Kayla got five steps down the hall and stopped. Steve saw the look in her eye and knew she was feeling just as unsure about letting Stephanie sleep alone as he was. Kayla turned on her heel and ran back through the door to make sure their daughter was still there. Which she was.
“Kayla,” Steve sighed heavily, “this is gonna give us ulcers, we’ve got to just keep goin’ here.”
She returned to the hallway and swayed nervously while biting her lower lip. “Maybe one of us should stay here while the other gets some sleep.”
“No! We’re not going to risk being apart.”
“Then why is it ok to leave Stephanie?”
Then a thought occurred to him, and he suddenly felt very confident. “Because she was here when we got here.” He paused to mull this over even as he said it. “So,” he looked to her door then back at Kayla, “I don’t think she’s going anywhere.” Steve didn’t know where he’d come up with that, but as soon as he said it, it felt right.
“She was here when we got here, wasn’t she? She’s the first thing about here that we noticed. She’s part of this time.” Kayla’s face was suddenly somber with dawning realization. “Steve. She belongs here.”
Steve felt a light go on. “That’s right, baby.” He reached out his right hand and touched her hair. “We’re the ones who don’t belong. Do we?”
“Our … our bodies do,” she said, trying to sound positive. “These are the right bodies. But who we are, our psyches maybe … I think maybe they … don’t.” Then they looked at each other with the same question in their eyes like a burden. Why?
They went back to their own room as Steve went over this in his head. Once inside, he turned on the baby monitor, and the comforting sounds of their daughter sounded through the room for a few short minutes before Stephanie had fallen asleep.
Steve walked over to his wife and held her face in his hands. “You know what, Sweetness?”
“What?” she asked, her heartbeat quickening as much with his touch as with the look in his eye.”
“I think this day was a gift. I got to love my baby daughter again, Kayla.” He reached over and gently brushed her hair back off her face. “It was one of the best days in my whole life,” then he kissed her forehead with a lingering kiss. “Ya know,” he added with a toss of his head, “other than the whole Twilight Zone thing.”
“Twilight Zone, huh?” she repeated with a smile.
“Mm-hmm,” he nodded with a smirk.
“So, let me just make sure I’ve got this right,” Kayla said as Steve brushed more of her hair back with his palm and ran his thumbs over her cheeks. “We’ve gone from Groundhog Day to Quantum …”
“Leap.”
“Leap, and now we’re in the Twilight Zone?”
“Yeah, that sounds about right, don’t you think? Just flippin’ channels, lookin’ for something good to watch.”
“Oh really, now?”
“Yeah, baby, I think so.”
“Well, I think you’d better give me the clicker, then.”
“Hell, no, baby, don’t you know men need to be in control of those things?”
“Oh,” Kayla tilted her head down and raised her arm in surrender. “Far be it from me to deprive you of your manly needs, Mr. Johnson.” She didn’t intend for the statement to have a double meaning, but Steve’s eye turned from playful to hungry in an instant. In response her body thrummed to life with an intense longing that brought her back to a different time. She’d been looking him all day, so it shouldn’t have come out of nowhere. But suddenly, she saw the impossible face she’d dreamed about for 16 years standing before her, touching her, and looking at her with lust glinting in his eye. It’s not that she didn’t love her Steve, the one that should have been back with her in 2009, it’s just that she couldn’t help but remember how badly she’d ached for this one. Not a day went by that this face wasn’t in her thoughts. Not a week went by that she didn’t dream of how it felt to have his body surrounding her in protection and love and desire and commitment. Not a moment went by in all of those 16 years that she didn’t harbor the wish that she could see that face just one more time. The intensity of her need for him — this him, the one with this face – overwhelmed her. She needed to touch him. Feel her lips on his, see the green of his eye and the height of his stance and the tone of his skin. She needed to feel herself engulfed by this man that she longed for every moment of every day for 16 years.
“What is it, Sweetness?” Steve asked after seeing something in her very distinctly change.
Her voice was shaking. “I’m seeing you, and I know you’re my Steve from the future … and I love you,” she said with guilt. “But I – you –,” she ran her tongue over her lower lip and swallowed. “Steve, when I prayed to God every day that I could see you just once more, this is the face I prayed for. It’s like I’m seeing you for the first time after God answered my prayer.”
Steve understood. He couldn’t put it into words, but he understood that ache. He felt it, too. When his memories came flooding back, he saw Kayla for the first time as the wife he was madly in love with, but something felt incomplete, like he didn’t get the closure provided by saying goodbye; he didn’t get to say goodbye to her beautiful face in 1990, and he wished he could see it again. So, he knew that Kayla loved him, even as she looked at him at this moment through the lens of this time, showing her this face.
“You know what I need, Kayla?” his hands still embracing her head. “I need to kiss those lips. That’s what I need.”
“Then what are you waiting for,” she sighed.
Steve needed no further invitation. He brought her face to his and kissed her with longing. It wasn’t the first time they’d kissed in these bodies, but Kayla felt transported. She parted her lips to him, inviting his tongue to prod hers with long, provocative strokes. Their kisses were filled with the love of soul mates brought together after a cruel and painful lifetime apart, because here in this room that’s what they were. Steve wrapped his arms around her and let his right hand drift down to feel the curve of her bottom while Kayla ran her fingers through his long hair. Then he left her warm mouth to place wet kisses on the flesh of her neck and shoulder while holding the back of her head. Kayla moaned softly as the sensation heated arousal deep within her.
Kayla moved a hand to stroke his hardened penis, but even amongst the gift they knew they were living, the uncertainty of it all surrounded them, and she dropped her hand, not following through. Steve was also holding back. His body was screaming for her, to have her bare breast against his palm, but he couldn’t quite let himself move his hands where they so wanted to go.
The fact was that they wanted nothing more than to explore these young bodies they hadn’t lived in and given pleasure to in 19 years, but they were so fearful about what would happen in the morning that they couldn’t shake that from their mind.
Steve pulled his lips from hers and looked into her beautiful eyes. “Kayla, I can’t believe I’m sayin’ this, but … I don’t know if we should be doing this.”
“I know,” she looked up at him with her own sexy, half-lidded eyes. It feels somehow not quite right,” she agreed. He kissed her, again, and lifted her arms up around his neck so he could rake his palms down over the sides of her ribcage, his thumbs just brushing against the sides of her breasts. Maybe if I take baby steps, he reasoned with himself. “But, this just – Steve you feel so good. You, in this body, it’s so incredible to be with you like this.”
Kayla suckled his bottom lip while Steve’s thumbs inched a bit closer to her stiff peaks. “Oh, Sweetness, I want you so much. But we don’t belong here. Is this natural? It feels right.”
She placed her palms on his chest and pushed herself away from him slightly. Looking down, she placed a kiss on the hilt of his tattoo. “Feels natural,” she said staring at the dagger with love. Then she dared a lick of his nipple sending waves of thrill through Steve. “It feels like all those years ago. I’m just wondering where we’ll wake up tomorrow.” She looked up at him with eyes that were so impossibly blue he didn’t think the sky could hold a candle to them.
“Kayla. Baby,” he groaned. “I can’t tell you how badly I want to see those breasts of yours, feel you, and taste every part of you.” He made just the subtlest move to lean his mouth down to the upper curve of her breast but then stopped himself. “But,” he finally brushed his thumb over her taut nipple outlined through the material of her bra and blouse, “I feel it, too,” he said as his wife whimpered with the sensation of where his hands were. “I don’t know what we’re supposed to do.”
That made Kayla sit up and take notice. She overcame her desire and answered him. “You’re my husband,” she said. “I’m your wife.” Steve smiled. Kayla stepped back from him and took down the straps of her jumper, unbuttoned it, then let it pool at her feet, kicking it aside.
“You gonna leave that there?”
Kayla nodded and said, “Yep.”
“The maid’s not gonna be happy with you, baby.”
Without reacting, Kayla then unbuttoned her blouse, took it off, and let it join the jumper on the floor. The baby let out a sigh that sounded over the monitor, and they both smiled brightly. Then Kayla looked Steve in the eye and took off her bra, stepped out of her underwear, and added them to the growing pile on the floor.
Steve took in the vision that was his wife standing before him naked in this body. She was beautiful. Her breasts were smaller and although they’d already once swelled with having carried a child, they were still pert and perfect. The curve of her belly was rounder than it would have been at the loft, but this, along with everything else about her from the curls at her center to the arches of her feet was every bit as beautiful to him as he remembered. He raked his eye over her before settling back at her one most mesmerizing, feature. Her eyes.
“Now you see me,” Kayla said. “That’s something we’re supposed to do. See each other. Here. Now. In 1990,” she said with still a good amount of incredulity.
Have I ever loved her more than I do right now? He didn’t think so.
“Your turn.”
Steve unbuttoned the rest of his shirt and layed it down in a crumple on the dresser. He unbuttoned his jeans and pushed them down with the pair of boxers beneath. He stepped out of them and kicked them over to Kayla’s pile. Kayla looked at him, gazing at the tattoo first, over his muscled torso, and then down to his hardened penis. When she looked back up at her husband, the look in his eye made her sway.
“I love you,” Kayla told him.
“I love you more,”
“Oh, I doubt that.”
Steve chuckled. “I think that’s my line.”
Kayla then got into bed and turned down the covers for him to join her. Steve got in and she immediately snuggled close against him in a familiar embrace that they’d shared countless times before. The feel of his naked body against hers was so powerful she was physically affected. Her core was wet with arousal, her heart fell into steady rhythm with his, and they were the very picture of a perfect fit. “Now you feel me. That’s something we’re supposed to do, too. Can you feel me, Steve?”
“I want to make love to you.”
She embraced him more tightly and said, “I want that, too. But—“
“But we shouldn’t.”
“I don’t think so,” she said softly.
It only took a minute of them laying naked together for them to realize that there was no way they were going to be able to lie there naked and not be all over each other.
“Kayla, if we’re supposed to see and feel each other but not make love, then, baby, I’m tellin’ you right now, we’re gonna have to put some clothes on.” Kayla tilted her head to look up at him with those eyes that he knew felt what he felt, and he didn’t have but a hair’s breadth of willpower left. “Now, baby.”
They rolled out of bed and swiftly found a white nightgown and pajama bottoms, which they donned in record time, then crawled back in bed. As soon as their bodies met, Steve kissed her lovingly letting his tongue find hers in sweet velvety strokes. When they parted, he pulled her back to their snuggled position, feeling her breasts fall through the nightgown against his bare chest.
Kayla kissed his tattoo before settling against him. “I want us to make love, Steve,” she said softly, “but somehow, I think we … got it right today. Being in your arms feels like what I should be doing.”
“I think you’re right, baby, this does feel like the way we’re supposed to be right now. Me holding you like this.” Kayla made a sweet sighing noise. “I can’t speak for tomorrow, though,” he smirked with a leer that Kayla loved.
“Ok,” she laughed, “Deal.”
“Yeah? Naked today, inside you tomorrow?”
“Sounds wonderful,” she grinned.
They laid in each other’s tight embrace for a bit, their arousal having slowly abated. Then Steve’s tone became serious. “Kayla?”
“Mm-hmm?”
He dared the question. “Do you want to wake up here in the morning?”
Kayla stilled her fingers that were tracing randomly across Steve’s smooth chest. “Do you?”
“I’m asking you.”
She didn’t know what answer Steve was looking for. She thought about giving him the one she thought he wanted but ultimately went with the truth. “I don’t know.”
“What would you say if I told you—,” he paused and swallowed, finding his courage. “—that I think I do.”
Whereas she wasn’t sure how she felt a minute ago, now that it was said out loud, she knew that this scared her. “What about Joe?” her voice heavy. “If … if we stay here … then we go on with one baby, but we lose another.”
Steve sighed and cursed the lump in his throat. “Or maybe we won’t lose him. We get him back when we have him 18 years from now. We know we have him, so,” his voice cracked, “we just wait for him.”
“Long wait.”
“But we’d get him back.”
Kayla knew the likelihood of this was slim. “A lot can happen in 18 years, Steve.”
“Maybe we have him sooner, then.”
“Joe is made of that egg and that sperm, which won’t meet before then, and they probably won’t at all,” she said through tears she was trying to hold back.
“Or more babies in between, then.”
“I want Joe,” she buried her head into his chest and finally cried.
“Baby,” Steve consoled her, “I’m sorry I asked. It’s just … Kayla I want my life back with you so badly it hurts. I’m sorry, Sweetness, I know it’s selfish, and I do feel so fulfilled today getting this whole day with my girls again, but I want this gift to keep going.”
“No, don’t apologize for how you feel. I don’t blame you.” Then she had a thought that scared her even more. “Steve, if we wake up tomorrow in our bed at home, and all of this is gone, will you be disappointed?”
“No.” Steve said this with a conviction that left positively no room for doubt. He lifted her chin to look at him and locked her into a piercing stare. “No, Kayla. Never. I could never be disappointed to be back home with you. Never, do you hear me?” He gathered her up to him and kissed her with as much strength as the words he was trying to convey. “Maybe we’ll be here tomorrow and the next day and next week, and then we’ll prevent me from being taken from you, and we’ll start all over again,” he said. “Or maybe we’ll find ourselves back in our bed with Joe needing his breakfast,” he fully palmed Kayla’s breast for the first time since they’d left 2009, “and our grown daughter hogging the bathroom.” Kayla laughed, her worry having all but disappeared. “But Kayla, you look at me. If that happens and we never see this place – this time – again, I will never be sorry to be with you in 2009.
Kayla looked at her husband and didn’t understand how anyone could ever be as in love as she was.
“Ok?”
“Ok,” she smiled. “Ok.” They laid there in their bed in their house in the silence of each other’s arms for what seemed like a long time. Though it went unspoken, they each knew they were trying not to fall asleep. The baby monitor hummed through the room casting a comforting lull over them, and somewhere in the distance they heard a dog barking in the night. It was hard to know which of them fell asleep first, but eventually, after a long while of laying in loving and fulfilled silence, they both succumbed to the darkness of sleep.