Steve and Kayla were covered in dust as the building that once housed Mike Horton’s lab was laid waste around them. The dust caked every inch of Steve’s now torn black tank top, leaving a fine layer of sooty debris over his skin. His lungs were aching from the hacking coughs that rattled his body when he’d arrived into it.
The first thing Steve noticed was Kayla laying in his arms. No looking around this time trying to figure out where she was. He was pretty sure he jumped first, but he couldn’t really be sure, so which Kayla this was he didn’t know. He took a good look around and, more importantly, a good look above them; it didn’t seem like any progress toward their rescue had been made at this point.
Time had stood still when they went through this before, and they only knew they’d spent a full day down there after having been rescued. Now was no different. His arrival into this body was well into their ordeal under the rubble, but he had no way of gauging that. All he knew right now was that the air was thin down there, his eyes stung from the tears this body had been previously crying, and he was holding Kayla tightly in his arms as she called out to him from her unconscious delirium.
They were in trouble.
Steve was still deeply affected by what had happened on the previous two jumps and brought that with him into this one. It wasn’t going to just go away, but he couldn’t help but put it on hold as the gravity of their current situation took hold of him. He instinctively held Kayla closely against him as she whimpered and cried. That’s all it took for his anxiety to spike, because he couldn’t stand to see her like this. In any time and beneath all emotions, he just couldn’t stand to see her damaged.
“Kayla? Baby, you in there?” Steve rasped, still recovering from having expelled the dust from his lungs.
He ran the back of his hand down her cheek and saw the dust caked in her eyelashes. She was drifting in and out of consciousness, her fever having taken hold of her by then, and it all started to come back to him. The poker game, Kayla insane with fear, Steve thinking he was going to lose her, his scouting missions.
Get her fever down.
“Kayla, come on, baby, which one of you do I got in there, huh? Come on talk to me. Can ya talk to me?” Steve was feeling smothered. He needed the open air, and seeing her like this only made his own angst worse. “You listen to me, now, I’m not mad anymore,” which was not quite the truth, “so you just wake up now. Kayla! Dammit!”
It was just like the poisoning! Why were they constantly being thrust into one dangerous situation after another with one or both of them in trouble? Would it be too much to ask for them to jump into their honeymoon for a g*ddamn change?! Steve groaned as he started to register pain on the right side of his face. He reached up and felt the blood that had started to clot. “Great what’s one more scar, huh?” He was so aggravated at having jumped here. Now they both needed saving, and there wasn’t a damn thing he could do about it other than shout at the top of his lungs and wait for her to wake up. This time it was up to him to keep it together. She saved your ass last time, he reminded himself unsolicited. “Shut up!” he yelled out loud. She did. You pulled that trigger without thinking it through, and she’s the one who kept you from imploding. He didn’t want to hear it, but his mind kept throwing more at him. How many times did she save you from yourself? Flying to the next continent to be your nursemaid and sticking by you when you had the Dimeras in your head. His frustration was boiling fast, and his emotions were a chaotic mess. Unfortunately, this wasn’t the time or the place to deal with them. He had to just leave them on the buffet like so many other times before and focus on the here and now. And who knew such a small cut on the cheek could hurt this bad? Now man up and fix her.
He tried rousing her one last time, but Kayla continued not responding to Steve other than a whimper here and there. “Ok, baby, ok,” he exhaled. “I need to get some water in you.” He swallowed the grit in his throat. “In both of us. You stay here, I’ll be back, ok?”
Steve started to gently slip his arm out from underneath her. He grazed her leg with his as he tried to position her, and she screamed out with pain.
“What?! Baby, what?!”
“Leg! My leg,” she cried. He’d forgotten about the gash on her leg that he’d dressed to the best of his ability and was now infected.
“Oh baby, I forgot,” he said bending to kiss her forehead, “I’m sorry.”
Then she spoke a bit more coherently. “Am I dreaming? Am I dreaming?” Now he knew which Kayla he had. And this very version of her had said those same words to him just a few short hours ago in a year that was almost half a decade away, and it froze Steve right where he was. He’d pushed down all the emotions and all the heartbreak that followed those words when he woke up in this lab explosion. Now they all came rushing back up to the surface, and his face flushed a heated red under the coating of soot . Jumping here only exacerbated what was already roiling within him, and for a moment, he felt the anger and hurt; for a moment, he felt the hatred for his father. For a moment, he wanted to push Kayla far away, yet hold her close and hear her say she loves him and only him. For a moment, he felt completely and utterly betrayed that she kept such a big secret from him and allowed himself to feel the jealousy that had threatened to consume him from the moment he spotted them on the pier. And for a moment, he thought the weight of the world would threaten to crush him.
Only …
This wasn’t that Kayla yet.
This wasn’t that time.
They weren’t safe.
He loved her more than life, itself.
He knew in his heart she felt the same.
And he was … lonely.
“I heard you say you love me,” Kayla moaned in a half-conscious whisper. He could hear the wonder in her voice – how she’d dared to hope it could be true – and remembered how he’d tried to deny it to her and to himself for so long. She opened her eyes and his heart clenched as he watched her try and fail to focus on him. “Did you say you loved me Steve?” she asked. “Did you say that?” She fought through that fog in her head to get those words out. “Did you say that you loved me? Steve? Did you say that?”
The hurt wasn’t going to go away so easily, but the anger mercifully drained out of him as his wife lay in his arms begging him to love her.
He hadn’t thought of this time in years. Now he remembered the panic that shot through him that she might die thinking he didn’t love her. That she might die not knowing that she was everything to him and that there was nothing he wouldn’t do for her. He called up the memory of him shouting to her that he’d die for her. That that was how much he loved her. And that had not changed in 20 years.
“Yeah, Sweetness,” he said in soft, soothing tones, “Yeah, that’s exactly what I said.” He placed a kiss on her temple and felt his own comfort in holding her against him. A comfort this Kayla was not going to understand, but then she didn’t have to. “I said it ‘cause it’s true. You can’t possibly know right now how much I love you, but you will, baby, you will.” He felt Kayla smile, her face smeared with dirt against his chest. “And I would still die for you, baby,” he whispered “I still would.”
Kayla’s smile started to fade as she fought to stay conscious. “I must be dreaming.”
“Shh, baby, don’t talk. Don’t talk right now.”
But she didn’t really hear him as the effects of going into shock were overtaking her. “If I’m dreaming,” she whimpered softly, “I don’t want to ever wake up.” Then Kayla’s soft whines finally stopped as she fell back into unconsciousness.
Steve gently removed his arm and leaned up on his side. Kayla was so pretty that night in her black and white dress. He chuckled a bit noting how she would look at it now and wonder what she was thinking. “You would hate that bow, Sweetness,” he said out loud.
I am mad at you. Doesn’t mean I don’t love you. They were the last words she’d heard him say before he jumped. He dragged his hand down his face and gave in to where he was. He didn’t have the time to wallow in the hurt that was lingering within him, he had to focus on finding … whatever he could find to help them until Jack and the others discovered them. The problem was he didn’t know when that would be, though the gummy texture of the blood on his cheek told him that they’d been down there quite a while already.
With the side of his face throbbing, Steve set off to find at least some water, maybe something to clean out Kayla’s wound. And he’d pay double for an aspirin. It wasn’t a very large space to move about in, but he was able to navigate around the inordinate amounts of broken glass to find a couple bottles of water, some rubbing alcohol, a box of Kleenex, and a random assortment of other items that would do them no good. Then he schooched his way back to Kayla, who was still passed out where he’d left her, with his payload in his arms.
“Lookie what I found, huh? Same as last time.” he said, shaking the alcohol bottle. His head started to pound from the pain in his cheek, and he really just wanted to lay down and sleep. “Nah, no sleep for Steven Earl Johnson, gotta take care of Mrs. Johnson,” he said to her oblivious form. He sat up against a fallen beam and positioned her between his legs so that she lay against his chest. Then he poured out the alcohol on some Kleenex in front of her and started to wipe her down.
“You don’t know you’re Mrs. Johnson yet, do ya?” he said out loud. “No, you’re still trying to get through this thick head of mine these days.” The smell of the alcohol took him back to how desperate he felt when he wiped her down that first time. He seemed to recall her being somewhat awake and reacting to the soothing feeling of it last time, but this time she was out.
So you’re glad I didn’t give up? she said in his head.
“Of course, I am,” he said to her like this was a conversation. “I just didn’t know how to let you love me back then.”
I guess you figured out how.”
“Yeah,” he replied as he poured some more alcohol out on the wad of Kleenex and gently wiped down her neck. “I figured out how.”
Now that you know about Shane, do you have to figure out how to love me again? Steve stopped his hand from moving for a moment as this imaginary conversation came to him from somewhere deep inside himself. Then he continued, moving the Kleenexes to her forehead.
“Letting myself love you isn’t a problem anymore, Kayla. It’s figuring out how to understand why you kept it from me. How could you not tell me? What did you think, that I wouldn’t be able to handle it?” A tear stung his eye. “You could have told me, Kayla!” he raised his voice to her still form. “You could have! But you kept me in the dark!” He realized he was yelling and took a breath that wasn’t as deep as he would have liked in the thinning air. He took a long drag on the water bottle then screwed the cap back on. “I’m sorry, I’m tryin’ not to yell, here, I really am.” Then he moved her hair aside and continued with the back of her neck.
“I thought it was some random guy in LA. Maybe a doctor.” He smirked at the thought of the comfort that two doctor’s salaries could have brought her. “But Shane? And Kim knew? Everyone must have known, Kayla, but no one filled me in. Even Bo never said a word to me, and believe me, he’s gonna hear about it, too. He wasn’t just family, Kayla, he was my friend. Someone should have told me. You should have told me.”
The alcohol was being absorbed by the Kleenex and not transferring very well to her skin. He vaguely remembered tearing strips from her slip all those years ago, so he tossed the wad of Kleenex and did the same here. Lifting her dress high on her thigh to reveal the slip, he awkwardly reached down to rip more off from where a strip had already been ripped to create the bandage on her leg. He saturated it with the alcohol, and that worked much better, evoking soft moans from his wife.
“I thought we had no secrets, baby,” he said softly as he swept the material across her collarbone. “I poured my heart out to you in Stockholm and told you one of the hardest things I’ve ever said to you. Maybe the hardest. It felt like I was cheating, Sweetness,” his voice starting to tremble with the guilt he still felt over the women he’d slept with when he didn’t know who he was. “You forgave me so quickly it was almost worse. You could have told me then and it still would have been better than finding you on the pier after I escaped from Alamain, Kayla. You don’t know what it did to me, you don’t know.” He rubbed quickly at his eye with the back of his hand, then kissed her head. “Baby, it was 16 years for you, but it was like the next day for me. It was like I woke up the next day and found you there with him. I feel everything like I’m still 35 years old. I look at myself and I say who the f*ck told you to go and turn 50, dude?! But then there I am, my whole life stolen from me. For you, Shane happened a lifetime ago, but it was just the other day for me. I need you to see that. ‘Cause I miss you Sweetness. I hate feeling this way. I don’t know – how – to – feel this way – about you. It’s all wrong, baby, it’s all wrong.”
Just then, Kayla inhaled sharply. Steve stopped what he was doing and called to her, as it seemed she’d arrived. But she didn’t really rouse. Just started moaning a bit, still more or less passed out against him.
“Are you there?” he asked as he slid the back of his hand down her face. “You’re due to wake up any minute, here, baby, so how ‘bout you open those eyes.” When she didn’t comply, Steve opened the bottle of water and placed it against her lips, trying to coax her to drink it. “Saved some for ya,” he said. She didn’t respond, so he drank it down himself. “Fine, be that way, I’ve got another one here with your name on it.” He poured some more alcohol on the strip of material and worked it over her forehead, being careful to not get any in her eyes. He felt the weight of her against him and he craned his neck to kiss her temple. He missed her so much. “I do love you. And I need you to wake up now, Sweetness. I’m gettin’ tired of talkin’ to myself.”
Just then a new wave of debris started to rain down on them. He was not in a good position to cover her, so he did the best he could with his arms as a new layer of dust settled upon them.
Somewhere beneath the haze of a very heavy, deep sleep, Kayla began to feel the effects of the jump. She wasn’t sure if she was dreaming or if it was real, her surroundings just felt so thick. Like she was moving through a jar of honey. Steve was there, she could hear him talking, but she was dizzy and couldn’t figure out what he was saying. She continued to move slowly toward his voice.
“Hey, hey!” Steve shouted at the top of his lungs as it continued to rain concrete. “We’re down here! How long till you find us this time, BillyJack?! Come on!”
“Steve?” Kayla said softly.
He closed his eye to the sound of his name on her lips. He didn’t need Stockholm, he knew it was her just from the sound of her voice.
“Hey baby,” he said calmly. “It’s me.”
“You went first?”
“Yeah.”
She didn’t remember the jump, and that scared her. As did their current surroundings. It was dark, she was cold, the air was hot, and the smell of alcohol permeated her nostrils. On the plus side, she felt Steve planted securely behind her. Even so, she had no clue where she was. “Where … what is …”
“Mike’s lab,” Steve said. Still 1987.
“Mike’s lab?” Then it hit her. “The explosion. Oh … that’s … great,” she said as she felt the stab of pain in her leg to drive it home. “Fantastic.”
Steve let out a pfft then unscrewed the bottled water and handed it to her. “You need to drink this, Sweetness, you’re body’s in shock.”
Kayla turned her head to look up at him. “Don’t you want to ask me about Stockholm?”
He pushed her hair back off her forehead. “Don’t need it, baby, I know it’s you.”
Kayla sighed and coughed up some dust. “I don’t remember the jump.”
“You were sleeping.” Kayla looked at him with surprise. “I felt it in my sleep and woke up. I wasn’t sure if you were still there when I jumped, but I figured it out when I got here.” Kayla got a sad and solemn look on her face, and he knew she thought he jumped without telling her. “I tried to wake you, to tell you I was jumping, but I was already too far gone and couldn’t get through to you.”
“You did?”
“Kayla, I wouldn’t leave without …” Then he remembered how he’d let her jump from the pier. Kayla saw him make contact with that truth before looking away from her.
“I shouldn’t have done that,” he said softly. “I was—“
“I know. It’s ok.”
Steve turned back to her and they locked eyes. Kayla saw a warmth there, but still a distance, too. She started to get dizzy and turned her head back straight to lean back against him. Steve reminded her to drink, and she took a sip.
We’re jumping in our sleep now? she thought to herself. That scared the crap out of her.
“Steve, if we wake up in a whole new place from when we went to sleep, then we’ll have no idea who jumped first or how long we’ve been there.”
He heard the fear in her voice, and in all honesty, he felt the same way. “Yeah, but think about it, that’s not new. The very first time we jumped it was in our sleep, remember? We went to bed at home and woke up at the loft. I think all these other times we just happened to be awake. Will you please drink this water, you need it.”
“What about you?”
“Already had mine.”
“You had cuts and scratches, I remember.”
“I’m fine,” he said in no mood to be coddled. “This is the first time you’ve been awake since I jumped in, so drink it up, come on now.” Kayla relented and downed half the bottle.
Several minutes passed in silence as they lost themselves in their own thoughts. Steve continued to apply the alcohol to her skin in an effort to get the fever down. She didn’t question him, she knew why he was doing it, she could tell she had a fever.
“So how long have you been here?” she asked Steve.
“I dunno, maybe half an hour now.”
Kayla nodded. Not too long apart this time,” she said quietly.
“Hard to know how long it was before we arrived, though.” She felt cooler to him, so he put down the strip and let the alcohol quickly dissipate.
“We weren’t together here,” she said trying not to sound sad.
“I know,” he replied calmly, “I remember.”
Worry about jumping while asleep still tugged at her, but she realized he was right about it not being new. “I guess there’s no point in worrying about when we jump,” she said resignedly. “We’re going to go wherever we’re going to go, and we can’t stop it.”
“And we always have the Stockholm question.”
“And home base.”
“Actually, baby, we don’t really have that.”
Kayla looked back up at him. “Why?”
“What are we gonna do if I don’t live there, break in and park our ass in the corner until the other one shows up? Might get away with it if Sweet Thing is in the picture, but if we’re already living in the house, or …” he took a deep breath. “… later… after they’ve taken me …” Steve let the thought die on the vine but felt Kayla tense up at the reference to the very thing they were continuing to not talk about.
The silence was awkward and filled with all kinds of things they each wanted to say but didn’t know quite how to start. Finally Kayla spoke.
“I love you.” She took his hand in hers and brought it to her chest. “Please tell me you know that.”
“I do know that.” He rearranged himself quickly while gently positioning her so that they were facing each other. Talking to her earlier helped him start to get some things off his chest, and he felt like now he was ready to hear what she had to say. So, if they were really going to have this conversation, then he wanted her to look him in the eye. “You’re leg ok?”
“Yeah,” she nodded. She was nervous.
“I do know that,” he said. “So why couldn’t you tell me about him, Kayla? Why did you have to hide it from me for three years? I know we haven’t had an easy time of it for all three of those years, but I can pick out more than a few moments that you could have chosen to tell me.”
“I know,” her eyes started to water, “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be sorry! Explain it to me!”
Now that the moment was finally upon her to come clean and lay it all out for him, she didn’t know where to begin. “I … when …,” she stammered.
“Kayla? We have nothing but time right now. Start from the beginning.”
“The beginning?” she laughed. “The beginning. Steve, it was more an end. Like the last tragic act of a Shakespearean play. I really was broken.”
“I don’t wanna hear you say that, Kayla.”
“Steve, please let me get this out.” He put a hand up and acquiesced. “When you died – when I thought you died,” she continued, “Steve, I wanted to die, too. I just didn’t want to go on. When you flatlined and they didn’t bring you back, I thought this just couldn’t be happening. And ya know what, I knew it was coming. I saw the monitors, and I knew what the readings meant, and I couldn’t figure out what had gone wrong so fast. And you knew it, too. You said goodbye to us all, and I was in denial up until the very moment Marcus made me leave you all alone in that room. You were still so warm. I couldn’t believe you were dead, how could you be so warm?” she said as unshed tears pooled in the rims of her eyes. Steve hated seeing her affected like this. No matter how upset he could ever be at her, it affected him to see her like this. But he didn’t say anything and let her go on. “I even thought I saw your pulse in your neck, but the monitors said otherwise.” Kayla smirked with a mirthless laugh. “I was beyond solace. I didn’t spend a moment by myself from that time onward, because I simply couldn’t function.”
“You got over me fast.” It was out of his mouth before he could stop it.
“That’s not true, dammit. That’s your jealousy talking, and I am tired of you throwing it in my face!” Steve looked away and steamed in silence, even though he knew it wasn’t fair. “I never got over you! Not for one moment was I ever over you. In fact, every day got worse not better!”
“But you never went back to live in the house! You went right to Shane’s and you sold our house, Kayla!”
“Because I wasn’t strong enough to be there without you! After the funeral, I tried to go back, but I was attacked right on our porch—“
“You were attacked? You never told me that.”
“It was Lawrence Alamain’s men. Shane was there and chased them off.” Steve reacted to that, and Kayla put a hand on his arm. “Steve, you have to let me tell this. If you’re going to get upset every time I mention his name we’re never going to get through this. Do you want to understand?” He didn’t look at her. “Do you?”
“Yes.” he said. They paused for a moment, and when a tear slipped over her eyelashes Steve wiped it away. “Ok, so go on. All you’d said before was that you were in danger from them, you never said they actually attacked you.”
“Yeah, well, they did. And I had a baby girl to take care of, I couldn’t risk her life, too. Nowhere was more secure than Shane’s house, so everyone convinced me to go there. Marcus wanted us to stay with him, but—“
“Marcus was our best friend, you should have gone there!”
“Be careful what you wish for, Steve Johnson.” The look on her face made Steve very, very uncomfortable. It was the last time he would interrupt her.
“We went to stay with Shane, and right after that is when I went with him and Jack to go find Jennifer in Lawrence’s country.”
“That’s where you found the tapes?”
Kayla nodded. “He’s so evil, Steve. Even with those tapes, we couldn’t make anything stick until Jennifer’s rape trial …”
Steve saw her shift gears for a minute. “What are you thinking about?”
“Jack.”
“What about him?”
“He apologized to me. Did you know that?” Steve shook his head. “For raping me,” she let her tears flow now. “He was desperate to find Jennifer, and he was feeling so much guilt over – I don’t know, his whole life’s choices, I think. But we found ourselves both in Lawrence’s garden, and he said in case we died there, he wanted me to know that he was sorry for raping me and that he hoped I’d forgive him one day.”
Steve reached over and caressed her face. Kayla took his hand and layed her cheek against it. “I haven’t thought about any of this in a really long time.” Then she took his hand in hers and went on. “Ya know, there was a cave-in there just like we’re in now?” He did know, she’d already told him all about it, but he let her go on at her own pace. “I thought of the lab explosion the whole time. Remembering how much of a hero you were to me.” She looked around and then back at him. “Irony, huh?” Steve chuckled. “Looking back on it now,” she continued very quietly, “I can see that Shane was already showing feelings for me. You were dead three weeks. I didn’t see it then. All I saw was my grief.”
“Where was Stephanie?”
“My folks.” She tried to take a deep breath, but she didn’t get nearly enough of it into her lungs, and she started to gasp a bit.
“Low deep breaths, Kayla, don’t panic.” She nodded, and Steve tried to jostle some debris overhead to give them some more air. He made some headway, but not as much as he’d have liked. Now Kayla was calmer. She wiped at her cheeks and went on.
“The first time I really noticed that Shane wanted to be more than my friend was at the holidays. It’s the first time I let myself notice. He gave Stephanie some Christmas gifts … there was a music box … and I could just see it in his eyes. He was looking at me differently, and I wasn’t ready for that. I pretended I didn’t see it, but it was there.” She could see Steve not handling this very well, but it was all tumbling out of her now, and she had to get it out. “I remember right after New Years telling Marcus how much I appreciated him. That he still saw me how I really was … that I was Steve’s wife, that I was still married to Steve, while everyone else was pressuring me, seeing me as a single woman.”
She paused here, not sure if she should truly burst his bubble about Marcus or not. Ultimately she decided to end all the lies and half-truths now. “None of that lasted, though. Because Marcus started to feel the same way Shane did.” She waited for his reaction, but he sat rock still. “They were going at it over me, and everyone was telling me I had to find someone to fill the void. That I had to move on. Even your mom encouraged me! But all I wanted was you back. I still wanted to die and join you wherever you were. You were gone on October 23rd, and it was only three months later, and I was more lost than I’d ever been.”
Steve was still back on the Marcus part. “Marcus. He—He was—in love … ?”
Kayla only nodded. “He kissed me one time, but he knew it was wrong as much as I did, and it went nowhere. We remained only friends. He was a rock for me, and you shouldn’t feel any differently toward him. I owe him so much.” Steve didn’t really know how to feel about this, and Kayla could see he was conflicted. “Steve, you wanted honesty, so I’m giving it to you. Marcus isn’t here to defend himself, and he was missing you, too. Give him a break.”
“Ok,” he sighed, tracing the strap of his patch over his forehead. “I just … this is hard, Sweetness. So, is that why you left the Emergency Center? Because of Marcus?”
“No,” Kayla smirked, “That was my biggest mistake, leaving that place. Marcus begged me to stay. But Bo had that virus Lawrence had developed, and he was dying. The hospital wanted me to run the Immunization Clinic, so I felt like it was my only choice. But I made one terrible decision after another, and it all started with leaving that Emergency Center, the only thing I had left, other than Stephanie, where I felt you with me.
“What do you mean the only thing you had left?” He wasn’t sure he liked the sound of that.
“I couldn’t think of you, Steve. If I did, I’d break down. Every time. I had to remove anything that made me think of you. But that was so hard, ‘cause everything made me think of you.”
“Kayla, you’re stronger than that.”
“No, I’m not! I might be now, but I sure as hell wasn’t then. The first thing I did was get rid of all my clothes.”
“What?”
“My whole wardrobe. I replaced the whole thing. I didn’t realize it right away, it was just a little bit at first. But then very quickly I just packed up the entire thing and replaced every single piece of clothing I owned.”
“Baby, why?”
“’Cause I saw you in every piece! I’d try to put something on, and I would remember the last time I wore it with you. I didn’t have a thing that didn’t remind me of you. Not a blouse, not a sweater, not a skirt, not a nightgown didn’t remind me of you. Not a sock. Not a single pair of underwear. I either kissed you in it or let you bleed on it, or made love to you after you took it off of me. I couldn’t function, I’d start sobbing every time I tried to get dressed in the morning. I had to replace it all.”
“God, Kayla. What about your wedding dress?”
She shot him a look that said, duh and was a little offended, too. “Give me a little credit, Steve, I wasn’t about to let that go, Stephanie might have wanted it, you know.” Steve smiled sadly. “I would never have let that go. I kept the nightgown I wore the first time we made love, too. And a couple other very special pieces to me. But I couldn’t bear to wear them or even look at them ever again, so I packed them away in boxes, and they’re still in those boxes in the storage unit in LA. The only thing I kept wearing was a robe. The black one with the lace collar. I wore it for years and years. I don’t really know why, but I held on to that.”
Steve was so sad he could barely speak. “And you cut your hair, too,” he said touching her face. “You looked like a different person the other day.”
“Yeah,” she chuckled, “because I was a different person. Every time I had to take some kind of big step, I’d cope by cutting my hair. I saw Shane had feelings for me, I cut it shorter. He kissed me, I lopped off another inch. We almost slept together on more than one occasion, I’d cut another half an inch.” She laughed a bit introspectively. “When I was a med student in my psych rotation I learned that that was a common coping mechanism. She ran her hand through her hair and let it linger at her ends. “I didn’t realize what I was doing, but in the span of a year I went from hair longer and straighter than you’ve ever seen it,” she held her palm out parallel with her breast to show him just how long, and Steve was surprised, “to this close-cropped cut that you almost couldn’t tell I was a girl.”
Steve smiled. “No one would ever think you weren’t a girl, Sweetness.”
“Trust me on this one, it was not a feminine cut.”
“You hair’s pretty short now – back home, I mean.”
“Way shorter.”
He smiled. “You’ll have to show me a picture.”
“This wasn’t about fashion, Steve, don’t you get it? It was destructive. Everything I was doing was destructive, lashing out, trying to cope with your death.” Stephanie spent almost as much time with my parents as she did with me. It was insane. I was insane. She looked down, unable to meet his eye. “The things I did, Steve … I’m so ashamed, there’s no other word for it. I’m still so ashamed of it I can’t … I can’t …”
Steve tipped her chin up. “Look at me, Kayla.” She moved her chin away and averted her eyes, so he tried again. “Sweetness, look at me.” Only when he called her that did she do so. “There is nothing you can’t tell me. We’ve been through Marina. We’ve been through …,” he dared to say it, “Ava.” He saw her eyes waver, and he made a note to himself that she still bothered her, but he went on. “We’ve been through Jack and my father. The brainwashing, and 16 years of separation. My heart is bonded to you, don’t you know that by now? Don’t you see that’s why this hurt me so bad? Kayla, do you really think there’s anything in this world that you can say to me that will make me think less of you?”
“Maybe,” she squeaked out.
“No, Kayla! There’s no maybe! There’s nothing! It might be hard to hear, and it might be hard to get through. But there’s nothing you need to keep a secret from me, Kayla. You’re the one who taught me that.”
“That’s the problem! You put me on this – this – this pedestal.”
Steve balked. “I don’t.”
“Yes, you do! When you came back, I couldn’t believe I was getting this second chance. And when you got your memories back and you’d really come back to me, I was so scared you’d go away again. I had to protect us. From the things I’d done. I just couldn’t bear to chip away at that.”
“You’re wrong, baby,” he insisted. “You’re plain wrong.”
“No, I’m not. And that’s why I didn’t tell you, because the whole story is ugly. I did things that if the shoe were on the other foot that I don’t know if I could forgive. The things I did to Kimberly.” Kayla’s tears began again at the memory of the damage she’d done to that relationship with her sister. It took years in LA together to repair that. “And the things I did to you. I took off your ring too quickly,” she cried. “It was too hard to see it.”
“You needed help, baby.” His heart had started to ache.
“Yeah, well it took one mistake after another to figure that out! Until then, I just kept making them! And to make it worse, Kim was dating the man that killed you!”
Steve’s face took on the shock that all of the Brady’s went through as it was happening 18 years before. “She what? Kayla, are you telling me that Kimberly was … sleeping with Lawrence Alamain?”
“Yeah,” she huffed. “That’s exactly what I’m telling you.”
“You told me Kim and Shane never got back together, but you never said Alamain had anything to do with it!”
“Believe me, she’s not proud. It started out as an ISA mission, but it didn’t turn out that way. And, of course, she got hurt in the end. But in the meantime, it sent me over the edge. You have no idea what kind of emotional trauma I went through seeing her with him. The betrayal. It was so bad I didn’t know how to deal with it. And the whole time Shane was trying to get closer to me, I was lost and lonely and damaged …”
“You’re not damaged, g*ddammit!”
“You have to stop seeing me as perfect, Steve!”
“I don’t! I don’t see you that way at all, I see you as the woman I love!”
“Well I have flaws just like everybody else. And trust me, I was completely damaged. I should know, I was the one who was there!” That cut Steve to the core, and he let out a pained sound. Kayla put her face in her hands and cried. She just kept hurting him. “I’m sorry,” she whimpered.
“Go on,” he urged.
“I’m so sorry, Steve.”
“What happened next, dammit!”
Kayla swallowed down his rebuke and continued. “Shane was there, and I let him in,” she sobbed. “Every little decision got harder and harder to make. But Shane was there. He swooped in right away to take care of me, brought us to his house, and he was just as damaged from Kim leaving him. I saw him falling in love with me, and I let him, because if I hadn’t, then I would have shriveled up and died having to face life without you. And Stephanie needed me! I wasn’t strong enough to do it, so I let Shane in.”
Kayla saw the mixture of sadness, jealousy, and pity on her husband’s face, and she felt very small. But she went on. “You still want to hear the things I did?”
“Yes!”
“Ok, I broke about a million hospital rules. I tampered with Bo’s blood sample when he was sick, switched it with my own, and I don’t even have a good reason why. It eventually got me fired.”
Steve looked her right in the eye. “I still love you. What else?”
“I took my rings off.”
“You already told me that.”
“‘Til death do us part’ or not, I still felt married to you. But I thought if I did, it would make things better. I’d be able to move on. So four months after you died, that was all I could bear before I took them off and let Shane start to fill the void.”
“I still love you, Kayla.” He was openly crying. “What else?”
“I let Lawrence Alamain get to Kim. I let him manipulate her, and I couldn’t save her from it. I didn’t try hard enough!”
“I still love you. Keep going.”
“I saw my sister hurting when Shane pursued me. I saw her crumble when she caught us kissing. I saw her die a little bit when she found out we’d s-s-slept together.” Steve reacted to that. “But I felt betrayed by her being with the man that killed you, so I encouraged him. I flirted with him. I seduced him as he seduced me. And I told Kim she was a bad sister for being upset about it.”
“I still love you,” he cried softly.
Kayla’s cries were not as soft. “I found out that Jeannie was really Shane’s daughter and not Cal’s. And I kept that information from him. I kept a father from his little girl. My sister’s little girl. So that he would love my little girl more. So that he would stay with me. So that I wouldn’t have to face you not being there.”
This one did shock him. And the thought of Shane raising his daughter, holding her when she’d wake up in the night, watching her first steps, being a father to her … It was almost more than he could take.
“You’re right, baby,” his voice broke. “That’s – not like you at all. And you win that one, it was a terrible thing to do.” Then he leaned close so that he was inches from her face. “But you don’t scare me. I still love you. What else?”
“I had sex with Shane.” She barely got it out, and Steve finally tore himself from her gaze. She saw the fire in his eye before he did. “I told him I loved him. I told him to make love to me. I told him I wanted to spend the rest of my life with him. I saw what it did to Kimberly and my pop and my whole family. I saw it split us all apart. And I still told Kim that Shane was mine. Can you believe that? I told her that the love of her life was mine. How could I do that, Steve? How could I do that and still be the woman you love?”
It was like he’d been stabbed through the heart. I told him I loved him. I told him to make love to me. I told him I wanted to spend the rest of my life with him. He couldn’t breathe. Kayla saw his reaction, and guilt swept through her.
“Steve …”
“Ok, you told me. No more.”
Pain stabbed at her heart when he didn’t immediately say he loved her.
“So, that hurt, then? I hurt you?” He tore his eye into her, and she felt just how much her words hurt him. “And you wonder why I kept it to myself?”
“Yeah, I’m hurting!” he shouted. “I never said it would feel like a walk in the park! But I’m not going anywhere! I’m still here, Kayla! Your husband! Loving you! Just like I would have been if you’d told me in the first place!”
“I didn’t want to hurt you!”
“Too f*cking late!”
Now Kayla was mad, too. “Which is it, Steve? Are you hurt because I lied about it, or is it because I moved on in the first place?”
“That’s not fair.”
“Oh, I think it’s very fair.”
“Picturing you with Shane hurts me more than you can know.”
“Oh, I think I know. Nine times over, I know, Steve.”
Now it was Steve’s turn to feel small.
“You can dish it out, but you can’t take it! You slept with all those women –“
“I didn’t know who I was!”
“And I thought you were dead!” Kayla’s leg was throbbing, and she wondered in the back of her head if this very loud conversation was going to draw people to discover them earlier this time. “You know why I forgave you so quickly? Because there was nothing to forgive. You didn’t know who you were!” Steve’s answer was to work the muscle in his jaw. “But you being dead isn’t a good enough reason for me, it seems.”
“You’re being—“
“Honest? Isn’t that what you wanted? You know, I thought that moving on with someone else meant that I would have to give up loving you. But Shane convinced me that it didn’t mean that. That I could always love you, yet still be able to have this relationship with him, because he would always love Kimberly, too. And I convinced myself of that for a while. I imagined you were out there saying, ‘go for it, Sweetness. Grab as much happiness as you can.’ Would you not want me to be happy?”
“Of course, I would.”
“Well, I forced myself to believe it, Steve. Because feeling Shane’s arms around me made the pain go away. I was in so much pain. It consumed me. I thought you were dead. And my life felt over. Every time I made love to him I convinced myself I wasn’t betraying you.” She huffed out her disgust with herself.
“You feel like you cheated on me with those nine women.” It was a statement not a question, but Steve nodded and told her he did, anyway. “I felt the same way every time I was with him,” she whispered. The first time I kissed him, I wanted it. I wanted it so bad. So that I could feel you there. You kissing me, you holding me. It never felt like that, though.” She wasn’t looking at him anymore, she was staring off, and her voice took on an ethereal quality as she remembered it. “I kept trying to feel you there. I would close my eyes,” and she closed hers as she spoke, “and I’d imagine it was you.” She touched her fingertips to her lips, then opened her eyes. “And for a moment here and there, it was close enough that I could pretend. But it always felt like I was cheating. I lied to myself and said it wasn’t so, but it was.
Steve took her hand from her lips and held it to his.
“I kept pursuing you but you were never there, and it was always Shane I ended up with. And I felt like I was the bad girl. Naughty. But that’s not who I was. I was your good girl, Steve. I was your sweetness. So, I had to be something with him that I wasn’t with you. With him I had to be something with that was not sweet. Kimberly was the hooker, Kimberly was the naughty one. So, I’d be that, the naughty girl that Shane liked. That kept the real me – the one that belonged to you – yours.”
Of all the things Kayla had said to him under the concrete and rubble, this was what shattered him the most. “Stop.”
“My clothes, my hair, my behavior, sex with Shane … I became a totally different person. It wasn’t because of him. He was just one in a long line of things I did wrong in a misguided attempt to focus on something else and get over you.”
“Please stop.”
“All of it, every bit of it, I did to try to get over you. Not because I was over you. And it never did work.
Steve couldn’t take another word. “No more! Please, baby, no more, I can’t hear any more!”
“Do you see now? All the terrible things I did? Do you see why I didn’t tell you? How can you forgive me for these things when I haven’t even forgiven myself?”
“BECAUSE YOU’RE MINE, KAYLA, THAT’S WHY! BECAUSE YOU. ARE. MINE! For better or for worse! Forever! And I meant that! Dammit, baby!” He sank his head into his hands, as the pain leached out of him and into the small space they were trapped in. When he looked back up at her he saw how much she needed him. “I meant that. My heart is in pieces, here, baby, but those pieces still belong to you, Kayla. And they always will!
With a desperation that he’d been harboring since the moment he woke up on Alamain’s boat, Steve grabbed Kayla’s face and crushed his lips to her in a wanton, frantic kiss that both of them felt with base and fundamental need. “I love you,” he cried into the kiss, “I still love you. I’ll never stop loving you, Sweetness.”
Neither of them had needed to feel each others’ kiss more than in their whole lives than at that very moment. They both cried cathartic tears and their souls connected through each joining of their lips.
When they finally broke away, Steve met her eyes again. “Is that everything?” His voice had an affected, troubled quality to it that he couldn’t help.
“That’s everything. Kayla cried in relief, grief, guilt, and also joy. “I’m sorry I hurt you,” she said as she threaded her hands through his hair. “I’m so sorry.”
He held her face with his hands. “You love only me,” he whispered.
She nodded and curled her fingers into his face. “You’re the only one I’ve ever given my heart to. The only one I’ve ever wanted. I thought I loved him, too. I was wrong.”
“I don’t ever wanna hear you think of yourself as something … dirty. Never again, Kayla. Ever.”
Kayla nodded and felt a surge of emotion for him so strong that she felt herself nearly explode she was so dizzy. “I’m your Sweetness, Steve. Only yours. I love you.”
Steve saw her sway and layed them down to hold her possessively against him. “I love you, too.”
They were both physically and emotionally spent. Steve still felt the hurt, and Kayla still felt the guilt. But there were no more secrets between them, and their healing had begun.
They layed there, holding each other in silence, allowing themselves to shed cathartic tears while they waited to be found.