When Kayla gave birth to Stephanie, she didn’t realize the precious nature of time. She didn’t notice that she’d slipped into her late ‘20’s. That potentially a third of her lifetime had been lived. That the faces she knew and loved were changing in miniscule ways every single day. That her baby was growing new hair, developing stronger muscle tone, acquiring personality, and adding vocal inflection every day. These things slipped by her notice on a daily basis, the beloved time ticking by as an afterthought. It wasn’t that Kayla had taken these things for granted. She, like most people, simply weren’t looking at the moments in that kind of detail; rather, she was observing the aggregate. Today Kayla was 20 years older and was exceptionally aware of the precious baby that was Emily. Most new mothers, and oftentimes even the ones who were mothers many times over, watched their babies sleep for fear that if they didn’t they’d stop breathing. Kayla watched Emily sleep for a much different reason. Every breath her daughter took was a moment that ticked by in this family’s borrowed time, and both Kayla and Steve were keenly aware of it.
But they didn’t allow themselves to be slaves to it.
They knew that one day they were going to jump. But not today. And not the today that was tomorrow. And not the today after that. Never today. They could have spent every waking moment terrified that they’d jump, hostages to its potential. But the fact was that they just didn’t have the time. In every sense of the word, they simply did not have the time.
For one thing, they had a baby, and they were exhausted with the sleep deprivation that comes as a tacit part of having a baby. This was a special little baby born to a special circumstance in an extraordinary timeline, certainly; but when you got right down to it, Emily was still a baby like all the others, and she needed the same kind of constant attention from her parents that any other baby needs. So, that’s what she got. If Kayla wasn’t breastfeeding, she was swaddling, and if Steve wasn’t finding ways to entertain her, he was walking the halls with her. If she was sleeping, they were sleeping, and if for some reason they weren’t, then they were fixing up their house as best they could on the income they had. No, Emily’s parents didn’t have time to worry about jumping, because they were lucky if they were awake half the time and even luckier if they were alert during said wakefulness.
For another thing, they didn’t want to spent time dwelling on the jump. It was a waste of their terribly, heartbreakingly, and preciously borrowed time. They wanted to enjoy every single moment of being this little baby’s mommy and daddy, feeding her, bathing her, changing her diapers, and just loving her for as long as they could. So that’s what they did. It’s not that they ignored the fact that the jump was coming – it never left their purview that the moment that had just passed might be their last with her, but to give it focus would defeat their purpose. And it was clear to them that their purpose was singular – to be a family. It didn’t hurt that they’d already been there for more than ten months. For all they knew, this could last years.
Emily was the first baby to these bodies her parents were inhabiting, but she wasn’t their first baby. In fact, her brother back home wasn’t developmentally too far ahead of her, so this infancy stage was fresh in their minds, and they didn’t stray very far from that routine. There were no apnea monitors here, and she’d come home on Day 3 of her life and not day 30. But for the entirety of Kayla’s maternity leave, which was six weeks …
“What’s this six week bullshit, baby, you got three months with Joe.”
“No Family Medical Leave Act here. Hospital policy is half that right now.”
“Yeah, well, hospital policy sucks, baby.”
… their routine with Emily was idyllic. The same could not be said for the baby gear available to them. What a difference 20 years made. No pack-and-plays here. No baby-proofing safety lines of products. No online shopping. And no baby superstores. The carseats available to them made them both wince, and Kayla went through a bit of a meltdown at one point with the lack of safe options, as far as she was concerned. Steve talked her off the ledge and assured her that somehow they got Stephanie and a whole slew of generations riding in cars through to adulthood with other carseats and infant carriers – and sometimes none. Eventually, they found products that made them satisfied. Kind of.
Emily slept in a bassinet in her parents’ room while the two of them got her own room ready for her. The logical room was the one closest to them, but that was Stephanie’s room, and they weren’t taking it away from her. Instead, they chose the room across the hall. It was roughly the same size, had a bay window, and dust, dirt, and chipped lead paint absolutely everywhere. It took them half of Kayla’s maternity leave to get it cleaned up and in good enough shape to paint. They chose pale green for her walls, and Kayla stenciled “Emily Gwendolyn” across the wall above her crib. By the time Emily was three weeks old the room was ready for her, but neither of her parents were in a real hurry to transfer her in there. It wasn’t until she was pushing herself up on her hands at three-months-old that they finally relented and let her sleep apart from them in the safety of the deeper well of her crib on a full time basis. Even so, they always checked on her liberally and kept their parenting extremely close.
From the moment they came home with their daughter, Kayla began keeping a hand-written journal. She knew that far beyond simply telling oneself that something is important to remember, writing it down was a powerful way to instill it. She also wanted to ensure that when this timeline inevitably continued without their consciousnesses that someone, whether it was their counterparts, someone else, or Emily herself, would know who this family was meant to be.
Kayla wrote about her daughter’s beautiful, strawberry curls, the small mole above her lip that was like a mirror reflection of her father’s below his, her first smile when he was five weeks old when her father made a silly face at her, the way she’d hold Kayla’s finger so tightly when she’d nurse, and how at the age of 8 months, 2 days old, Kayla found her sitting up in her crib all by herself for the first time. There wasn’t a day she didn’t write about what Emily looked like, smelled like, sounded like, ate, drank, or spit up. There wasn’t a day she didn’t write about how Emily would have been so loved by her older sister and brother and what they would do as a family of five if only the others had been here with them. And there wasn’t a day she didn’t write about how much Emily’s mother and father loved her.
To this world in 1987, there were three Johnsons now, but Steve and Kayla were keenly aware that they were a family of not three but five. So, when Emily was just two weeks and six days old, Steve and Kayla had Marcus over to the house for another birthday party, this one for Joey. Kayla took treasured naptime to stay awake and bake cupcakes. Marcus folded his arms and gave his best friend a look.
“Let me get this straight,” Marcus said with irritated curiosity. “Stephanie’s birthday is February 19th.”
“That’s right,” Steve said as he shoved a vanilla cupcake into his mouth whole. It was from a box, but the strawberry frosting she’d made from scratch, and he truly loved his wife’s homemade frosting.
“Now we’re celebrating the birthday of one Joseph.”
“Joe,” Steve corrected. “Just Joe.”
“Kayla just called him Joey in there.”
“That works, too.”
“No Joseph, then.”
“Nah.”
Marcus narrowed his eyes. “And his birthday is today.”
“May 19th, yep.”
“And he’s … who exactly?”
Steve leaned back against the couch and took a swig of his beer. “Stephanie’s brother,” he said.
“Steve, come on man, you want me to eat cake and sing happy birthday for people I’ve never even met, and you won’t tell me who they are?”
“Homey,” Steve smiled as he leaned over and clapped his best friend hard on the shoulder, “that’s exactly what I want you to do.”
Marcus smiled. “You are pissing me off right now, you do know that, don’t you?” He knew on some kind of intuitive level that what he was being included in was very special; it was the fact that he didn’t know why that made him crazy.
“Well, then I think my job here is done,” Steve grunted out as he got up and went to his three-week-old daughter in her bassinet. “Homey, you finish off that last cupcake, I’m gonna take my Littlest Sweetness to get a fresh diaper. Marcus gave Steve a lopsided grin, ate the last cupcake, and went into the kitchen to hug Kayla goodbye. When Steve came back with a freshly changed baby, Marcus insisted on some time to hold her. He’d bonded very quickly with his best friend’s baby, and it made him think some secretly paternal thoughts, himself.
Equally non-parentally smitten with this little girl was her aunt Kimberly. Despite the loss of her own child, as well as the fact that she had one of her own, one of Shane’s, plus four other nieces and nephews before this one came along, Kim could not wait to get this little baby in her arms. When she did, Emily took her aunt’s breath away. She and Shane were at the hospital on day one, and then they came to the hosue a few times that first week to help, along with Caroline and Jo. Steve was no longer treating Shane with disdain, veiled or otherwise, but the friendship they once shared was no longer going to be possible in any timeline. Not like it was originally intended. They co-existed civilly as brothers-in-law on friendly terms, but they were not friends.
Similar to the other long stays they’d had, Steve and Kayla realized that keeping things close to the real timeline was not going to happen. The very first thing they did when they got here was change things when they didn’t break up, which begat their marriage a year early, not to mention their child. There was no more Low Income Housing project, and, in fact, there was also no Assemblyman Jack Deveraux, for unfortunately, he’d lost the election. Unfortuantely for him and unfortunately for the people on the Riverfront, as his loss meant no more Community Center, either. The three of them tried to secure Federal funding, but the senator wanted nothing to do with it, and they weren’t able to fund the center. They could have tried for another fund raiser, this time without the revival front impeding them, as that was more than a year away, but they now had a baby, and their time now belonged exclusively to her. The Emergency Center went on, but Steve was now left jobless. It didn’t take long for it to hit them that if ever something was meant to be, this was it, because it meant that Steve was free to do something that made his heart soar: be a full time dad. He’d never preferred the conventional employment that seemed oppressive to him when he lived this timeline the first time around. While he’d gained enough life experience and patience over the years to, certainly, do it, like his work at the fish market several jumps ago proved, this opportunity to stay home and be a full time parent to his baby girl was a bird in the hand for him. It was a gift.
And, oh, how he loved it.
He’d started down this path once before, but then it was out of necessity, his wife was in prison. Today it was for the pure joy of being Emily’s father and caring for her every day. So much of the brief but precious time he’d spent with Stephanie at this age came back to him like it was yesterday in the little things he’d do with Emily around the house, even just feeding and burping her. It was a bittersweet existence he had with this baby daughter as he thought constantly of his other one. It was bittersweet for Kayla, too, as she cried happy tears watching her husband with their beautiful Emily.
The term “stay at home mom” hadn’t been quite coined yet, let alone “stay at home dad,” but Mr. Mom was five years old by this time, and it was the first thing both of their families thought of when they heard Steve and Kayla use the modern-day anachronism to describe what Steve’s job was going ot be. Kayla had never given much thought to this time’s view of gender roles, but now that she and Steve were bucking them quite unapologetically, she was really shocked at just how far society had progressed in 2009. Or more accurately, how oppressive the judgments were in 1988. She thought they’d already changed by now, but in reality the shift to more equality in parenting had not quite taken mainstream hold yet.
“Kayla, dear, we don’t want to pry, because it’s none of our business,” Caroline had begun gently when the family had gotten together for a 4th of July barbecue, “but don’t you want to be the one home for your baby?”
“Mom, I have to work, we don’t have a choice.”
“Well, why can’t Steve get his job back with that Jack Deveraux?”
Kayla was a little surprised that she’d recoiled slightly at the mention of Jack’s name; it wasn’t common for her to do that these days, but now and then she’d involuntarily react. “Because he lost the election.”
“Well, how about the Senator?”
“No,” Kayla immediately snapped. Now Kayla recoiled even more and secured her hold on her daughter in her arms. Her mother cast her eyes downward in a combination of displeasure with her daughter’s tone and pure confusion as to why she would choose this unconventional approach.
“I’m only trying to understand, Kayla.”
“Mom, fathers have just as much to offer their children as mothers do.”
“Well, of course, they do, I never said they didn’t.” Caroline was getting testy.
“And Steve is a wonderful father. The best. I have a good job managing the Emergency Center, Steve’s job was lost when the Community Center project stopped, and he truly wants to stay home with Emily. Why would we put her in daycare when we can afford for him to stay home?”
Caroline sighed, and Kayla was about to get very angry with her mother’s attitude that she, frankly, wasn’t expecting. After all, Marlena was a psychiatrist, Kim was a therapist, and Hope had been a police officer, and all of them worked after they had their babies. So, why on earth her mother was fighting her on this she did not know. But then the older woman got a very faraway look on her face, and suddenly Kayla was seeing her through lenses that she’d never looked at her thorugh before.
“When Roman was born we didn’t have two nickels to rub together. But somehow we managed to open the fishmarket. It was just the two of us back then. Your father did all the fishing, and I did all the cooking, and we handled just about everything else very equally. When we had Kimmie things were a little better with the income that was coming in, and that’s because we needed both of us to put food on the table and a roof over our heads. Your grandmother sure let me know how much she disapproved of me working the market. She said that’s how businesses get staff. We never could really afford much by way of staff, luckily we had you kids.”
Kayla was listening raptly as she held Emily over her shoulder, the baby enjoying the pressure on her tummy while looking out over the world over her mother’s shoulder. Kayla knew a lot more about her parents’ financial situation than she let on thanks to the earlier jump, but she didn’t interrupt and let her mother make her point, which she was just waiting to rebut.
“I don’t want that for you, Kayla. I want you to be able to enjoy your baby. They grow up so fast …” Kayla softened to her mother’s glassy eyes. Not exactly where she thought her mother was going with that. “And isn’t Steve’s place in the working world, anyway?” Ah, there it was. “You know your father’s been talking about taking on a partner.”
Kayla took a deep breath. She knew her mother only wanted to help, and she knew it because she’s been shown this desire to help for so many years in multiple timelines, now. She appreciated it, but this was a whole new ballgame, now. Caroline couldn’t have understood this, and there was no way to make her, so she just did her best to end this conversation. “Mom, Steve was born to be this little girl’s father, and I’m going to let him. I want him to. And believe me, I’m going to be just fine.”
Caroline relented, and she was pleasantly surprised to see just how right Kayla was when Steve and Kayla settled into the routine that would sustain them. They took on the roles of every other new parent of an infant – because that’s what they were. They took care of Emily 24/7, slept when she slept, fed her, bathed her, attended to her every need, and loved her to pieces. Then when when her maternity leave was over, Kayla went to work Monday through Friday, Steve became a stay-at-home parent, and it all worked out beautifully. He and Emily would visit Kayla for lunch most days, and he brought her over to the fish market to visit with her grandparents often. Shawn and Caroline were both impressed with how much fatherhood agreed with him, and whatever doubts they had seemed to disappear very quickly. Steve also helped Shawn behind the counter now and then, which shocked the hell out if his father-in-law, because he had no idea the lad had a clue what to do with a fish.
“Tell me this,” Shawn said in a curious tone that amused Steve, “who is it that taught ye that technique?”
Steve tried so hard not to laugh like a fool. “Not real sure, Shawn, just kind of picked it up in my merchant marine days. Seems like a few lifetimes since I used them.” Steve was in grave danger of cracking himself up.
“Yeh, well yer knife skills are a real puzzle, lad. It’s almost like I taught ye myself!”
Steve lost the battle to will his laughter into submission and let out a guffaw that confused Shawn to no end. Steve didn’t explain himself as he filleted the perch, and Shawn just shook his head in confusion.
Kayla’s heart melted to watch her husband share this time with their daughter, but it was also hard on her when that stab of longing hit her in the gut every morning she walked out the door to go to work. She was thrilled that her husband was getting this beautiful opportunity to be the parent he’d always longed to be, but the reality was that the kiss she’d give Emily when she’d leave that house every morning might very well be the last. Forever. Again, they both knew it, but they had to live their lives, that meant giving this baby a roof over her head like Kayla’s parents gave her. Someone had to work, it made sense that this time it was her. She hated being apart from them, but their daily lunch visits helped.
They also didn’t go anywhere without her. Under normal circumstances, a night out as a couple would have been something they craved. Not this time. No sitters, no movies, no romantic evenings out, no asking Jo to come over while Steve ran a quick errand. When they went out, they took Emily with them, and there were no exceptions. It was hard enough to force themselves to let her out of their sight when they went to the bathroom, got in the shower, or just plain let her nap. A purposeful separation for the sake of socializing was not going to happen. This was not the charmed and blissfully ignorant existence they’d both lived with Stephanie; just because they didn’t focus on the temporary nature of it all didn’t mean that they didn’t know their time was limited, and they weren’t squandering it. They’d made that decision immediately, much to Kimberly, Adrienne, and both grandmothers’ dismay, all of whom wanted one-on-one time with the baby. But they just knew it in their bones, the one day they let Grandma have an overnight would be the night they jumped. So, the Johnson couple became a family threesome, and that was it for that.
On Father’s Day, Kayla brought their six-week-old baby into bed so the two of them could nuzzle Steve at noon. It was a nearly sleepless night, and because it was Father’s Day, she would not take no for an answer in letting Steve sleep in. He smiled drowsily and rolled over into his wife’s lap where he could blow kisses onto Emily’s tummy. She waved her arms wildly, clearly enjoying her father’s attention, and made all kinds of happy baby noises. Finally she got up and pulled Steve up to follow behind her. She made him close his eyes as she held their daughter in one arm, then led him into the hallway. When he opened them, he gasped. Four pictures now hung on the wall between their three bedrooms and the bathroom at the end of the hall that had not been there in the early morning hours that Steve had last been awake. One was of their wedding day here in this timeline. One was of Emily’s first portrait, taken two weeks before. The other two were not photographs but drawings that were so photorealistic that it took a good eye to catch it on first glance, and they were of Stephanie and Joey. Steve’s heightened emotions kicked into high gear, and he was so taken aback by the beauty of the children he had not seen in so long that he could not breathe. Tears stung his eye, and he just looked at his wife with incredulity.
“Frankie’s art teacher is actually a very talented portrait artist. She drew them from my description. We spent two afternoons of her coming to the Emergency Center so I could watch her draw them. It was like a police sketch artist, I told her where things weren’t right and helped her to hone them into … into what they look like.”
“How? My God, Kayla, how did you pull this out of your memory?”
Kayla didn’t really know, but the recalling of it was beautifully painful for her to the point where the artist had to ask her if she was ok more than once. Joey’s face wasn’t that hard to remember, he was still a baby when they left, and he looked alot like Emily. But Stephanie was really quite difficult to recall correctly, as she wanted these portraits to be of the baby years that Steve would know. The last time Stephanie was a baby in Kayla’s mind was nearly two decades ago, so it ws harder. But there were several photographs of Stephanie emblazoned in her mind that would live in her forever, one of which was made just before Steve died when she was eight months old. She knew Steve would know the photo, so that’s the one Kayla went with, so he could relate personal memories with it.
Steve couldn’t control his tears, he was overcome. His children – all of them – were there. In their home. It was the most beautiful thing Kayla had ever done for him. She pushed them all out of her body, labored long and hard with each of them, gave them up, worried over their incubator, and lived on borrowed time for them – all beautiful things that nothing would ever equal, the bringing forth to this world the children they made together. But these pictures in their upstairs hallway, which would be mostly private unto only them, were a gesture so moving that he almost couldn’t take the emotion. Steve felt how much Kayla loved him every day. Now he looked at her and saw it hovering around her like an aura.
Steve went to each photo beginning with the one on the pier at their wedding and touched reverent fingers upon the glass of each one. Four gorgeous representations of their family. He took them in and felt an elation stir inside him at the same time he felt a stab try to remind him that he wouldn’t be taking it all with him, but he pushed it away. That stab would not be invading his happiness today.
When he looked back at his wife Emily was attached to her breast, her little mouth covering her mother’s nipple to happily take the sustenance Kayla was more than happy to provide for her. Steve wanted to hold them, give them everything he was feeling inside of him as Kayla fed their beautiful daughter.
“Thank you, Sweetnes. Thank you so much, baby, this is …” He swallowed and let a tear escape his eye. Then he kissed Kayla, bent to kiss Emily’s head, stopping to smell the sweet combination of his daughter’s hair and the breastmilk she was taking in, and brought them into his embrace. Steve and Kayla each silently looked upon their other children as they looked back upon their parents. They held each other in this intimate embrace swaying gently in the hallway for some time, this family of five, present or otherwise.
Emily had finished nursing, and Kayla re-hooked her bra, and pulled down her tank top. She fell asleep for her afternoon nap while they were cuddled together. Steve kissed her curly-haired head and let Kayla go to put her down. Before she turned to go into their bedroom room she stopped and looked up at her husband. She knew the look on his face. She knew it because she knew him, but also because she was feeling the exact same way. She looked to her left into their room, then she turned her head to the right into Emily’s. When she looked back to Steve his face had asked silently if this was too soon. She answered him with a gorgeous smile that was both sweet and sexy, licked her lips that had suddenly gone a bit dry, and then padded silently into their daughter’s room to set her in her crib for her nap.
When she came out Steve was there to capture her in a kiss that aroused all the parts of Kayla’s body that weren’t already feeling the desire. They kissed with mad passion without letting go of each other’s lips or bodies as they walked each other quietly into their room. When they got to the bed that they’d made love in so many times he squeezed her bottom in his hands and pulled her perfect cheeks firmly into his erection. Kayla loved the feel of it so firm against her belly. “Sweetness … Sweetness …” Steve held her so tightly, his hands roaming up and down her back and buttocks, and wrapping desperately into her hair.
“I’m wet, Steve. I need you!” Kayla’s kisses were beautiful torture up and down the length of his tattoo.
The last time they made love was the night before Emily was born. They’d touched and caressed, but sex was off the table while Kayla took the necessary six weeks to heal. Not that they hadn’t been tempted. Kayla felt herself heat up on more than a few occasions when Steve would look at her from across the room like she was something delicious. It was hard to feel sexy two weeks post-partum, but Steve never failed to make her feel good about herself that way. And she knew he meant it, too. She was heavier like she always was after she’d had her babies, and there were days she couldn’t even catch a shower, but she knew that Steve thought she was the most beautiful woman on the earth, and looking at her like he wanted to consume her made her feel so good – like if she didn’t take her husband inside her that moment she’d burst. She couldn’t, though, they had to wait, and she somehow didn’t burst.
Steve was feeling it for the entirety of these six weeks, too. Even with the sleep deprivation, there were mornings he woke up hard as a rock. The first time was only two weeks after Kayla came home from the hospital.
“Some things never change, baby. I’m sorry.”
“Steve Johnson, what on earth are you sorry about?” she scoleded as Steve scooted up to sit against the headboard.
“You just had my baby, you’re still bleeding, I know you’re sore, and I’m wakin’ up like a horny sailor.”
“Yes, but you’re my horny sailor. Mariner, actually …”
“Sweetness, come on, I should be able to control myself, it’s not right.”
Kayla rolled to him and laid her head against his strong chest as her hand lightly stroked him over the sheets. “You know better than that, and so do I. Waking up like this is a physiological reaction, and it’s a healthy one. And maintaining it after you wake up, even knowing that I’m bleeding and sore and not looking the least bit sexy down there makes me feel better than you can possibly know.”
Steve was a little taken aback and put his hand over hers atop his crotch. “Kayla, I don’t get horny because of what your vagina looks like.”
Kayla looked up at him. “Wow, you said vagina.”
“Yep, all grown up now. It’s not what’s on the outside that gets me hard for you, Kayla Caroline Johnson. It’s you.”
Kayla smiled and ran a loving finger down his patch. Steve took that finger in his hand and kissed it. Then he rubbed his thumb across her bottom lip. “And your tits are somethin’ else, too.”
Now she laughed and slipped her hand beneath the sheets to fondle him. “I knew it! Well you just go ahead and keep waking up like that, then, ‘cuase I’m not afraid of this thing.”
Steve stayed her hand and laughed. “That feels too good.”
Kayla kept rubbing, so Steve tightened his groin and widened his eye as he made his penis jump in her hand and blurted, “Boo!” Kayla disappeared into the bedcovers and pulled them up over her head.
“Eek!”
Steve pulled them back down to expose just her eyes, kissed her forehead, then did his own scolding with a finger pointed at her. “What have I said about calling him a thing, now, Sweetness?”
“Just remember what I keep telling you. He’s my thing. And just because you can’t do anything to me right now doesn’t mean I can’t do anything to you.”
Steve sank back down to join his wife under the covers and pulled her to him. “I love you, baby. I’d love that, but it seems a little selfish.”
Kayla curled her fingers into the stubbly beard Steve had allowed to grow there; she liked the feel of the hairs there in her fingers. “Would you do it for me? If I couldn’t give you any pleasure would you still give it to me?”
Steve smiled as he let himself grind into her slightly. He knew where she was going with this. “Of course, I would,” he said.
“That’s why it’s not selfish.”
He kissed her and let himself grind one more time against her thigh. “I want to wait for you.”
Kayla held him close. “You’re the least selfish man I know.”
He ground himself into her again, and snickered. “Are you sure?” Then his face wrinkled as a thought came to him. “Baby, I don’t remember having this conversation before, but we’ve got two other kids. When did we … am I just not remembering? Was I horny like this after Stephanie?”
Kayla looked at him with something he couldn’t quite identify, then she glanced away as the memories flooded her. Steve realized from the look on her face that he may have just said something wrong. “I went right to prison after Stephanie. I was there a while.”
“Yeah, but …” Then Steve swallowed as the reality of Stephanie’s kidnapping and the hell they went through hit him. “… Jesus, Kayla, I let that woman get our baby.”
“It was a horrible time, Steve, we did what we thought was best.”
“I should have never let you give her up.”
“Oh yes you should have. Prison was not the right place for Stephanie, her home with her father was. You didn’t have a lot of choices.” They both shook off the memory. “And as for Joe, I think we were too busy worrying that he wasn’t going to make it to think about sex.”
“There’s where you’re wrong.” Kayla’s look turned slightly indignant. “I knew we were in trouble,” he said softly. “I tried to pretend it wasn’t there, but I knew. The only thing keeping us together was our love for that baby I’d almost lost us.” Kayla immediately softened and was about to interject, because this was done, now, and she wasn’t blaming him anymore, so neither should he. But he put his fingers to her lips to stop her and continued. “Goin’ to the hospital every day, doin’ the kangaroo care …” Steve’s reference to the common pre-term infant care of holding your baby skin-to-skin for short times outside the incubator made Kayla tear up. “Being strong for him, Sweetness … we were too busy doin’ all that while you were healing. But I wanted to make love to you every day. Every single day, Kayla, I felt you slipping away from me, and all I wanted to do was find my way inside you and make you feel how much I love you. And I am selfish, because I needed it for me, too. I needed to feel you love me like that. You hadn’t said you loved me in so long.”
“I did love you. You know that, don’t you?”
Steve nodded. “But sometimes love isn’t enough. I could feel us floundering, and I just needed that connection to you.”
“Love is always enough.”
Steve’s erection had subsided with the turn this conversation had taken, and now they lay protectively in each other’s arms. “Kayla … sometimes I think that if you hadn’t been shot that we might not have made it.”
“That is not true. Don’t you ever say that again. Your love is enough. Your love will always be enough.”
Just then Emily cried out, and any sexual tension that hadn’t drained out of them already now followed.
“I love you, Sweetness.”
“I love you, too.”
“And we wait. It’s only another four weeks.” Neither of them said if we’re here that long.
Then Steve palmed Kayla’s breast with his warm, loving hand. “You get her breakfast ready for her, I’ll get our littlest girl.”
And so it went.
Now six weeks had gone by, they were, indeed, still here, and because it was a weekend they had to wait until six weeks and two days for Kayla’s post-partum doctor’s visit. That didn’t help right now with all this love inside of them that they were desperate to pour into each other with the physicality that they craved so badly. Steve knew he should wait, but Kayla’s body was like a siren call to him.
“I have to learn how to keep my hands off of you, Sweetness,” he whispered softly into her neck while he kissed it.
“No you don’t,” she whispered back. “Never learn that!”
“Doesn’t the doctor have to release you?” It was all he could do to stop himself from biting at her neck.
“I’m releasing myself,” she sighed as he bit at her neck anyway.
“I … I don’t wanna hurt you if you’re not all healed down there.”
“I’m healed down there, really!”
“Baby, I want you so bad. Are you sure you’re healed? Please say yes, baby, oh, please, please say yes.”
“I’m sure!”
“What if—”
“Oh, God, Steve, I have to have you, just take my word for it, I’m ready!”
Their hot breath whispered against their skin, and both of them had completely lost their resolve as their bodies screamed for each other.
“Have we ever gone this long?” Steve asked as he raised Kayla’s summer tank top up over her head to reveal her breasts resting quite larger than normal in her nursing bra.
“Does 16 years count?” she asked incredulously.
“I’m an idiot.”
Kayla sighed and then let her hands find his. “It’s ok.”
“No it’s not.” He plowed a hand through his hair. “My dick is takin’ all the blood away from my brain, I’m saying stupid things.”
Now Kayla smiled at her husband. “Good one,” she chuckled.
“What, I’m serious.” Only he winked suggestively and let his hand travel up and down her arms in pleasant strokes. The conversation had succeeded in calming them both down enough to be rational. “You sure you’re ok, baby? I’m not tryin’ to put you off, believe me, I need some sex.” Kayla laughed. “I just don’t want to damage you.”
Kayla licked her lips and got a very naughty look on her face. “Steve?”
He swallowed. “Yeah?”
“Did you know that women get blue balls, too?”
“Say what?” His voice was seductive.
“A woman’s clitoris swells so much when she’s turned on that if the pressure is not relieved of all that blood that rushed to it with an orgasm she will feel intense discomfort there. I believe you men call that blue balls.”
Steve very purposely ogled his wife as both of his hands went to the waistband of her shorts where he unbuttoned then unzipped them. They were red, and her bra and underwear were white under what had been her lighter shade of red tank top. “No, I didn’t know that,” he said in hushed tones. “I would hate for you to go through that.”
“Yes, it’s awfully uncomfortable.”
“Oh, so you’ve experienced this clitoris problem before, then.”
“Many times.”
“Oh, that won’t do.” He slipped his hand down into the front of her loosened shorts beneath her underwear so his fingers could finally begin touching her again. “Next time, you have to tell me when that very blue clit of yours needs some relief.”
“Steve?” she whispered as she licked her tongue up the dagger etched onto her husband’s bare chest, “my clitoris is pretty blue right now.”
That was all Steve had to hear. He picked Kayla up under her arms, and she jumped up into him and wrapped her legs around his waist so he could support her bottom. He held her in his arms to kiss her just a few seconds longer before he laid her gently on the bed. He removed his pajama pants so that he was naked, and Kayla was now in just her bra and underwear beneath her husband’s naked body. They kissed hotly, their tongues connecting over and over again in strokes that promised so much more.
Steve dragged his lips down her neck and onto her collarbone before losing himself in her breasts. He kissed her taut flesh and licked at her nipple through the fabric of her bra. “I love it when you have my babies, Kayla. You know why?” She knew all the reasons whether he said them out loud or not, but she shook her head for him to tell her anyway. “Great, big, huge tits.” Then he very gently began rubbing them. He wanted to squeeze, but he knew better and kissed her clavicle again.
Kayla snickered. “The truth comes out. And here I thought you liked it best when you could get the whole thing in your mouth. Now you can barely get the whole thing into one hand.”
Steve lifted his eye to meet hers and held her chin in his thumb and forefinger. “I love these breasts of yours always, there is no best. In any time and any size. Right now, they’re just like when we left.” He nuzzled them with his face in more of a loving gesture than a sexual one. “So pretty. All of you was so pretty that first time after you were shot, baby. I can see your short hair and how it moves every time you whip your head around. I see what you look like in 2009 when I look at these breasts.”
“Oh, Steve, I love you.”
Steve told her how much he loved her, too, then he gently unhooked the panel from one bra’s cup and licked her nipple for the first time in just over six weeks. The feeling was intense, and she arched her back. “They’re sensitive,” she said.
“You want me to stop?”
Kayla shook her head. “Do it again.”
Steve licked very gently around her areola and then lightly across the nipple again. Kayla moaned and arched her back again, which drove Steve nearly to his own orgasm just watching the reaction he could get out of her this way. He watched her rosy tips for the telltale leak that often happened back at home with Joey. When none came, he unhooked the other and licked that one, too. Kayla’s reactions were beautiful, and he wanted more of them. Steve unhooked the bra quickly, releasing her from its confines. Now he kissed her flesh and took her breast into his mouth far more gently than his desire wanted him to and noted that her breasts were dry but for the wetness from his mouth.
Steve remembered a lot more leaking with Joe. “Your milk’s not leaking ‘cause you just fed her?” he asked trying not sound desperate.
“Mm-hmm.”
Steve devoured her. He rubbed her skin with his warm hands and brought her breasts one at a time to his hungry mouth and feasted, concentrating more on the softness of them than her nipples, which he knew would get overstimulated too quickly. Kayla wanted to cry out with the sensations, but she’d proven in Hawaii that she could be silent, and so she continued to prove it, the only sounds signifying her pleasure those of small sighs and the quietest of moans.
Kayla took Steve’s thick penis in her hands and stroked him firmly. It had been so long that he knew he had only moments before he’d explode all over her, and that’s not what he wanted. He needed to be inside his wife, and he needed it bad.
“Slow down, Sweetness, I don’t wanna come yet.”
Kayla released him, and Steve reached down to gently find her swollen bundle of nerves. Now Kayla found it far more challenging to be quiet. Her husband looked her in the eye when he inserted his finger very gently and found her wetness more than ready for him. Kayla gasped and held him tightly. Steve stroked her clitoris with his very slick finger, and she wanted to scream, it felt so good.
“I love you!” she whispered “I need you!”
“I need you, too, Sweetness!” Then he moaned more loudly than he should have as Kayla took his cock expertly in her hands.
“Shh! If we don’t finish I’m going to go insane.”
“Can’t help it, Sweetness,” he breathed, “you could make me come by looking at me.” Kayla began stroking him again as he stroked her, and his eyes practically rolled back into his head. “I have to be inside you … Kayla … I-I-I … want you so bad. But …”
Kayla knew what was coming, because she knew her husband.
“Can’t … can’t get … preg … pregnant.”
Kayla eased up on her strokes and came back into herself a bit with that statement. “I’m back on the pill,” she said softly, “and breastfeeding reduces ovulation. But it’s … always possible.” Steve felt her wetness surround his finger and ached to join with her. “We’re at 98 or 99%. You could wear a condom and it would be just about foolproof.”
Steve didn’t want one, but he’d do it if she thought he should. “Do I need it?”
Kayla didn’t want him to wear one, either, but she was as afraid of pregnancy as he was. “Probably not.”
Their eyes locked, their decision was made, and their trust was strong.
Steve pulled her white bikini underwear down over her rear, she kicked it off, and he settled himself between her legs. He kissed from her sternum up between her breasts and then nibbled at her neck. Kayla placed her plump lips onto the hilt of Steve’s tattoo and eventually met his lips lovingly with hers. He gently plunged his fingers inside of her once more, wanting to feel her wetness. He ran his thumb over her clitoris and felt her buck at him with unbridled sexuality. They continued to kiss unyieldingly as they stroked each other until they both insitinctively knew it was time. It was now just as he was about to sink himself inside of her that Steve realized with a profound feeling of awe that this was the first time after three children that they were able to have this kind of first time after the baby experience. He recalled their conversation a month ago, and it hit home for him that Stephanie and Joe really were different. This beautiful, important part of a marriage – the first time you make love after your wife has your baby – was stolen from them each of the other two times. He knew he had a hand in both of them, but ultimately it was other, outside forces that created the circumstances to begin with. If he hadn’t been in his wife’s arms right now, he’d have allowed the bitterness at those outside forces and also at himself to overtake him. But Kayla was laying in his arms right now, naked with his fingers inside of her and her hand surrounding him. And she loved him. Steve released her lips and looked down upon her.
“I love you, Kayla. I’ll never stop loving you.”
Kayla’s frenzy took a momentary backseat when she saw the look on her husband’s face. “Are you ok?”
Steve nodded as his eye became glassy. “Never leave me.”
Kayla held Steve’s face in her hands. “Never!”
While their gazes were still connected, Steve slipped gently inside of his wife. She gasped at the fullness, and Steve savored the feel of his wife’s slick walls hugging his shaft as he very slowly and very gently moved back and forth inside her. He knew how thick he’d become with desire, and he worried that Kayla’s brow was furrowed in pain. “Am I hurting you?”
Kayla shook her head against the pillow. “Feels good inside of me. Just … big.”
“You tryin’ to inflate my ego, too?” Kayla smiled. “Not too big, though, right?”
Now she replaced the furrow with a devilish smile. “No.” Then she angled her head up for a kiss, which he gave her.
“Sweetness … baby, you feel so good. You’re so wet.”
“I love how you love me,” she said so softly. “You’re gentle, you’re sexy,” she huffed.
They rocked gently until they both, very quickly, approached the edge of their climaxes. Kayla reached for hers with a desperation that she wished she could control, because she didn’t want it to be over yet. Steve was insane with lust but held back. He knew that feeling her contract around him would send him to his orgasm and that it would be even better than letting himself go now, much as he wanted to. He felt his wife’s bare skin on his and was in heaven. She was heaven in his arms.
Kayla wrapped her own arms around Steve and held him in her firm embrace. This slight shift in position gave his penis the ability to stroke her clitoris more firmly, and it was all she needed to find the release that Steve was so happy to give her. This time she was unable to come in silence and cried out her pleasure as the orgasm positively ripped through her. She shuddered fiercely, and Steve exploded. Streams of Steve’s pearly white cum shot out of him and into his wife, their love combining in a sea of sexual pleasure that had finally found them again after a long six-week wait. Kayla felt Steve hold her so tightly, and she was suddenly overcome with emotion. She didn’t know why, but she cried silent tears as her hips writhed into her husband’s pulsing penis. She couldn’t explain why, she only knew that the emotions were relentless as they overwhelmed her.
Steve was so happy. He loved Kayla so much, and he’d pleasured her as she did the same for him. Only now she was shaking in his arms in a way very different from the shaking of just moments ago. She was crying. He didn’t panic that he’d hurt her, because somehow he knew that wasn’t it. He knew this was an emotional release. He knew her that well.
“It’s ok, baby. Shh, it’s ok.”
“I love you,” she cried.
“I know you do, baby, I know.”
“I’m so scared.”
Steve couldn’t help it, that one sentence coming out in Kayla’s teary voice released the dam on his own fears and sent tears down his face, as well. “Me, too.”
“I love you. I love our family. And I’m just so scared.”
Steve collapsed onto his wife, buried his head in her shoulder, and continued holding her tightly. “We’ve gotta do our best to just live. Raise our baby and love her and live,” he cried. “Love me like this every day, ok? Please?”
“Every day, I will. You love me back.”
“I will,” he promised.
After a short time of holding and and caressing each other, Kayla finally spoke. “That was beautiful. Sorry I was a downer. I don’t know what came over me.”
“You weren’t a downer, baby. You’re the love of my life.”
They fell asleep until close to 3pm when Emily woke up, and Kayla’s breasts were more than ready to get some relief from a daughter ready to nurse. Steve got Emily, changed her, and Kayla emptied her nourishment into her hungry baby while Steve held them in just the same way he always held she and Joey. It was the most beautiful Father’s Day Steve had ever had.
As the weeks melted into the summer months and the summer all too quickly became fall, Steve, Kayla, and Emily were one very happy family. They took advantage of every moment they had and experienced all the things together that they could reasonably experience. They did all the family outings they’d enjoyed with Joey, and Kayla wrote about each one in painstaking detail. She included photos in the journal, and she made sure to mark and date each one of them so that their lives were documented out there … somewhere. On several occasions, Kayla would cry softly as she wrote, because she just couldn’t help the melancholy. But she knew how important it was to do this, so she did.
Emily Gwendolyn had quite the personality. She was what many people called “a good baby.” She cried when she needed something basic, and sometimes not even then. She smiled all the time, she made happy baby sounds all the time, and her thick strawberry blonde curls never fell out like the hair of many babies did before it began growing in again. Her demeanor was mild, very alert, and completely sweet. She always seemed to be thinking very deep thoughts behind those bright green eyes of hers that were so much like her father’s. She looked very much like her brother, but with each passing week her visage took on the almost mirror image of Kayla’s other than having Steve’s eyes. She bewitched every single person that met her, especially her aunts on either side, as well as Marcus.
Not that she didn’t have those baby phases that were challenging, too. She did have a witching hour of fussy time that was more like a witching three hours, and it was during that time that she would cry on and off with no apparent reason. Kimberly chuckled when Kayla called one night at 3am desperate for any tricks they hadn’t tried yet.
“Fussy time, eh?” Kimberly half smiled into the phone after she’d been apologized to and assured that no one had died.
“I’ve tried everything. I set her on the washer and the dryer –”
“Did you run ‘em, too?”
“Do I look stupid?”
“What else?”
“Bouncing up and down the halls, walked her in the stroller.”
“In the middle of the night?!”
“In the driveway!”
“Did you try tummy time?”
“Yes. Kimmie, it’s not that I don’t know what to do, I’m just out of ideas and hoped you’d have something I haven’t thought of yet. The only thing I haven’t done that I can think of is driving in the car.”
“Then drive in the car, Kay, hello?”
“I’m too tired, I’m afraid I’ll fall asleep.”
“I think you’re gonna have to tough this one out, kiddo.” Kayla whimpered in frustration. Kim glanced over at Shane asleep beside her, who was now beginning to rouse. “You want me to come over there?”
Kayla sighed. “No, just … could you talk to me while I bounce.”
Kim rolled over and nested herself into Shane’s lap before he could roll over, then she closed her eyes and held the cordless phone to her ear. “Sure, Kay, what are big sisters for?”
This phase was not a favorite of any parent no matter what the circumstances of the baby in the center of it, and this one seemed to last at least twice as long as both of their other children. This meant a good two months of intense sleep deprivation carving interesting lines in both of her parents faces that hadn’t been there before. Even so? They wouldn’t have given up a moment of it for the world.
As the months wore on, Steve and Kayla were acutely aware that the world had changed significantly from their rightful timeline. They had several conversations about what was supposed to be happening right about now. Most of their jumps they had a general idea of what everyone was doing more or less. Here things had gone so off the rails that their frame of reference to remind them had disappeared, and they just weren’t entirely sure where everyone was supposed to be. And that unnerved them. They had no control over where they jumped or when, so at least knowing what was going on gave them some sort of stability; now even that was gone. They quickly realized, however, that they really only had themselves to blame. The first change that was made was made in their first moments when Kayla stopped Steve from leaving for that meeting with Harper Deveraux. It was a pivotal moment in their relationship, but it was also a pivotal moment in the lives of so many of those around them, so when it changed for Steve and Kayla it changed for everyone else, too.
For one thing, Eve wasn’t a prostitute anymore, Kimberly wasn’t going undercover to expose anyone for anything, and she didn’t need to put herself in harm’s way by getting her stepdaughter out of trouble. She did still lose her baby, however, and Kayla noted the interesting fate that seemed to chase and find her sister in both versions of this timeline, but the rest of her life was a lot more stable, for which they also had the absence of Eve’s ISA agent mother, Gabrielle, to thank.
For another thing, the Emergency Center had not burned down. Later discovered to be at the hands of Victor and, to their utter dismay, Justin, that never happened this time. They had no idea what connection had been broken with the Kiriakis underworld when their lives took this tangent, but that was something that never happened. Kayla had also distanced herself from Diana; she wasn’t in her on-again/off-again brother’s future, the way she’d left salem was bizarre, and so investing any further in Diana at all was pointless as far as she was concerned. Similarly, neither of them wanted to stay embroiled in the computer disk that Victor and the ISA and other players were at war to get. They had bigger fish to fry now, especially since it was all going to reset, anyway.
No, things went very differently in this timeline, they were keenly aware that they were the ones who set it off that way, and that’s just how it was. They lived every day, appreciated them as they came and went, and tried not to let the knowledge that the jump was coming affect them. As it happened, the jump was farther off than they knew.