Find Me – Chapter 163

Kayla had been through just about every emotion today. She woke up with anxiety, slipped into trauma-induced PTSD catatonia, moved into panic, roamed around emotionally lost while Steve was at the library, then felt sheer and utter relief when he actually believed the ridiculous time travel story she fed him, true though it was. And she wondered with real concern what this emotional rollercoaster was doing to her brain both in this body and going forward in every body. As they waited the two hours until Stephanie went down for the night before the unprecedented and truly otherworldly conversation that would be coming next could happen, Kayla was at the other end of the emotional spectrum with the oddest sense of excited anticipation. She should have been exhausted, but on the contrary, she was eagerly awake.

That didn’t last, however, as she exhausted herself trying to line up in her head the best way this exposition would need to go. Her truth bomb had relieved her of the burden of her existence, and Steve’s unexpected reaction had given her more confidence than either of them would have guessed. But as those two hours ticked by, she’d become a bit overwhelmed. How on earth was she supposed to explain this? Nothing she said wasn’t just going to lead to more questions than timeline offshoots, and she could see the whole thing going in circles before it even started.

Which is exactly how it ended up going.

For the time being, she was impressed with Steve’s patience during those two hours, which definitely seemed to outmatch her own; that patience did not, however, stop him from watching her the rest of the night. From the time that Kayla had promised to give her husband full disclosure, his scrutinous eye followed her.

“I’m still me, Steve,” she said as he watched her feed Stephanie from their daughter’s doorway. “I can feel you back there auditing me.”

“Auditing you? So, Uncle Sam is involved here?” he jibed.

Kayla chuckled. “You’re watching me for signs of recognition.”

Steve didn’t deny it. He squeezed her shoulder and leaned down to kiss Stephanie on her clean, baby shampooed head. “Sorry, baby. It’s just …”

“Weird. Don’t be sorry, I get it, it’s weird.”

He didn’t reply to that, but he did palm her face and stroke her chin with his thumb before rubbing the ends of her hair between his thumb and forefinger. “You don’t look like you’ve aged at all. You look exactly the same.”

“It’s not like that. My body doesn’t do the jumping, only my consciousness.” Kayla enjoyed her husband’s continued tactile connection; but the connection his eye was trying to make made her question what he was really thinking. “I must sound insane.”

“You sound like you don’t believe that I do believe you.”

“I—”

“Remember when I shot the senator?”

“Yeah …?”

“I told you how it went down, and you should have run. You should have forgotten about me. But you believed me.”

“Well, that wasn’t exactly paranormal.”

“It wasn’t exactly normal normal, either. But you believed me. You didn’t just stick by me because you were overlooking it or something, you believed that this crazy thing happened the way I said it did. So now you believe me when I say that I believe you. Ok?”

Kayla smiled. “Ok.”

“Doesn’t mean it’s not also weird,” he smirked.

Stephanie had fallen asleep with the bottle in her mouth, so Kayla very gently positioned the baby against her shoulder so she could get at least a small bubble out of her. “It’s weird for me, too,” she adjusted her volume down. “We’ve never told our other us’s before.” Steve laughed silently at the absurdity of that phrase. “Yep, the whole vernacular is weird,” Kayla replied. That’s what happens when you’re an experiment.”

“Did you just call me a guinea pig?” Steve whispered.

“Oh, we both are.” Kayla waved the topic away. “We’ll get to that. And don’t whisper, just speak softly. I know you think you’ll wake her, but trying to eliminate every single noise breeds a light sleeper.”

Steve made an impressed face. “You’re full of tips, baby. Went to bed with a new mom, woke up with a ringer.”

A little after 9pm, Steve came in from the kitchen to find Kayla not in the living room, but through the slightly open front door on the porch swing. She had the baby monitor clutched in one hand while the back of her other stroked under her chin in deep thought.

“You ok?” Kayla startled but smiled with a nod. “Sorry, baby,” he said as he handed her a large mug of hot tea. “It’s freezing, you really wanna talk out here?”

“No, I just like sitting out here sometimes. Helps to clear my head a little.” She could see that Steve didn’t quite like the sound of that. “I just want to get this right.”

“Can’t get anything right if you’re frozen solid, come on back in.”

“It’s not that cold,” Kayla chuckled.

“Come on back in anyway.”

Kayla took a sip of the hot liquid as Steve shut the door behind her, and she realized she was pretty chilled, after all. She set down the mug on the coffee table and pleasantly recalled the one Steve had jury rigged in his tiny Cleveland apartment. A memory this Steve was never going to have. Then she sat down on the blue, striped couch she’d become so very reacquainted with on these jumps and ran her hand over the cushion.

Steve sat down right beside her. “I don’t know what to ask first,” he said tentatively.

“Well, if I’m your first time traveler, I’m not surprised.”

Steve chuckled, but then he became very serious. “What exactly is happening to you, Kayla?”

“What’s happening is happening to both of us, and it’s complicated,” she said lacing her fingers into his. “There are going to be more things that are impossible to believe.”

“You just told me you’re from the future, and I’m still here. I’ll believe you.”

“What I mean is that they’re going to be really hard truths.”

A beat. “Are we together in 2009?” Kayla nodded. “Then I’m ready to hear them. Just start at the beginning.”

The beginning starts at the end. Kayla stared off with this realization, then grinned mildly at the fact that when she needed guidance from her husband, he found a way to give it to her. It should have been ludicrous that anyone, no matter how much they were loved and trusted, would be simply believed when they said, guess what, I’m a time traveler, and I don’t belong here. Steve said he did. But even if he didn’t, Kayla felt the absolute devotion her husband had to her, even now so relatively early in their relationship, and she felt suddenly confident to take that leap of faith.

“Ok, here’s your first hard truth. Right now, this is not our real timeline. This is an offshoot that never actually happened. It all changed when my consciousness jumped into the body that belongs here on March 16th. In the real timeline I’m still in jail. And when the next timeline offshoot happens, none of what happens here will be brought over to the next one.”

“So … you’re saying this isn’t really happening?”

“No, it’s happening. But it’s like a branch of fractured time.” Kayla diagramed the slipstream with the random baby toys and objects on the coffee table, and Steve picked it up very quickly.

“So, future you and future me have been making these offshoots over and over again?”

Kayla nodded. “We’ve been through so much. Some of it’s been wonderful and beautiful. But it was set in motion by something that was terrible. And that hard truth is going to be really really hard. But if you want to understand—”

“I do, Sweetness.” Steve absently played with Kayla’s interlaced fingers.

“—then you need to hear the bad stuff. And it begins at what I thought was the very end.”

“Is it that terrible thing you said you had to fix soon or we’re going to be in ‘so much trouble,’” he used air quotes with his other hand.

Kayla nodded. “God, this is hard. Lying to you feels less cruel.”

“No more lies, baby. I mean it.”

“I’m not,” she assured him. “I’m not going to lie to you. But you have to promise me that you’re going to stay calm and not fly off the handle.”

Steve couldn’t imagine what could be so terrible if they were still both there in 2009. “It’s that bad?”

“It’s that bad,” she repeated.

“Worse than going to prison? Losing your freedom?”

“Much.” Kayla didn’t drop her eyes from his piercing green gaze. “We lose you.”

Kayla practically felt the chill rush up Steve’s spine. “I leave you two? I’d never leave you.”

Kayla shook her head. “You don’t leave us. You’re taken. Lawrence Alamain. He fakes your death, and you’re held captive. For a real long time. I think I fixed it for us here. But six months from now in the real timeline, you’re going to be injured by a bomb. I’m going to watch your heart stop, and I’m going to think you died in my arms. And we’re going to be kept apart while I think you’re dead for the next—” Kayla swallowed anxiously, “—16 years.”

Steve stared at his wife. For a long moment, he didn’t say anything. Then he adjusted his patch and ran his fingers along the strap across his forehead.

“Are … are you still with me?” Kayla asked. When he didn’t answer immediately, she prompted him nervously. “Steve?”

“I’m sittin’ in front of you, aren’t I?”

Kayla blew out a breath. Right out of the gate it was already not a walk in the park. “I know it’s a shock,” she said.

“A shock? Yeah, you could say that.”

“Steve—”

“No. No, that’s not possible.”

“I wish it wasn’t, but it is.”

Steve shot up on his feet and began to pace. “This is bullshit, that’s what it is, Kayla!” She tried to interject, but Steve was about to go on a tear. “There’s no way I’d stay away from you and Stephanie for 16 years, there’s no way!”

“Steve, I need you to calm down.”

“You want me to be calm?! You’re telling me that our daughter’s about to grow up without a father! You’re telling me that you live a whole goddamn lifetime without me, and you want me to calm the fuck down?!”

Kayla crossed her arms and shot him a look. “You said you wouldn’t fly off the handle,” she chided.

“I know what I said! But how do you expect me to react to this?!”

“You think this is easy for me, Steve?! Because I’m flying pretty blind, here! I—”

Kayla got up on her own feet and paced in the other direction. She leaned against the righthand doorway to the foyer and crossed her arms again as she sent her gaze downward in a bid for some strength. Then she raised her head back up to her husband, who was rocking back and forth on his feet. She knew this was going to be rough, but she found her center and went to him.

“I expect your reaction to be shock,” she said gently as she held his hand. “I expect your reaction to be sadness, and some fear. But there’s a lot more to this, so I also expect you to react with some joy, too.” Steve caressed her hand with his thumb. It was an automatic response Kayla knew in all timelines. “If you give me the chance to explain it all to you, we’ll get to some of it. We’ll get to the answers to your questions. That’s what you want, right? Answers?”

“Yes,” he said with so many feelings clearly layered beneath it.

“You wanted the truth, and I told you – I told you – it was going to be hard to hear.” She placed a kiss in his palm then closed his fingers around it like a promise. In this moment, she felt an overwhelming sense of this being the very last moment Steve had before there would be no going back. And her instinct was to protect him by preserving his blissful ignorance. “There’s a lot more to our story. But it’s hard, and I love you so much that if you want to change your mind, I’ll carry it alone.”

“We’re together in 2009, though, right? That’s what you said?”

Kayla nodded. “We found our way back to each other. But what we went through to get there – what we’re living right now here in April of 1990 was the very last chapter before the end of us—” Steve blustered “—for 16 very long years. That end doesn’t happen here anymore, but it’ll always be what happened in the real timeline. I’m sorry to say it that way, but that’s what it is. And if you want to understand how we started jumping through time, you need to hear about it and all the other parts of our lives that got us here. So, I’m asking you again. Is that what you really want?”

“Yes,” he assured her.

“’Cause, Steve, we can go back and just pretend today never happened. Just pretend I never told you any of this.” Tears welled up in the rims of Kayla’s eyes, and her voice broke. “And your heart will be safe.”

Steve caressed his wife’s face. “No. Your problems are my problems. You taught me that. I don’t want you to carry this alone. I want you to tell me.”

Kayla stroked her palm down his arm and made a very conscious decision to remove that protected state by doing her best to get him as close to understanding as she could for as long as he’d be there. “Ok,” she nodded. Then I need you to listen to me and be patient. You don’t have to like everything you hear, and I’m not saying you’re not allowed to have reactions. But if you want to get through this then you can’t go nuts with every detail. Ok?”

Steve forced a small smile. “Ok.” They sat back down and tried this again. “So … you’re sayin’ in a couple months I die?” The words sounded surreal.

“You don’t really die, but we all think that you do,” she picked up where they’d left off. “I wish none of it was true, but yes, I truly believed it. I was there watching you die. It’ll be with me forever and haunts me.” Steve’s eye turned sad at that. “It’s one of the worst things that’s ever happened to us.”

One of the worst didn’t mean the very worst, and Steve internally shuddered. “Ok, but you said you fixed it, though? This time?” Then suddenly he realized. “Wait, Abe? Is that why you freaked out when Abe was here the other day?”

Kayla nodded. “Yes. There’s this company that starts operating here in Salem pretty soon called Jencon. Nick Corelli is involved in it, and you and Bo start investigating them.”

“Bo? He’s somewhere out on the Mediterranean right now.”

“Right now, yes. But there’s a whole story there. And one of the things you should definitely do is just cut all ties with Nick Corelli.”

Kayla went on to explain all about Ernesto Toscano’s not-so-dead status and how Bo, Hope, Jack, Jennifer, and seemingly half of everyone they know get involved in the cruise that would lure them all to their near deaths. Steve was in veritable shock with all of this, all the way up to the events of his own supposed death. He started right in with saying they had to warn everyone, but Kayla stopped him before he could get started and explained that helping everyone else fix their own lives was a rabbit hole that leads to nothing but disaster.

“So, we’ve just let people die?”

Kayla explained that no one really stays dead, and that even so it just wasn’t that simple. It was especially complicated to delineate the times they lived the timelines vs. the times they didn’t, but Steve honored her request, sat there, and listened. And she was impressed that he was, actually, starting to take these things in a little better than the information in the beginning of this conversation.

“Ok, so you’re saying we’re living Quantum Leap. Which one of us is Sam Becket, and which of us is Al?”

Kayla laughed. “You know we’ve had this very conversation a lot. Finding TV shows to fit what’s happening.” Steve smiled. “So, this is where the guinea pigs come in. We’re both Sam Becket, and the Al is a guy named Wilhelm Rolf. He’s a scientist that works for … Stefano Dimera.”

Steve’s face went from amused to very angry very quickly. “Stefano Dimera’s doing this to us?!”

Kayla shook her head and held up her hand. “Calm down.”

“Kayla, you’re tellin’ me that Stefano’s still after us in 2009!”

“Steve. Stop. That’s not accurate. Now, you promised to be calm.”

“Ok, I’m calm,” he scoffed not very calmly.

“You’re so not,” she accused with a mirthless chuckle. Steve cocked his head and laid a fascinated look upon her. “What?” she prodded.

“I’m so not? Never heard that before. And that voice that comes out of you sometimes. Since you came home.”

Kayla softened her tone. “Yeah, the idioms and anachronisms make people look at us funny a lot.”

“It’s also your – I dunno, your – you. You sound different sometimes.”

Kayla understood this very well. “I’m not 28 years old. This body is in this timeline. But I am not. I’ve grown older and have a lot of life lived behind me. So when I talk now, you’re hearing a much older Kayla, not this one.”

The truth of that statement struck Steve completely off guard. “Wait – so you’re …” He did the mind-boggling math in his head and looked at her with a wide open eye of sudden realization. “You’re fifty?”

“In 2009 I’m 48. But I’ve lived 12 years in the slipstream – well, ten – there was a gap – nevermind, we’ll call it 12. So it’s older than that on my body clock. I have to do the math of the lived days, but give or take, I’m almost, like, um …” She shrugged and looked a bit sheepish. “… 60 years old or so.”

“Say what?”

“Ish.”

“You’re twice my age?!” Steve was gobsmacked.

“Not quite,” she balked, “don’t rush it, buster. It really depends on how you want to count it. But that’s why I sound different, I’ve had a lot more time I’ve lived beyond this point that this version of you hasn’t lived with me.”

Steve dragged a palm down his face. “This is wild.”

“Too old for you, now, huh?”

Steve took Kayla’s hand and kissed her knuckle. “You’ll never be too anything for me, Sweetness. You sound different sometimes, but you’re still mine. I see you in there when I look in your eyes.”

Kayla looked at him tenderly. “Is that why you believe me? ‘Cause you can tell something is different?

He shook his head. “I believe you because you said so.”

Kayla turned up the corners of her mouth. His trust in her was palpable, and she was going to respect it.

“Dr. Rolf isn’t working for Stefano in 2009,” she continued the subject. He’s a brilliant scientist. Insane, but brilliant. He’s using us as guinea pigs, testing his theory of time travel. Clearly it works. I’m here. But it’s not working like he thought it would. Time is doing its own thing, and the foundation I showed you is breaking down. Not stable. We were supposed to only go to times in our lives that we shared together. So, from the first time you saw me in Cleveland when you were in the closet …” Steve furrowed his brow. “… to literally the last day we were together in 2009, which was March about a week after your birthday. But we started making changes, some we couldn’t help, literally the tiniest thing, like going to work on a day we didn’t, and time didn’t know what to do with that alternate version of the lives we’d originally lived. And our jumps started going wrong.”

“Wrong how?” Kayla recounted all the ways the slipstream’s breakdown had impacted Rolf’s intent of their jumps. “Can you fix it?”

“Not well. And sometimes it’s best not to.”

“Wait, I don’t get that. Why not?”

She hadn’t gotten to the fact that they were actively trying to break things now; one thing at a time. “It basically boils down to living apart. Or living with other people. I’m not re-marrying Jack. And you’re not staying with—” Kayla stopped and redirected herself. “I think I fixed it for this jump. You’re not going to work for the police, and as long as you don’t work for the ISA or investigate Jencon and basically just stay away from it all, you won’t be taken this time. I’m honestly not sure what to do about stopping Bo; the bomb was meant for him.”

Steve was still back on what Kayla wasn’t saying when she chose to change direction, though. He blinked several times and then gave her a serious look. “And I’m not staying with who? Who were you going to say? Marina? Britta?”

“Mm-hmm.”

But Steve knew his Kaylas. “You’re holding out on me.”

“It’s complicated.”

“There’s no one else it could be.”

Kayla angled her head slowly and looked away. “Sixteen years is a long time.”

“Sweetness, I’m gonna say it again. I’d never leave you. Even if we were apart, I’d never be with someone else. You can’t be sayin’ I’d do that.”

Kayla licked her lips nervously and shrugged her shoulders. “I’m going to sound like a broken record, but I’ll say it again, too. It’s very, very complicated. And you weren’t yourself while we were separated.”

All Steve could do was stare. Kayla could see that he was truly at a loss for words as his eye became glassy. The concept of being with another woman upset him. “Is it that woman named Ava?” he asked carefully. Kayla couldn’t help it when she flinched, her horrific experience was far too recent. It was clear to Steve that he was correct. Kayla felt an abashed thrill at the menace in her husband’s tone. “Your diary,” he replied to her silent question. Kayla just nodded, folding her arms and looking away. She couldn’t help it. “Jesus,” he whispered roughly. “Who is she and what did she do to you?”

Kayla teared up, because the events of that jump now had a Pavlovian effect on her and would be adding to her PTSD. “She’s your ex, and what she has done to me – to us both – is reprehensible.”

Steve sat stock still for several moments. Finally, he scrubbed a hand down his face. “You’d better just skip to that chapter,” he said with a trembling voice. “The whole thing. I need to know.”

Red flags flew everywhere at the concept of telling this Steve that an Ava he’d never met had stolen what just might become their baby that neither of them were sure existed. Kayla thought she knew what to do before this conversation started, but now she was just as lost as she’d been before. She really was breaking brand new ground here. They’d never talked about how to tell their destination selves about their primary selves. How was she supposed to know what to omit for his own good? For their own good? This was exactly as hard as she thought it was going to be.

“In for a penny in for a pound,” Steve said, continuing to quite accurately read her thoughts. “Just do it.” And it was because of Steve’s show of truly transcendent trust in her that Kayla took a deep breath and made the final decision within herself to let this destination version of him almost all the way in.

From the bombing to his coma to his death to his return, Kayla laid out those 16 years for her husband. She explained about Jencon, Lawrence Alamain, Dr. Hopkins, the memory drug, being held first in the warehouse then on the boat, the human trafficking, being purchased by Stefano, then sold to the Vitalis. She actually explained his death twice, once the way it happened the first time, and then the way he was able to escape when they jumped there for the second time. She did the same dual explanation for her time raising Stephanie in LA and then their jump to the year 2000, which included his nearly marrying Ava.

She committed her first lie of omission when she didn’t tell him about their recently discovered IVF procedure.

Steve was absolutely riveted to her every word. Kayla could see a hundred questions on his lips as she went through all this, but he only interrupted her a handful of times before she felt good and spent on the subject. One of those times was how he could allow himself to forget his wife and daughter.

“I’d never do it, Kayla. Even if they tortured me into staying away, I just don’t understand how I could allow myself to be – what did you call it, imprinted?”

“It’s very simple, actually. Your love for us. Your selflessness. They threatened to kill me and Stephanie, and you refused to let that happen. You sacrificed yourself for us. They proved to you that they were serious. Believe me, I know, I experienced those threats, too. And you did what you always do. You put yourself last and gave up your life so me and Stephanie could live. That’s how.”

Kayla expected Steve to be speechless, which he was. But she was very intrigued by the fact that rather than shock, his face registered a kind of knowing acceptance. I told you I’d die for you, he silently said to her with just the look in his eye. Kayla’s eye watered as she nodded in her own silent acknowledgment.

“I know,” she barely whispered. Steve smiled sadly, but before he could say anything Kayla scooted up to him and kissed him tenderly. “You’ve told me so many times that there’s nothing you wouldn’t do for me and our family. And there’s nothing I wouldn’t do either. I’ve crossed the planet for you. I’ve risked everything for us all. And I always will.”

Steve held Kayla’s face in his hands and reacted to this profession of her love for him with a kiss that was this time filled with heat. It was passionate with desire, and while she knew this wasn’t her Steve, it sure felt like him. Maybe because there was no difference. Or maybe because she wanted there not to be. Kayla’s nipples hardened. She desperately wanted him and responded with her own desire. She gathered his long hair in her fingers and stroked her palm up his beefy arm. She came to her senses when the monitor sounded with Stephanie’s cries a bit early for her overnight feeding.

The whimpering sound Steve made when they broke their kiss was the audible embodiment of what she knew was going on below his waist. She felt it, too, but right now, her daughter needed a bottle. They both smiled at the broken silence like a well-timed call. Kayla chuckled, as she got up to make Stephanie’s bottle, but Steve found himself in a sudden epiphany. “What is it?” Kayla asked.

“Sheila. Things went differently with her the first time, didn’t they?”

Kayla nodded. “This isn’t how it went for us the first time.”

“Is Stephanie ok?” he asked tightly. “What happened? Did she – do something to our baby?”

“Sheila is insane. When her own baby died, she just broke. She took advantage of me being in prison and – kidnapped Stephanie.”

“She what?!” Steve hissed, getting up like a shot. “That’s why you were so worried about it when you were still in prison, ‘cause she actually had done it already!”

“We got her back,” Kayla calmly cautioned with a raised hand between them. “She tried to disappear with her to Australia, but we got her back, and she was fine.”

“How? When? Where is she now? Then? 2009 I mean.”

“Back home?” The concept that this wasn’t home for Kayla gave Steve some anxiety. “In 2009? I—I don’t know.”

“What if she tries to come back?!”

“Shh, baby.” Kayla took Steve’s face in her hands, curling her fingers into the stubble he’d recently allowed to grow there. “You don’t have to worry about this. I promise you, you don’t.”

Steve palmed the back of her hands against his face and smiled. “When did you start doing this,” he squeezed her hands, “and calling me baby?”

“Hmmp. I don’t know, actually. But the other you likes it.”

“This me likes it, too,” he smiled. He leaned in for a kiss, and Kayla gave it to him before they headed into the kitchen. “You’re sure that woman is neutralized now?”

“This now is new for me, remember, it’s an offshoot I haven’t lived before, so I have no way of knowing how it’s gonna go, but it seems like she is. That’s why I’ve been a little obsessed with our checking doors and passages. But I think probably yes. And in that now, definitely. We never see her or have to deal with her again so far. And Steph is 19 now. She’s fierce and smart and she is—she’s absolutely your daughter.” The dichotomy of Kayla talking about the baby she was currently mixing formula for as an adult was a hell of a thing for Kayla’s hindbrain. This was also when Kayla made a very conscious choice to tell her second lie of omission. No talk of Stephanie’s abuse by Jeremy Horton. No talk of her rape. She wasn’t going to count out telling him ever, but there was such a thing as too much too soon; so for now, she left it out. And his reaction gave her the immediate knowledge that she was right.

“Yeah? She’s—she’s strong? Doesn’t take any shit?”

Kayla laughed with genuine thrill. “She’s so strong. And the amount of shit she does not take is – well let’s put it this way, her hobby is racing cars.”

Steve marveled at this as they headed upstairs with the bottle. They spent the next bit of time feeding their daughter and talking about the woman she was going to use the next 19 years growing into. Kayla especially enjoyed her husband’s reaction to the story of how Stephanie found him behind the couch armed with a bottle of sage just in case he was a ghost.

“Kitchen sage!” Steve cackled. “What a funny Little Sweetness you turn out to be, Little Sweetness!” Stephanie very much enjoyed her father’s enjoyment. Kayla was holding her in her right arm, but her daughter’s eyes were squarely on her laughing father. Steve let loose with the laughter, and Stephanie opened her mouth and gave him a wide smile. Her little baby giggle and excitedly kicking legs were paired with a warmth that was so tangible they could almost touch it. It was Stephanie’s very first laugh of this timeline, and both of her parents were overjoyed.

“Oh, Baby Girl,” Kayla cooed with some happy tears forming in her eyes. “Thank you, honey. Oh, my sweet beauty, thank you!” Kayla looked up into her husband’s questioning eye. “I missed her first smile and her first laugh, too. I was still in prison last time.” She leaned her cheek down and rubbed it on the top of Stephanie’s head. When she opened her eyes, Steve was still gazing into Stephanie’s, but his smile had fallen into something very sad.

“I took that from you. When I got us into this mess with Marina. It’s my fault.”

“Steve, no.”

“I read what you wrote, Sweetness. I know.”

“And did you also read that I don’t blame you.”

“That’s not what I saw.”

Kayla wanted to get him past this. She convinced him to table this for now and let him clean up the bottle while she gave their daughter a fresh diaper before putting her back down. When she came back to the living room, Steve had a new mug of tea ready for her on the coffee table. She smiled at him and thanked him with a kiss.

“So, you still like tea, then?”

“Mm-hmm,” she tousled his hair, “you know me well.”

“You sure about that? It’s a lot of years.”

Kayla held her husband’s hand in both of her own and clutched it lovingly to her bosom. “Every day. Every version of you. In every timeline.” Kayla was glad to see Steve’s happy reaction to that. She then had her own reaction when he started stroking the breast she was holding his hand against. Steve smiled when her nipple hardened, not for the first time that night, beneath his thumb.

“I want to pick up where we left off,” Steve whispered. Kayla licked her lips. “I want you, baby. I’ve missed you so bad.”

“So, you’re, ah, done with the questions?” It was a stall, and from the look on Steve’s face, she knew he knew it.

“No, I’ve got lots more of those. You want me, too, Kayla. You do, don’t you?”

“Yes, I do.”

“I can see it.” He stroked his palm down over Kayla’s rear end and gently squeezed. “I wanna feel it.”

“We have—rules—” Steve bent his head to place warm, wet kisses on Kayla’s slim neck. “—kind of—we—It’s not that—”

“What kind of rules?” he asked into her neck. “You can’t let yourself have me or you’re breaking a time travel rule?”

“Ah … no? Well, actually, kind of.” Steve lifted his head and smoldered at her. “Ok, so no, that’s not the way it works.” She took a deep, sexually frustrated breath. “But, there are definitely some details we haven’t gotten to yet.”

Steve rubbed his thumb over her bottom lip. “So, I’m allowed to kiss you.”

Kayla nodded with a forlorn look, and Steve kissed her with a lingering lust his tongue made her feel.

“Am I allowed to touch you?” He reached into her robe and fondled her breast through her tank top, rolling her nipple gently between his thumb and forefinger. Kayla nodded, wishing he was inside her. “How else am I allowed to touch you?” Steve untied her robe, cupped her breast, and kissed the bare skin of her chest; his other hand continued stroking her left buttock.

“Steve …” Her voice was filled with pleasure, but also apprehension.

He brought her hand to the bulge between his legs and encouraged her to stroke. “Are you allowed to touch me?”

“I want to,” she barely whispered. “But …”

Steve’s face went from lustful to disappointed. He removed her hand and held it between them. “That’s not a yes.” He kissed her knuckle without dropping her eye contact. “So tell me more about these rules.”

Kayla leaned herself into her husband and nuzzled her head into his neck. “Thank you,” she nearly cried. “For not pushing me.”

“I would never push you,” he replied slightly offended.

“Are you mad?”

“How can you think that? No. But I wanna understand it, Sweetness.”

“Ok, I’m-I’m gonna explain it to you.”

“Including what Ava did to us?” Kayla stayed silent even as she continued to hold on to him. “You never got to that part. You said I was with her, but you didn’t say what she did.”

Kayla exhaled heavily. She didn’t want to tell him this. Something in her was screaming at her not to. She pulled out of his embrace and went to look out the window onto the back yard. “If it wasn’t for how messed up we are in the timelines we might never have even known about it, to be honest.”

“Wait, go back. Messed up how?” It was all so complicated for Steve to hear and Kayla to explain. When she didn’t answer him, he went to her and turned her by the shoulders to face him. “Come back to Ava; first, tell me about how we messed it up.”

Relieved by the stay in topics, her tone improved. “Now you’re getting into the quantum mechanics.”

“We messed with quantum mechanics? Come on, baby be real.”

“You think I’m not being real? Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle would beg to differ.” Steve stared at her slack-jawed. “Not in the literature?”

“So, you became a doctor and a physicist?”

Kayla laughed, then ushered them back to the couch, dug her heels in, and did her best to explain every question of mechanics that Steve asked about how the time travelling actually worked. She explained that the changes they were making from what time was expecting was creating more and more fractures, and that those were causing physical effects.

“I don’t feel anything yet,” Steve said.

“You wouldn’t, you’re still the destination Steve, not my Steve.”

Steve clenched his jaw and crossed his arms. He stared at her from his side opposite her on the couch. He didn’t know that this had become one of their most common positions, it was still new to him. He didn’t know that they’d had endless conversations about their time travels from this very couch, this was his first one. He didn’t know so many things that he didn’t even know to ask. What he did know was the sting of that statement.

Kayla bit at her bottom lip. “I’m so sorry. You’re not not my Steve, you are mine.”

“No, I’m not, apparently,” he snapped.

“Well, that didn’t take long,” Kayla mumbled. She took a breath and tried to smooth this over. “It’s just the way we keep ourselves straight for each other, I didn’t mean to make you feel like you’re not …”

“Like I’m not what? Real?”

Yes, that was exactly what she was going to say before she stopped herself and made it worse. “And this is a prime example of why this is hard to hear.”

“Listening,” he cracked back.

“Steve, you’re real. You’re as real as the other you is. You sitting here right in front of me are the man that went through our lives and eventually started jumping in 2009. You’re real.”

“But I’m not yours,” he spat back. That other guy is.”

Kayla looked him right in the eye. “We never feel like the destination versions of ourselves aren’t real. What they’re not is permanent.” Steve glared. “You asked for honesty. You asked for it, you got it, Toyota.” His glare became laughter, and Kayla was much more pleased with that reaction. “So, do you want the honesty? Or do you want me to gloss over it?” Steve let out a big breath. “Or we could just pretend this never happened and go back to like it was before you read the diary,” she offered again.

“No. I want to hear it. I said I could take it, and I can.”

“You’re real to me. Stephanie is real. Pretty much everyone else isn’t. They’re noise. They have to be, or we end up down those rabbit holes. Nothing changes, everything resets. Otherwise, we’d do things differently.” The fact that they were about to do things differently she let remain tabled for a future conversation.

“So, if nothing gets changed, how does the timeline go on after we jump away? What happens to everyone else?”

Kayla used as kind a voice as she could with her answer. “The timeline doesn’t go on. It stops.”

“What do you mean, it stops?”

“I mean it literally stops. Freezes. Becomes dormant.”

Steve chuffed out a breath. “What, we all just stop existing?”

Kayla half nodded and replied softly, “Something like that, yeah.”

“Naw, baby. No, that’s not possible. These bodies are here, we can’t just go up in smoke. Is that what that scientist said?”

“Yes, he was pretty clear, these timelines go dormant. Our consciousnesses leave these bodies, and when they do, this world … stops. There’s no further movement, time literally stops for them because they’re offshoots of the real timeline. That goes on, but not the offshoots, they just end. It’s not what he meant to have happen, he didn’t know there would be branches like this. And we can’t jump back to one. We only snap back to the original timeline like I showed you, and then upon arrival we create a brand new one.”

“Every time?”

“Every time.”

“How many times has it been?”

“Well, this one makes 43.” Steve’s eye widened so far his eyebrow receded into his hairline. “But two of those times there were a ton of jumps just seconds apart, that’s a nightmare. It’s the slipstream struggling to adjust and sends us into chaos. So, it’s probably more like 60 if you count those.”

“60? In 12 years?”

“Let’s just call it 43.”

This launched them into an hour of just where they’d been, in what order and how Kayla was able to even keep it all straight. She explained the jump project to him, and he told her that probably explained the old addresses he’d seen on the first page of her diary. She started at the beginning with the very first jump and without any real detail briefly went through most of them from then until right now. She left out some of the ones she didn’t know how to explain quickly, tabling them in her head with a plan to go back to them.

Maybe.

When Kayla got to the jump that resulted in their daughter, Emily, she stopped and considered how much of that one she wanted to disclose. Because all it was going to do was beg the question about her. He was going to want to know more. And she didn’t want to deny him. But she truly didn’t want to discuss her, either. She tried to skirt around her instead.

“The um … the next jump was to our second longest time. The day you were going to propose to me but then you took that meeting with Harper and learned that Jack was your brother.” Steve frowned. He had very mixed feelings about Jack right now. “Try to cut him a little slack,” she said.

“Really? You’re his advocate now?”

Kayla blew out a breath. “It really is amazing how you seem to be destined to say the same thing about him over and over.” Rather than let him react to that, she just went on. “You two do bury the hatchet. You don’t have to do it right now, it’s ok. But he loves you, and you love him.”

“He raped you.”

Kayla blinked hard. “Yes, he did. I haven’t forgotten that,” she snapped.

“I’m sorry,” Steve said. “I have a hard time with him. And I don’t forgive him for it.”

Kayla rubbed her foot against his leg. “I know. I’m just saying that one day things between all three of us are going to be better.”

“You’re going to forgive him?”

Kayla hunched her shoulders. “I’m going to move on. I’ll never forget it. But he’s your brother, and he worships you.”

“Now that’s just some kind of bullshit right there.”

“Nope. It sure isn’t. He adores you. He really finds redemption once he sort of figures out who he is amidst two awful men for fathers.”

“You really won the lottery on that one, BillyJack,” Steve said rhetorically.

“Yeah,” Kayla agreed. “But there’s a lot to his own story, too. And ya know what? He apologizes to me.”

“For real?” he questioned doubtfully. “I can’t see him doing that, baby.”

“I can’t blame you. But, yeah. He does. So, you can feel however you want, but that’s how it ends up.”

This topic was a downer, but Kayla lifted Steve’s mood with the fact that, ultimately, she’d fixed the terrible mistake he’d made by leaving and not proposing. He was awed at the alternate path their lives took.

“I proposed?! I really did?”

“You did,” Kayla smiled. “It was so beautiful. You took me up to the roof, got down on one knee, and we were so happy, Steve. That jump was one of the happiest times of our entire lives.”

“Happier than 1979? You said we were blissful then.”

She grinned in reverie. “Different kind of happy. They were both so very happy. Just … idyllic. I really mean that. When we were in those two years after we got married—”

“We got married early? Oh, baby, we did? Was I that me or the other me?”

Kayla nodded. “You had jumped in right away pretty much. But yes, we got married and then it was during that jump that Dr. Rolf came to us and explained what was happening. Before that we were just constantly guessing, equating what was happening to TV shows and trying to figure out the rules. It was a little chaotic. But that jump was a lot of living in fear. Unbelievable happiness, but fear of jumping away.”

“Because we’d have to leave Stephanie?”

Kayla’s eyes watered. Dammit. She shook her head and dropped her eyes to her lap. “Not Stephanie,” she said softly.

Steve didn’t understand and prompted her. When she didn’t respond, he suddenly realized. “Emily? We had Emily?” Kayla nodded. “I don’t get it. How could we have Emily if we didn’t already have Stephanie?” Kayla looked up and a tear spilled over her lash line. She brushed it away and found the strength to explain.

“In our real timeline, we have two children. Stephanie. And then in 2008 we have a baby boy.” Steve smiled wide. “He’s beautiful. His name is Joe.”

“Just Joe?”

“Just Joe. He was nine months old when we jumped for the first time.”

“Wait, he’s only a baby? Like, we just had him?”

“Yes, Last year. Well, 12 years ago as that time passes for us, but he’s still just a baby in the real timeline.” Steve stared at his wife, clearly communicating surprise at their ability to have him at their ages. “We always wanted more kids, and when you came back, we had a little help but got pregnant quickly.”

“Wow, Sweetness. That’s incredible. You gave me a son. He’s ok?”

“There were some—problems.” Steve brayed with immediate concern. “But it turned out ok. He’s healthy and a really happy little boy.”

“Tell me more.”

“I wish I could. But we’ve been gone a long time. Only jumped to him one time. Stephanie we’ve seen a few times at a lot of ages, but Joe was just a little baby. Still breastfeeding. He has a really funny little sneeze and a huge grin like his sister.”

“Joe Johnson. For Mama?” Kayla nodded. “Then what about Emily?” He still didn’t understand.

Kayla steeled herself and just said it. “Emily is not part of our real timeline. We made her in that jump. She’s part of that offshoot timeline only. So, when we jumped away, we—” she licked her lips and took a breath. “—we lost her.”

“Lost her?”

“Remember, we can’t jump back to any of the branches. We start all over again every time. Emily is part of a dormant timeline now. And we’ll never get her back. Ever.”

Steve was stunned, and he finally understood the depth of the sadness she’d been displaying. He raked his palm down his face and squirmed a bit. “There’s gotta be a way.”

Kayla shook her head. “There’s not.”

Steve stammered in speechlessness. “How long ago was this? How many jumps ago?”

Kayla estimated about eight years in real time. “We had a very hard time after that. We were both devastated and grieving for a very, very long time. We still do. We didn’t break up, but we almost didn’t make it before we managed to find each other again and move on.”

The look on Steve’s face was heartbreaking. “I’m never gonna meet my daughter?”

Kayla hunched up one shoulder and shook her head. “I’m sorry.”

“No, Sweetness. I’m sorry. What you’ve been through. Steve pulled his wife onto his lap and held her there. He comforted her and in doing so was able to take some for himself for the loss. He’d never met her. He never would meet her. But the concept of her rang true for him, and he was sad.

Kayla had a hard time getting through the rest of the jumps, because Steve had so many questions. She wanted to answer them, but realistically, there just weren’t enough minutes in the hours they’d have left before sleep was going to have to take them for their own sanity.

“But why, Sweetness? Why us? Why would this guy do this to us?”

“Well right now he pretty much hates us, ‘cause we’re not sticking to the timeline, and that’s messing up his experiment. But when he picked us,” she nodded into a raised shoulder, “it was his sick way of giving us back the 16 years he originally helped take from us.”

“So, there are four more years to go?”

“That’s how it’s supposed to work. But now there’s a potential that we’ll be at this forever. Just jumping over and over forever.”

“Jesus Christ,” Steve huffed in serious agitation.

“We have a plan for that. But listen,” Kayla said as she scooted up to him, across the couch. “I know this sounds terrible and scary, and you’re right, it has been. But there are so many good things that have happened, too. You and I are closer than we’ve ever been. We are unshakeable. We’ve been through some very difficult things that almost ended us. Not just here on these jumps, but before that, after you came back from those 16 years.” Steve looked at her warily, clearly wondering if now was one of those times. Kayla mildly gestured a confirmation. “And it’s because of all those things that we’ve been thru that we’re so strong now. I’d like to take back a few of those things, but it’s all meant that we’re who we are now. And Steve, we’re unbreakable.”

“We’re unbreakable now, baby.”

Kayla swallowed. “I want to believe that. But—”

“You’d better not say what you’re about to say.”

“—no, we’re not.”

“Dammit, Kayla, I said not to say that!” Steve got up in the most distress since this conversation began, the concept that their love could be undone terrifying to him. “You’re saying we survived Marina coming into our lives and still aren’t ‘unbreakable?’” Kayla dropped her head into her palm and rubbed at her eyes with a heavy sigh. “Too real?” Steve snapped with the snark of the man who belonged here, rather than the wiser one who was still lost out in the ether.

“Nope,” she snapped right back. “Just trying to navigate your on-again-off-again temper while trying not to hurt you.” Kayla watched Steve’s face go a bit more contrite. “We’re not unbreakable right now—”

“Because of Marina.”

Kayla was completely annoyed by the name of that woman continuing to be spoken. “No,” she replied with a cold tone that Steve absolutely did not like, “because you and the me that’s supposed to be here have the luxury of a normal life. You and her—”

“Me and you.”

“The we that belongs here have a choice in how we react to how life is happening to us. The me and you that have been jumping through time don’t have any choices. We only have each other. No one else, including our other selves, have been able to understand what’s happening. And those things have been deeply … poignant. It’s bonded us in ways that are so much deeper than I ever knew could be. Because we, literally, only have each other to depend on. Other than Marcus a few times.”

“Homey knows?!”

“Not here, no. We’ve only told him twice. And we’ve also depended on Alice Horton a lot. We’ve never told her we’re time travelling, but she’s our secret-keeper; we leave messages with her so we can find each other.”

“And she’s ok with that?”

“Think about it, Steve.”

Steve rolled his eye and nodded. “Of course, she is.” They were silent for a minute, then Steve started to say something before thinking better of it.

“What?”

“It’ll keep.” Kayla knew without a doubt that he wanted to circle back to Ava. So, she didn’t push him, because she didn’t want to disclose this any more now than she did before. Instead, she navigated around that elephant with a completely authentic yawn as she rubbed her eyes. “I think I’m the only one left in the house still awake, here,” Steve said.

Kayla looked at the time on the VCR and groaned. “It’s almost 1am and we’ve barely scratched the surface.” She could see her husband’s moral dilemma playing out in his non-verbals and put him out of his misery. “Ok,” she said with another yawn before standing up, “let me caffeine up one more time. I’ll be right back.”

Kayla raked her eyes over the kitchen as she stood at the stove trying to avoid literally watching the pot of water boil. She’d been here three weeks. The first time she’d spent this much time in a destination alone was very recently in 1971. But this was the first time she’d done so as an adult, with the other Steve, waiting for him for this long. Two years? I’m not the strong one, Steve, you are. She felt overwhelmed at the amount of information this Steve still didn’t have, resulting in a serious homesickness to settle around her. Then like the cosmos knew to hand her what she needed, a vision of Steve and herself sitting at this kitchen table playing 20 Questions popped into her head. That’s a pretty good idea, she said to herself. The pot whined out its ready status, Kayla filled her cup with a fresh teabag, grabbed her husband a beer, and headed back to the living room.

Which was empty.

“Steve?” When she was met with silence she checked the bathroom, which was similarly empty. “Steve?” she called out again.

“In here, baby.”

Kayla whirled around to see him emerge from the secret passage on the back wall. “What are you doing in there?”

“Double checking for Kelly—Sheila.” He closed the enormous door and took a big swig of the beer his wife had brought him. “I admit it, I’m a little freaked out.”

“You’ve always made me feel safe, you know that? Every jump, whether you knew me or not. You are the greatest protector. Of me. And our family.”

They held each other for a long time before Steve broke their embrace then kissed her, the taste of beer lingering on his lips. “I hope you got more gas in that tank, Sweetness, ‘cause I’ve got more questions.”

“Well, you’re in luck,” she replied with a stroke of her finger down his patch, “because you get to ask me 20 more of them.”

“Like in Stockholm,” Steve smiled. Then he looked at her sideways. “Stockholm …”

Kayla saw that he was making a connection. “Mm-hmm. You ask, I answer.” But when she saw that the VCR now said 1:18am she amended that down. “No wait, that’ll take all night. Ten. You get to ask ten questions.”

“What if I have more than ten questions? There are 43 jumps to tell me about.”

“You can have a fresh ten questions every night.” For as long as you’re here. “I think that works out pretty good,” she stuck her chin out and crossed her arms pretty proud of herself. Steve silently studied her, more pieces falling into place in his head. “Anything I want?”

Kaya shrugged a nod. “Is that your first question?”

Steve smirked. “C’mon, play fair, baby.”

“Kayla grinned but came clean, too. “Yes … but I’m not going to promise that I can answer it well or that the answer you get will be what you want to hear.”

“I said I can take it, didn’t I?” Steve turned back to the desk by the window and took a cassette tape out of its box. You don’t believe me?”

“I do believe you,” she said as Steve hit play on the mixed tape.

“Then why did you leave a bunch of jumps out?”

Kayla folded her arms and exhaled heavily. “Noticed, huh?”

“You said you’d be honest.”

Simon & Garfunkle’s “Cecelia” came on, and the upbeat song mixed with the tea’s caffeine to galvanize her a bit.
“Steve, I’m going to tell you about every one of them. I’m going to tell you where we’re headed and what’s going to happen. But some of this is really … awful … and very complicated. And honestly, they’re a separate conversation.” Steve exhaled with frustration. “You want me to trust you to be able to take it, and I do. But you have to trust me, too. This is the first time I’ve ever told you. The first time either of us have told our destination selves that this is happening. I’m making this up as I go along. The other you isn’t here to ask what to do, so I’m in this alone.”

Steve pawed at the back of his neck and scratched his stubble. He nodded his head and apologized. “You know I love you?”

“You know I love you, too?”

“You’re never alone,” Steve said meaningfully. “Ok?”

“Ok,” she smiled so warmly. Then he finally began.

< Chapter 162

Chapter 164 >