It was the second time Steve had started a jump in jail, and it was no more pleasant this time than the first. After his last try to reach a fully arrived Kayla by jailhouse payphone got him nowhere, he’d gotten into the scuffle that landed him two weeks in the infirmary, none of which existed last time through.
“Two weeks?” Kayla sounded as concerned as she looked.
“That was two years ago, I’m fine, now, Sweetness. See? I’m right here. All better.”
“Let me see,” she insisted.
Steve knew where this was going, and it was only going to upset her. “Drivin’. Can’t play Show & Tell right now.” But his attempt at caginess fell short with Kayla. She looked at the red light they were stopped at, then crossed her arms and stared a hole through him. He exhaled an annoyed breath. “Fine.” He was not pleased, but he pulled up his black, sleeveless t-shirt and showed her the fully healed seam that ran across the right side of his upper abdomen just under his ribcage.
Kayla sucked in her breath. “My God, Steve, that was a deep wound!”
And here we go. “Yeah, but I bled my O-neg all over the guy, so not a great day for him.
Kayla knew exactly what injuries were possible based on what she was seeing, and Steve knew that she knew it. “Do you still have your gallbladder?”
“Yep, digesting high fat foods like a champ,” he jibed. “Dude got some vein.” Steve was the spouse of a surgeon. He knew the names of the parts. But he was going to keep downplaying this as long as he could.
“The vena cava?” she asked guardedly.
Yes. “Not sure,” he lied.
“Steve!”
“Yes, Kayla, he nicked the biggie and collapsed a lung.”
Kayla clicked her tongue in sadness. She ran her fingers over the knitted skin of the scar, and now it was Steve who sucked in his breath. “What’s wrong?!” she panicked as he shuddered. “Does it still hurt?!” She started to make a mental checklist of possible complications.
Steve chuckled. “You haven’t touched me in two years. I—reacted.”
“Oh.” She let the corners of her mouth inch up a bit as the light turned green, and Steve put his eye back on the road. “But … even though we … made out back there?”
Steve chuckled again, this time at her use of the term, “made out.”
“Yeah,” he said. “I don’t think all of me knows you’re real yet.”
“I’m real.” It would not be the last time she assured him of that.
“Yeah, most of me knows,” he said with a wink.
“You said it was a new scar. So that didn’t happen when you were there the first time?”
Steve shook his head. “Had no idea what the pecking order was, sat down one minute, was passing out on my way to the operating room the next. Woke up with bandages, hoping to God it was another jump and you were the one that put ‘em on me.”
“But I wasn’t,” she said.
“Nope.” Steve exhaled heavily. His extra-curricular visit to the OR was the first instance of a verge away from the timeline, and he didn’t even do anything to cause it. “So I tried real hard not to fuck up the timeline any more than I already did. Just woke up, ate three meals, went to sleep, tried those calls, waited for you, stayed out of trouble. Wasn’t ‘til I was released that I started to freak out. I just couldn’t understand where you were.”
Kayla thought all the previous gaps waiting for each other were bad, but four months was already twice the time Kayla spent without him as a ten-year-old, and he still had a year and a half to go. She rubbed at her forehead.
“I didn’t know what to do or where to go, Sweetness.”
“Did you think about going to find Rolf?”
“Why, ‘cause that had gone oh so well last time?” If the scientist’s very strong warning didn’t do its intended job of discouraging him from trying, Steve’s sheer lack of confidence in the man did.
Kayla shrugged. “So you came here?”
“No, I tried not to upset the applecart. Tried real hard, baby. Stayed in Chicago.” Kayla’s face was something between dread and distaste, and he knew why. “Didn’t go back to that place, though,” he said immediately.
“You didn’t? But … the timeline …” Kayla didn’t understand this choice.
“Sweetness, if I’d been within any kind of distance to that piece of shit next door that attacked you when you jumped to Chicago I would have killed him.” Steve’s voice was intense as he referenced the way Ray had nearly raped her. “If I hadn’t jumped away from that place when I did I would have finished the job the other me left. And I just knew I wouldn’t be able to stop myself – I’d’ve done it.” No one knew better than Kayla that that was true. “That would’ve fucked up the timeline more than livin’ somewhere else.”
Kayla was moved by Steve’s devotion to her. His devotion wasn’t a surprise, but his show of it moved her every time. “You’re right,” she said gently. “Killing someone who didn’t die in the first place would have been worse for the timeline.”
“So I didn’t go back,” he continued with just as much edge to his tone. “Hunkered down somewhere ese to wait. Made real sure my address was registered with my PO so you could find me.”
Kayla put a comforting hand on Steve’s bicep to calm his white-knuckle grip on the wheel. Steve thrilled at her touch and gave her a knowing glance before nodding with understanding – that she didn’t judge his choice and that she loved him for it. “I know,” he said more calmly.
Steve went on to bridge the gap between then and now. Staying out of trouble wasn’t nearly as difficult as the rightful owner of this body would have argued. He took really low profile odd jobs, like overnight stocking and day laboring. And, of course, the early ‘80s were the exact right timeframe to hustle pool. He was exceedingly good at that. It took some trial and error to remember which of the pool halls were more seedy than others, but he more or less avoided the ones that would lead to no good. He also did some under the table mechanic work, which is how he got ahold of the car they were currently driving in. It didn’t have much besides an AM radio and a heater, but it ran exceedingly well by the time he got done with it. It reminded him of Stephanie and her classes at the YMCA and made him very melancholy; but he welcomed that melancholy, hanging on to it to keep him human. And he honestly enjoyed it.
Every day Steve looked for Kayla around every corner. Every blonde, young woman, every French braid, every pair of soft, blue eyes gave him hope followed by immediate despondence. For weeks he held on to the hope that his wife would show up to the studio apartment above the garage he’d managed to rent for a pittance. The place was an improvement over the one-room hovel he’d hosted her in before, but it was still a piece of shit.
“About a month after I got out the dreams started again. They …”
“They what?” she prompted gently.
“They were just like all the others. You were always reaching to me from like a fog or somewhere far away. You’d call my name, it was like you were beggin’ me to help you, but I could never reach. I was scared that you needed me.”
They’d both had their own dreams since nearly the beginning. Even Rolf didn’t know if the disturbing experiences were a construct of the slipstream, or actually some kind of alternate dimension, or if they were … just dreams.
Kayla understood just how tortured his dreams had made him, because they’d tortured her, too. She knew without question that the possibility that she might really be stuck in there, begging him to help her made her husband crazy.
“It was instant,” she insisted. “I promise you, it was just like any other jump. I was in Copenhagen, and then I was in the bar. I wasn’t stuck in there.”
“You can’t know that. Maybe you just don’t remember.”
“I can, I just lived it, and I’m telling you, I wasn’t suffering.” She squeezed his hand and then added a final thought. “And if it really did happen and I just don’t remember, then what I don’t know won’t hurt me.”
She was trying hard to make him feel better, and Steve wanted to believe her. So he made a choice to go ahrad and accept that what she said was true. “Ok.” He kissed her hand and then went on.
The dreams had triggered Steve to have a real meltdown that Kayla was trying to find him and had shown up at the Hotel LaSalle, after all. He actually went there and had a not so great conversation with the man who’d worked as the desk attendant.
“Why would a hooker come in here lookin’ for some asshole who doesn’t even live here?” Frank asked.
“She’s not a hooker!”
Frank looked at him askance. “A regular girl came in here lookin’ for a guy like you?”
“That’s what I’m askin’, man, has anyone been in here looking for a guy that fits my description?” Frank was greasy and creepy, and as opposed to the Steve Kayla had jumped to back in 1982, this Steve barely remembered him. Even so, he was extremely impressed that Kayla held her own with the guy during that jump.
“Da girl’s a blonde, you said?”
“Yeah.”
“Blue eyes?”
“Yes.”
“Real pretty, yeah?”
Steve’s pulse quickened in hope. “She’s here then?!”
“I don’t give away shit for free. Pony up.” Steve’s funds were wildly limited, but he took $20 out of his front pocket and pushed it through the passage in the security window. Frank looked at it then looked back up at Steve. “I dunno, I think my memory’s broke.”
Steve gripped the counter and leaned forward menacingly. “Yeah? How ‘bout I come back there an break your face?”
Frank knew when to call it. “A’right, I’ll take the twenty. No, no one’s been here lookin’ for a guy that looks like you.” Steve banged hard on the window, quite displeased at having been led on. “I answered the question!” he defended himself. “Never said it was gonna be the answer ya were lookin’ for!”
“You’d better be sure, man. Steve Johnson – maybe Patch – no one’s been here looking for that name? You’re positive? Don’t fuck with me, dude.”
“Look, I don’t know nothin’. I’m tellin’ you I’m here all the time. I can’t stop broads from just havin’ themselves a stroll up the stairs, m’kay, but no one who looks like that’s even been here, that I seen. No one’s askin’ me.”
Kayla’s experience with Ray disquieted her whenever she thought about it, and the more Steve talked, the more she was sure he did the right thing not taking his old room there.
“I thought about leaving word with him just in case you came looking. But my instinct told me to just avoid that place, period.”
“Your instincts are better than some people’s facts. You were right to look for me there, ‘cause I would have come. I will always come find you.”
The light turned green, but Steve kept looking at his wife. Her face was softly illuminated by the light of the gibbous moon. He’d seen her older, he’d seen her younger, he’d seen her impossibly younger, and he’d seen her at her best and worst. He’d seen this version of her for the past two years. But somehow he could still be affected by how beautiful she was no matter what version he was looking at. And this very beautiful version of her, ready for a night out with friends in a pretty, blue sundress that matched the shade of her eyes with her hair curled around her face … gave him so much relief just in the fact that she was there sitting next to him.
“You are so beautiful, Kayla.” He ran the back of his hand down her face. Kayla angled her cheek into him. “I missed you.” The car behind them honked, and Steve was forced out of the moment.
“So what was your next move?”
“Other than lose my mind? Call Mrs. H.”
Kayla perked up at this. “And?”
“She did her whole, ‘Young man, why do you think I might have a message for you?’ routine.” Kayla laughed at her husband’s expertly crafted Alice Horton voice, and boy did Steve like it. He could have left it at that, but instead he reiterated the whole thing just to keep amusing her. It didn’t take long, though, because there wasn’t that much to reiterate.
“So, what you’re saying,” Kayla replied when he’d finished, “is just like every other time, our secret-keeper said she’d keep our secret?”
“More or less, yeah,” he confirmed. “She’s very close to Bo right now, and I just didn’t have it in me to play the game. I just did my best to lay a foundation and get off the phone.” And because they knew her so well by this point, Kayla had no doubt that had it come to that, Alice would have followed through.
Steve’s mental emotional state was in the trash heap for another a few days. He earned cash, fed himself, drank heavily, and passed out drunk. He wasn’t proud of himself, but it was the truth.
“You know I couldn’t stop remembering to feed the cat? I still thought about your hospital schedule and what Steph had going on at school. We were already gone from that jump for months, but that stuff just kept sitting in my head.
“You bonded with it. I know we tried not to, but that one stuck. You had a hard time shaking it.”
“Still do,” he said.
“I’m surprised you didn’t try to call again.”
“Actually, I did.”
“Really?”
“told myself that I had to know if you were there waiting for me to find you while I was waiting for you to find me. But I think I just wanted to hear your voice.” Kayla smiled as he recalled the conversation.
“Hello?” Kayla’s bubbly voice had answered when the phone rang.
“Yeah, is Stephanie Johnson there?” Steve very casually asked in as different a voice from the one that called collect that he could muster.
“Ah … there’s no one here by that name,” she answered with genuine regret that her caller had the wrong number.
“Oh, sorry about that, I think I have the wrong number.”
“It’s ok,” she said, then hung up.
Steve was so relieved he surprised himself. The fact that she was not there was horrifying, but it also meant she wasn’t terrified out of her wits that she couldn’t find him. He forced himself to wait a week before repeating this.
“Hello?” she answered again.
“Yeah, can I speak with Stephanie Johnson please?”
“Oh. No, you dialed the wrong number again. Remember you accidentally got this number last week.”
“I did?” Steve played very dumb and cited a number that was a digit off.
“No,” Kayla laughed good-naturedly, I think you’re accidentally dialing a 4.”
“Yeah, you’re totally right,” Steve said in a preppy style so foreign to him it sounded like he might just run off to a tennis match at the club. “I’m sorry I bothered you again.”
“It’s no bother, I’m glad we figured it out!”
“Yeah, me, too.” Steve wanted so badly to engage Kayla in conversation but knew it was a bad idea for so many reasons.
“Ok, good luck finding Stephanie,” she smiled.
Kayla was captivated through Steve’s entire retelling. “That was very impressive, Mr. Johnson,” she smiled with serious approval.
“Yeah, well you should have seen the goosebumps run down my arms when you said, ‘Stephanie.’ I had to hang up before I kept talking to you.
“That was so smart, though,” she insisted. “It must have been so hard not to engage me.”
“It was. But not knowing where the hell you really were was a lot harder. So much shit ran through my head, Sweetness. I wasn’t running gems for Werner, I wasn’t living in that dump, I was finding ways to talk to you. I didn’t know if the slipstream was reacting. Maybe it really was mad at being folded and manipulated so it said, ya know, what, I’m not gonna deposit her in her vessel.” His voice was agitated again. “I wanted to talk to you but I couldn’t. Thought about tryin’ another set of calls, new voice, new reason. And, baby, that’s what they call themselves a vicious cycle.”
The clouds had moved in over the moon, and Kayla could feel the humidity rise in the air almost in direct measure with Steve’s tension level.
“And it just kind of hit me that you were actually missing in time. Like for real, missing in time, Kayla. I was doing the very best I could to live the timeline in the best way I knew how, and you were STILL not here. What made me think continuing to stick to it would get you here any quicker? Rolf talks, baby. He does a lot of talkin’ and gives a lot of direction. But ya know what, he doesn’t know, either. He’s lost control of time, and I was on my own.”
Kayla agreed with every word he’d just said. “And that’s when you decided to come to Cleveland, wasn’t it?”
Steve nodded. “Better to wait where I could keep an eye on you, instead of two states away where I had to keep inventing stupid ways to interact with you. Plus, if I stayed there, I’m tellin’ you, I had zero chance of not going insane.”
“I just can’t believe you live in my building. On my same floor! How did you manage that? And how is it that I don’t know you’re alive? That’s what you said, right?”
“That’s what I said.”
“How is that possible?”
“Your building’s not a dive, Sweetness, but it ain’t the Ritz. That apartment was empty on all three floors, ‘cause it’s tiny – I mean, it’s smaller than yours. And it’s right next to the elevator.”
“Oh yeah. I remember how loud it would scrape up the walls.”
“Yep, you can hear it. So I gobbled that up, and when I showed the landlord a year’s worth of cash in advance, he looked the other way on me being an unemployed ex-con.”
“How did you get that much cash?”
“You’ve seen me play pool, Dr. Johnson?”
“Hmm,” she mocked in thought. “I think I may have once or twice.”
“Yeah, well it was a lot of once or twice in a lot of joints across three states. Didn’t actually take that long, cost of livin’s pretty low in ’84.”
“So that was, what, a year and a half ago? How did I not notice you living across the hall for 18 months?”
“Because that’s how I designed it, Sweetness.”
Now it was Kayla’s turn for a bit of an epiphany. She slowly turned her head toward him. “Steve?”
Uh oh.
“How is it you were there on the exact day I jumped in? After all of these months, on this random day? I arrived, and before I could even look for you, you were there. How did you do that?”
“Well. Mainly ‘cause I’ve been following you.”
“Yeah, I figured you must have, but how did you know to follow me on this day? When Steve took too many beats to answer, she pushed him. “Steve?!”
“Because I follow you every day.”
Kayla licked her lips and blinked. “Every day?”
“Yeah.”
“You follow me every day.”
“Yeahp.”
Kayla’s reaction to this was a confluence of feelings. She was awe-struck at his patience, loved him for putting her before himself, distraught at his loneliness, and turned on at the thrill of her husband watching her. It was all of those things, and it made her dizzy.
Steve remembered her reaction on their first New Year’s Eve when she’d learned that he’d been following her, and his confidence level got the best of him. “Are you mad?” he asked.
“Mad? Because you followed me?”
“Wouldn’t be the first time.”
“Steve,” Kayla admonished him with a click of her tongue. “This isn’t the first time. This isn’t anything like that. No. How could I be mad? I would have done the same thing, only I couldn’t have gone on as long as you did. I’m … I’m a little overwhelmed. I think.” She told him all of these feelings, and was confused when Steve gave her what could only be described as a shit-eating grin. “What?” she asked.
“Turned on?”
She crossed her legs in front of her and followed the move by doing the same with her arms. “Maybe,” she said with a Cheshire Cat grin of her own.
“Mm-hmm,” he replied. “Noted.”
“Don’t note anything, Steve Johnson, just keep talking. And, yes, I’m a little turned on.”
Steve let out a snicker. “Still noting it, then.”
Kayla listened, completely enthralled at Steve’s description of the next year and a half. How he’d spent the entire first month following her around like a stalker, because he was still of the mindset that she’d be jumping into herself any minute, and he had to be there for her when she did. He followed her to work in the mornings, followed her home at night, and spent an extreme amount of time in his car.
“I was so naïve,” she said.
“Not naïve, just young. You hadn’t had your first kidnapping yet, how were you supposed to have a clue that this was happening.”
“Fair,” she jibed. And Steve ate it up.
“I tried having lunch with you a couple times.”
“Like a date?”
“More like parallel play, baby, I ate behind a newspaper, you ate with your co-workers. By the way, Deb’s ok. Don’t remember you knowing her after this, so I don’t think she lasts, but she seems like a good egg.”
“Ok, so how many not-a-dates did we have?”
“Not too many. Eventually you were gonna notice that a guy with an eyepatch kept turning up where you were.”
“Well, that is exactly how it happened the first time.”
“So no more dates. But I did keep following you. Movie theatres, bars, places I could sit in a dark corner unnoticed. I kept hopin’ every day was the day you’d get here. For that first month I didn’t let you out of my sight. But it wasn’t healthy. I know it wasn’t, you don’t have to say it, I know.”
“I wasn’t going to say that.”
“It wasn’t just me obsessing over you.”
“I don’t think that, Steve.”
“I felt guilty, too. I knew I needed something to do all day while I waited for you, but it felt like I was …” he used a word that meant terrible things for both of them, but there was no other way to explain himself. “… abandoning you.” Kayla inhaled sharply for the exact reason he feared she would. “But that’s how it felt, Sweetness. It wasn’t just following you around ‘cause I was lost without you – which I am – it was that letting up felt like I was giving up on you.”
“You didn’t! It’s not giving up on me. You have to live your life!”
“Steve hit the brake a little too hard at the yellow light. “And what if you jumped in when I wasn’t lookin’!” he shouted. “What if you got there and I wasn’t there?! I wasn’t in Chicago, I was right down the hall! If you’d gotten here and had to do it all alone—”
“I’ve done it all alone before! We both have!”
“Not when we didn’t have to! It’s never happened! That we chose not to be there!”
“That’s not actually true,” Kayla said so softly, that Steve felt the difference in the decibel level in his chest. “The first time you woke up in jail. I didn’t come to you. On purpose.”
In this moment, Steve had somehow forgotten that. And the truth was that it stung, but only in the way one remembers the sting, not in the way it continues to inflict pain.
A severely amplified but not entirely inauthentic wave of guilt swept through Kayla. She dropped her face into her hands, but she didn’t cry. She was so tired of crying. “I’m sorry.”
“No, baby. No, we can’t do this. That’s over and done with.”
“It was because—”
“I don’t care.”
“Well, you should!”
“You wanna go backwards, Kayla? We’re already doin’ that every single day. I forgave you for that. And you forgave me! So, no. I don’t. I don’t care. And neither can you.”
Kayla felt her pulse race in her neck and thought her reaction raged through her so fast that it might be influenced by the jump effect. But she couldn’t help how it felt. She took a deep breath, trying to get a grip. “Ok,” she relented. “Ok. But if I don’t get to be sorry, you don’t either. You had to survive somehow.”
“You know what it’s like gettin’ here first. It was my turn. It was hard, though. Forced myself.”
“So you got a job?” She felt the emotion ebb and knew there was definitely an element of the jump effect. She was grateful it was passing and made a mental note about artificial triggers.
“This me would’ve just bummed pool money all day. So, that’s what I did at first, just enough to put gas in this car and food in my belly. Watched you go to work and come home through the door every day. Even through that little peephole, I could see you weren’t you yet. So, I’d go on about my day. And when you went out, I tried to go out with you.”
“I know how hard it must have been. I haven’t had to wait as long, but I know.”
“I know you do, baby. I hit rock bottom when a year went by. Drank a lot. Funds got low. Then one day you came home in the middle of the day sick with the flu. I mean, baby, you were sick. I wanted to take care of you, no one else was here to do it.”
“Oh, I remember a couple times I came home from the hospital before I started working for Dr. Dennison sick as hell. It’s a wonder I didn’t pick up more when I was there.”
“Yeah, sick as hell is about right. I felt helpless. So ya know what I did?”
She shook her head. “What?”
Made you some tea and toast and a whole thermos of homemade chicken soup.”
“What? How?”
“Left it at your door and ran. You were so pale I thought you were gonna pass out. Wasn’t sure you’d even pick it up, not like you had a clue who sent it. But you did. And you smiled. And it gave me hope, Sweetness. You had the flu, and I was able to take care of you. I dunno, it helped me find a way to keep going.
“For a another whole year,” Kayla replied shakily. She was losing that strength she needed for Steve and was now in need of some, herself. “God.” She was trying so hard not to cry again. Some of it was artificial, she knew; but some of it wasn’t.
“Got a job at a local garage just like in Chicago. It’s under the table again, keepin’ me under the radar, pays pretty well, and …” he sighed deeply, “… it forced me out of my head. From having nothing better to do than follow you around literally everywhere. Like a goddamn stalker.”
“You’re not a stalker. You didn’t follow me around everywhere.”
“Yeah, but that doesn’t mean I didn’t follow you around somewhere. There’s a lot of days you were out with your friends, and I was right there watching you for signs.”
“Just in case I arrived.”
Steve nodded. “So you wouldn’t be alone. When you got here. Scared.”
“Like you were.” Her tender voice was full of regret.
Steve pulled into a parking space with his newly arrived wife and turned off the car. He’d been on the edge of losing control of his emotions the entire drive home; now that he’d gotten them there and gotten it all out, he felt … better. Not great. But definitely better.
“I Promised.” He turned in his seat, took her hand in his. “To find you. Gather you up and take you home.” Which is exactly where they now were.
“I was home the minute I got here. Because you were there. You saw me arrive, and you were there to bring me home. ‘Cause you’re my home.”
Steve remembered the conversation on Rolf’s stairs that was long ago for him and just an hour ago for her. Not for the first, second, or even third time in this conversation, Steve replied to the truth of his wife’s words with a kiss of his lips to her hand.
They got out of the car, and Kayla took a moment to see it for the first time. “It looks just like our Dodge Dart,” she said approvingly.
“Yeah, it was one of those things. Kind of fell into my lap, and I figured the slipstream gave it to me.” Kayla was actually quite sure that he was right.
Because he was.
The entire way into the building and up the elevator, Kayla took in her surroundings. They’d jumped back to a lot of places more than once, but this was her first glimpse of Cleveland, as their first return was limited to just the interior of her apartment.
“Ringin’ any bells?” Steve asked.
Kayla nodded. “Yeah. I mean, it wasn’t that meaningful, but I was here for four years, so yeah.” They stepped off the elevator, and Kayla stopped with a glance to what she knew must be Steve’s front door. “What do we do?” she said absently. Steve knew exactly what she was asking.
“The slipstream is already broken,” Steve said. “We’re not spending another day apart.”
“Are you sure we won’t break it more?”
“Kayla. I’m not sure of anything. Except that I love you.” It was the first time he’d said it to her in two years, and the impact on him did not evade Kayla’s notice. “God, it feels so good to tell you that to your face. I love you so much, Sweetness. And the whole thing’s so broken right now that there’s just no telling.”
Kayla took Steve’s hand and walked backwards with him toward apartment 3. “Then I think it’s time we stopped paying two rents.” Once inside, Kayla thought she’d feel some kind of nostalgia, but the truth was she just felt fatigue. And a little overstimulation at the wildly eclectic collection of stuff she’d accumulated. “Wow. We haven’t seen any of this stuff in a while,” she chuckled.
“Actually, I’ve been in here a few times, already.”
Kayla snapped her head around. “You have? You mean when we jumped here?”
“Baby, when we jumped here, there was only one thing I was lookin’ at.” It was the most Steve-like he’d sounded so far, and Kayla grinned widely at the solicitousness in his voice. Then, however, she curled her lip a bit. “Were you spying on me from the closet again?”
“Relax, you weren’t even here.” He closed the door behind them and locked it. “You need a deadbolt,” he said.
“We need a deadbolt.”
“Yeahp. Almost installed one when you weren’t lookin’.” Then he gently applied pressure on her shoulders and said, “sit.” Kayla did as she was told, but she was completely lost as to what Steve was doing with his hand up inside the table lamp.
“Please don’t electrocute yourself, I just got here.”
Steve took the circle of gold that he’d taped into the lamp’s interior and polished it on his black tee shirt. The diamond was small, it wasn’t anything he’d’ve chosen for her, and the whole thing basically fell off the back of a truck, but it was Kayla’s from the moment Steve set eyes on it.
Steve sidled up closer to her and took her left hand. He pushed the ring onto her finger and met her eyes. They were so full of love. He’d longed for that love for so long that now he thought his heart might burst. “I do.”
Kayla was so shocked. This ring ceremony wasn’t new, but that he gave it to her on this of all jumps was downright unbelievable. “How—how did you—”
“Say it back, baby. God—Kayla, please say it back to me.”
“I do, too,” she said quickly taking his hand in hers. “Of course, I do, too,” she repeated, barely whispering through a loving smile. Steve let out the breath he’d been holding and kissed her fingertips.
Kayla held up her hand and gazed at her new ring, falling in love with it instantly. “How long have you had this squirreled away in here?”
“Last year. Right around Christmas. I was workin’ on a car, and it fell out through the back of the glove box. Young dumb kid was at least the third or fourth owner, there’s no way he knew it was there, so I didn’t tell him.” Kayla chuckled. “I was gonna wear it around my neck, but I just needed you to have it. I felt like – if you had it, you might feel me with you. Get here sooner.” Steve shrugged. “Doesn’t make any sense.”
Kayla stroked her fingertip down Steve’s patch again. “It makes perfect sense.”
“Snuck in here while you were at work, wanted to make sure it was close to you and wasn’t gonna come loose. Came back a couple times to make sure you hadn’t somehow found it. Wasn’t gonna watch you sleep, just got in and got out. Not that I haven’t done that before.”
“You’ve told me.”
“Doin’ it now just felt …”
“Wrong?” Kayla asked with curiosity, not judgment.
Steve shook his head. “Dangerous. Like Time wasn’t gonna like it.” Kayla could see the anxiety creeping back into him. “I’ve missed you so much. I’ve missed you so goddamn much.”
Kayla crawled up into Steve’s lap where he instantly held her against him, her legs straddling his waist. She held his face in her palms and kissed him deeply. “I’m here now,” she said, once again. And she was going to keep on saying it. “I’m here,” she purred into their kisses. “I love you, and I’m here.”
Steve stroked his palms up and down Kayla’s back. Her sleeveless, cotton sundress was smooth and warm beneath his fingertips. Kayla responded to her husband’s hands on her body, naturally reacting by rubbing her hips against him. He hadn’t had any of this in so long. Steve’s young body was hard and the desire flowed through him hotly. But his much older mind was truly terrified of losing his wife in the ceaseless nightmare of time. “I want you, Kayla. I need to feel you.”
Kayla drew her lips down her husband’s neck “I know,” she breathed. “I’m going to make it better.”
Steve’s penis strained against his jeans, but he pulled her away by her shoulders. “This is where it all began, Kayla. It was, literally, right here. And now we’re two years even before that. We were so out of our minds we couldn’t keep our hands off each other. And it’s when everything started to change.” Kayla licked her lips in a fretful need to give her husband succor. And to give it to herself, as well. “We made love here when we weren’t supposed to, and we’ve been tempting fate ever since.”
“Listen to me—”
“I can’t lose you again. I’d do anything. Give up anything. Not to lose you again.” Then after a long moment of silence he pushed the hair back off of her forehead. “I’m scared, Sweetness,” he whispered softly. “I’m so damned scared.”
Kayla still sat in her straddled position, her own heat competing against the current reality of this body, as well as the truth of what Steve had just said. But Kayla knew a few more truths.
“I’m scared, too. Being without you at ten-years-old was almost the worst thing that’s ever happened to me.” Steve didn’t have to ask what the worst one was. “I know it’s not the same as two years.”
Steve shook his head. “It’s not a contest.”
“So, believe me, I’m scared, too. But …” Kayla had been the strong one since she arrived to her husband’s, poor, beautiful, broken soul. She’d cried and she’d questioned, but she hadn’t broken down. Now she had run out of strength, the amplification effect had caught up with her, and the words fell out of her like a storm. “We’ve… we’ve tried. Denying ourselves. Not just of sex, but of each other. Our marriage. Intimacy. We’ve tried living apart. We’ve tried to be good,” she said bitterly, somehow that last word triggering something fierce in her. “And all it did was make things worse!” She dropped her head onto Steve’s shoulder and clung on to him. “Make us worse! Make us so miserable we couldn’t function!” Steve held her. “What should we do, just go our separate ways, then?!”
“No!”
“Be with other people?!”
“NO, KAYLA!”
“Live these goddamn lives until we’re supposed to meet right back here in two more years?! Because I can’t do that! How can I do that?!”
A possessiveness so brutal swept through Steve. “You are MY wife! And I won’t leave you!”
Steve slid down off the couch onto the floor and positioned them so that he hovered above Kayla’s body. He unzipped his jeans, and Kayla tugged them down as he pushed her dress up.
“I’m yours!” Kayla cried. “I’m your Sweetness!”
“Shh. Don’t cry.” He tried to kiss her tears away.
She kicked off her underwear and felt his erection against her wetness. Her need to join with him was carnal. Her need to love him was desperate.
Steve reached down to touch her and almost came at the slickness he hadn’t felt in two years. The lust was overpowering, and he couldn’t help inserting his finger. He felt how tight she was as he searched her eyes for her approval. “I want you so bad!” he exclaimed in a frenzy for her. Kayla whimpered with need as Steve fingered that spot that would make her feel good. The sex coursing through Steve made him shudder. He removed his finger, gripped his length, and entered her with his tip. “Kayla,” he panted, stopping short with great difficulty. “Neither of us have done this in a long time.” He was clearly asking her final permission.
“Take what you need from me,” she whispered.
Steve stopped and came slightly more to his senses. “You’re so beautiful, Sweetness,” he moaned as he felt the sexual desire rage through him. He rested his weight on his forearms and leaned down for a tongue-filled kiss. “I love you.”
Steve slid himself into Kayla for the first time in two years. She couldn’t help but cry out. He locked eyes with her, and in that moment silently asked her if she was ok. She held him fiercely against her and squeezed her vagina around his thick shaft in silent reply.
Now Steve puffed up with a licentious grin. “Mine!” he grunted.
Steve and Kayla’s hips met in a hard, fast rhythm that lit them on fire. His shaft stroked his wife’s clitoris only three times before she came. The sounds of her ecstasy were like a drug.
“Yes!” Steve grunted in her ear as she shuddered. He suckled on her neck while she came, wanting to give her so much pleasure. “Another! Baby! Take another!” Knowing he’d pleasured her and was going to do so again made Steve feel limitless. And in this very young body, he felt like he could go forever.
Kayla rolled them over and climbed on top of him. She shuddered with an aftershock and gave Steve a coital smile. She used her knees for leverage and started riding him in deep thrusts. He held her by her thighs as she leaned back to feel him against her bottom. She arched her back so that her husband’s cock could stroke her g-spot, and knew she was close to coming again. “Can you …” she moaned. “feel … how much I love you?” She pulled her dress up over her head and tossed it away. Then she pulled Steve’s hands up over her breasts still resting in the small triangle bra cups. “I’m here! I’m here now!”
Steve rubbed his thumbs over her hardened nipples under the flesh-colored satin. “I feel it, baby. I do.” But he needed more. He grabbed her hips and pulled her down into him as he pushed himself inside her. “Harder!” he begged, his orgasm about to rip through him. But then he forced himself to wait. And the gratification he denied himself with the edging was rewarded with Kayla’s next climax. She screamed out coital cries in rhythm with Steve’s strokes until she came hard. Steve watched his wife shake with orgasm on top of him like she had beneath him just moments before.
“I love you,” she murmured, barely able to form words. She lay atop his chest, his tee shirt still between them. “I’m here,” she repeated again and again. “Steve … I’m here … And I’ll always love you.”
Steve held her, his penis still hard and thick inside of her. And he realized that her pleasure … her words … her body surrounding him … really were healing his soul. He sat them up so they could face each other.
“Are you ok?” she asked him in the most beautiful, loving, sexy voice.
“Only if you are.”
“In case you missed it, I’m ok two times over now. Pretty sure you haven’t had ok even one time over yet.”
Steve chuckled. “Making you come has made me plenty ok,” he said quite truthfully, even as his cock stayed at an uncomfortable level of hardness. “It’s just been a while for your body, so I was just—”
Kayla swallowed up the rest of that sentence with a kiss full of heat. “I’m good. But you still haven’t taken what’s yours,” she cooed lustfully. Steve smiled with absolute prurience. “Come get it.”
Without breaking Kayla’s gaze, he started rocking them. Gently at first, the intimacy of their eye contact making his heart fill to impossible happiness. He paused just long enough to pull off his t-shirt and unhook her bra. He sucked her right breast into his mouth, humming around her areola as he flicked his tongue over her nipple. Kayla hadn’t even seen her own naked body yet, but she gave all of it to Steve. She arched her back and moaned. “I love watching you come,” he whispered. “I’ve missed watching you come.”
Kayla was in ecstasy again. She was 23, her hormones were wild, the jump effect heightened it all, and it didn’t take long for Steve’s ministrations to build her toward another climax. Her swelled clitoris denied recovery a second time was ready to throw her into another rapture. She wanted this for Steve, but she couldn’t help what his sex was doing to her. “Oh … God,” she whimpered, “… Don’t stop!”
“Tell me how good it is!”
“So good! It feels so good!
They were bucking against each other now, Kissing, thrusting, tangled up in the connection they’d both needed as much as they needed air to breathe. Because they could no longer depend on having time to fulfill each other. They were going to have to live in every moment like there wouldn’t be any others. And in this moment, they each wanted to feel the other come apart.
Kayla’s third orgasm crashed over her. Her clitoris pulsed against Steve’s cock, and she almost passed out in euphoria when he added pressure to her bottom with his thumb. It was at this moment that Steve finally let himself have what he’d needed for so long. he cried out her name and grunted in climax.
Kayla spasmed over and over as she panted her ecstasy, unbelievable happiness washing over her knowing that Steve felt as euphoric as she did.
“I love you!” he cried into her neck. He held her naked body fiercely against his and pulsed his cum into her in one powerful lurch after another. Every one of them gave him a heady feeling of unspeakable bliss.
Kayla continued to tremble as Steve’s cum pooled inside of her. And it felt good. It felt so good. She knew what he was feeling and never wanted him to stop feeling it. She never wanted to see the pain on his face and the anxiety in his eye that she’d arrived to ever again and instead wanted this feeling of coital joy to be the only thing he felt as long as he lived.
The last of Steve’s semen left his body as he held his wife close. Her head was laying on his shoulder like it had so many times in the past. “Kayla,” he whispered. “Oh, baby.”
“Mm.” She didn’t open her eyes or raise her head. She just laid there against him, wanting the moment to last as long as possible.
“Thank you, Sweetness.” He felt her smile as he stroked his warm palms down her bare back. “Thank you. For loving me.”
Kayla finally raised her head out of the crook of Steve’s shoulder. The deep green of his eye was looking at her with more love than she thought she’d ever seen from him before. She kissed his patch before gently sliding it off of his face and holding it to her bosom. Then she kissed his cheek for the second time that night. “Thank you for finding me. And bringing me home.”
Steve had no words. So, he didn’t try to find any. Instead he gently laid them down and pulled her in close against him. Kayla burrowed her head into his chest, and it gave Steve such a rush that he hardened right back up. “I think I’d better warn you, Sweetness, I’m back in one of those bodies where I can do it all night long.”
“That’s a warning?” she asked, “or an invitation?”
Kayla rested her chin on Steve’s pectoral muscle. “Care to tell me if you’ve spied a pack of birth control pills during your field trips into my apartment?”
“What makes you think I’d be lookin’ for such a thing?” Kayla shot him a look that said she knew better. “They’re in there.” He angled his head toward the bathroom.
“Mm,” she cooed. “We’ll put those to good use while we’re here, then.”
“Is that a warning or an invitation?” Steve parroted back to her.
“I think it’s probably both,” she promised with a vixen of a smile.
“Probably definitely,” Steve agreed.
Despite Steve’s 28-year-old virility, their sexual recovery left them with barely enough energy to pull the bed out from the couch. When they finally did, they crawled inside, held each other, and slept not knowing what would happen next. They figured it probably wasn’t good. And it’s not that they didn’t care, because they still very much did. But this night they took a stand against the slipstream and for themselves, come what may. Making love here, living together here, even just plain knowing each other here might be bad for time. But denying each other their intimacy, and going through the motions of wherever they were supposed to be right now wasn’t going to make time stable, either. Tonight was a decision that if the construct broke, then it did. They’d made this decision before, but now was the first time they’d done so after experiencing the consequences. They were absolutely terrified of what was going to happen to them now that they’d done this. But they were absolutely more terrified of what would have happened to them if they hadn’t.
When the sun came up on the next day Kayla was up with it. She was still here, and seeing her husband’s chest rise and fall, she new he was, too. She closed her eyes and tried to feel the atmosphere around her for signals of approaching space time collapse – or even just impending departure; bur really, it just felt like an ordinary day. She leaned up on her elbow and took in her husband beside her. He was lean and very muscular. And his complexion was paler than she was used to; a lot less time spent outdoors in this timeline working under cars in a garage all day. Seeing Steve at these unshared ages was always a novelty. She should have been used to It by now, and in a way she was; but seeing him like this, or revisiting him in times past would always be wondrous to her. And his face would always be the most handsome one she’d ever lay her eyes on.
Kayla laid her wet lips onto his chest. He reacted immediately, waking with the tingle those kisses brought to the base of his spine. She placed another kiss below it, and then one below that, pleased when he stirred enough to cup the back of her head. She was prepared for him to wake up worried, agitated, concerned that she’d be gone. But he was calm.
“Sweetness,” he whispered sleepily.
Kayla found he bullet scar on his shoulder and kissed it. Then she kissed the scar on his left cheek. She moved down his body and found the new scar that didn’t rightfully belong there, seeing its details in the light of the morning streaming in from the windows behind them. She kissed that, too. He stroked her head tenderly as she showed him her love through her kisses.
Steve sucked in his breath when Kayla took his entire penis into her mouth and started sucking him to hardness. Her tongue swirled around his shaft, quickly becoming hard as a rock, and when she swallowed the small bit of cum that leaked from his tip he moaned. Steve twisted his fingers into Kayla’s hair. He wanted to come, the edge of that cliff approaching fast. His dick was so hard, and Kayla’s mouth was so warm.
Kayla made no move to take any for herself, letting out a little hum as her mouth moved up and down. It was clear that what she wanted was for him to feel the pleasure. Feel her give it to him. Come and get it, he recalled her saying last night. So he did. He let himself enjoy the feel of his wife fondling his ballsac with just the right amount of pressure. He let himself revel in the feel of her tongue working his penis. And when he opened his eye to see his thick cock disappearing in and out of her mouth he let himself feel the euphoria of his orgasm. Kayla took Steve’s essence and swallowed, the movements sending more pleasure through him. When he was spent, Kayla released him from her mouth and crawled back up to snuggle in close to him.
“Baby. That was … what a way to wake up.”
“Hot?” she asked him wantonly.
“Wait, I gotta think about this. Getting a blow job from my smokin’ hot wife first thing in the morning after not having been with her in two years? Yeah, baby. You could say it was hot.”
“Good. I want to lay in this bed all day and do nothing but more of this.”
“I think I can live with that,” he laughed. “But actually, I’ve got something in my apartment to show you first.”
She smiled and burrowed. “You can show me whatever you want in both of our apartments,” she teased.
“Oh, don’t worry, you’re gonna get shown a lot,” he leered. “But for real, there’s something I’ve been working on. I want you to see it.
She sat up her naked breasts hanging beautifully. Steve wanted to play with them right now. Instead, he sat up, too. “My own version of your jump project. Been taking notes for the last two years. ‘Cause we’ve got a slipstream to break.”