day this was and wasn’t Steve here and where was he and oh my God, what’s happening?! In every other jump, Steve was beside her when they arrived. This time, she didn’t see him anywhere.