When Kayla opened her eyes the next morning Steve was leaned up on his elbow watching her. Even though the silence was jarring, she did know when and where she was, and Steve’s presence quelled her anxiety before it could even really take hold.
The sheets felt good against them as the early morning breeze blew in gently from the open window. Kayla inhaled deeply of the scent of the clean sheets and felt good in the familiarity. There was a melancholy charge to the air, though, and they couldn’t help but smile sadly at each other at their situation.
Kayla reached up and touched her fingertips to her husband’s face as he caressed the hair back off her forehead. “Hi,” she signed with her other hand.
“Hi,” he signed back. Then he pointed to her and kaleidescoped his fingers in front of his face. Kayla smiled warmly at him. He’d just told her she was beautiful. “You are,” he repeated aloud. Then he tapped at his cheek before pointing to the same spot on hers where a large bruise from the explosion still lingered. “Does it hurt?” he asked. Kayla responded with a look of confusion, not understanding him. He very gently laid his fingers on her cheek under the injury and made a pained face, using his eyebrows to form a questioning look. Now Kayla understood.
She shrugged, making a so-so motion with her hand.
Steve kissed his fingertips then carefully touched them to the bruise. Kayla smiled, her face clearly saying, “better already.”
Steve’s stomach made noise which she didn’t hear. It reminded him of the mashed potatoes he’d just eaten with Marcus. He wanted to tell her so much. He wanted to ask her so much. He wanted to talk about where they’d been, what they were supposed to be doing now, and what they were actually going to do instead. But he was quickly starting to get overwhelmed with the thoughts in his head and needed her to stem the tide – to ground him.
Steve leaned down to kiss her. It was gentle but unmistakably needy. He palmed Kayla’s bare breast beneath the sheet before bending his head to kiss the warm flesh of the other. “I need you, Sweetness,” Steve said as tears stung the back of his eye. She felt only the breath of his words. “Is this ok?” He licked Kayla’s peaked nipple and repeated himself. Of course, she didn’t answer. He looked at her and said it again. “Baby? Please …” Kayla nodded and felt the same need to connect with him as she had last night.
Steve repositioned himself beside her and slipped inside her sheath. They clung to each other’s bodies, letting their lips and hands and lovemaking do the talking. No, Kayla couldn’t speak. But hearing her voice in her sighs and whimpers of pleasure gave Steve jolts of happiness that no orgasm could match. Still, he reached for it – for the culmination of their love and the purity of expressing it.
Kayla came without warning, her hips lurching in rhythmic bursts. Her coital smile lit up her face. I missed you so much! I want you to be inside me forever, Steve! Every time you make me come, I want you to feel the love you give me!
Kayla wrapped her fingers in Steve’s hair as he came. Her leg was draped over his hip, her body shrouding him in a feeling of safety and devotion as the pleasure coursed through him. He stayed inside of her as Kayla held him against her, his face pillowed between her breasts. Their post-coital caresses did more talking as they continued to lie in bed; for now, their touch was the only thing they needed to communicate.
The morning was still relatively early when Kayla got into the shower and Steve headed downstairs to forage for their breakfast. They had jotted down a few words, intending to get their ducks in a row on this destination while they ate. It was when Steve had his head buried in the fridge that he heard something outside the loft door. He prairie-dogged up from looking for bacon at the sound of whatever it was leaning against the door. Steve shut the fridge and stepped directly in front of it. Rather than immediately react, he put his hands on his hips and did some thinking. He could see the movement in the crack under the door, so clearly someone was there. He remembered a cavalcade of visitors in these first few days before he left for Washington; Kimberly … Jack … Peggy … at least a couple others. But hell if he knew which one was when or if they came when called or of their own volition. So, with a glance behind him and then an adjustment of his patch, he opened the sliding door. To his dismay, it was his least favorite option.
“Hanging around like some kind of stalker, as usual,” Steve said to the unwanted guest. “Great.”
“Where’s Kayla?” Jack demanded. He tried to sound authoritative, but the bravado he’d clearly intended was missing.
“You gotta drop this obsession, man, it’s not gonna get you anywhere.”
“I know she was hurt, just tell me if she’s here!”
“Jesus, I can’t keep track of when I’ve got good you and when I’ve got the asshole. Go home, Jack.”
He took a beat to curl his lip in confusion before replying, “not until I know Kayla’s ok. Not until I see her.” Jack bobbed his head trying to see into the apartment. “Kayla!” he yelled.
“Stop, already, wouldja? She can’t hear you.”
“So she is here! I wanna know she’s ok!” Jack tried shouldering in past Steve, but he pushed his brother back hard.
“Listen, I’m not doin’ this with you right now. You’ll find out eventually, and I’m too tired to argue. She’s deaf and she can’t talk. The explosion damaged her ears, and the weight of the goddamn world damaged the rest of her!
“Did you just say she’s deaf?” Jack repeated incredulously.
“Yeah, but you’re not, so listen close. I don’t want you near her.” For reasons past, present, future, and all three combined.
“But-but I didn’t do anything!”
“Oh, you’ve done more than enough.”
“You mean the funding?!”
The funding. Steve didn’t want to play the memory game, looking for a match for whatever it was Jack was referencing. So he just went with it.
“Yeah, the funding. The not giving her a divorce. The rape.”
“I never meant to hurt her. I love her, Steve! I still love her!”
Steve had had enough. He took Jack by the lapels of his dark navy suit and dragged him backwards to the elevator. “You get gone, Jack!” he boomed as he dragged open the metal frame and pushed his brother into the elevator. “Don’t come back here!” Then he pushed the button for the ground floor and dragged the metal grating back over. “I mean it!”
The last thing Steve saw before the elevator door closed were Jack’s eyes widen as he looked over Steve’s shoulder. When he turned back around, Kayla was standing in her, satin robe in the doorway. She looked meaningfully at the elevator and then waved her hand up and down between herself and Steve. What’s going on?
Steve sighed heavily. “J-A-C-K,” he finger-spelled; somewhere in his hindbrain he was grateful that he’d retained his ASL alphabet. “Back to the asshole version,” he muttered to himself.
I know, she nodded. Then she roughly signed, “Why?”
Steve shrugged and shook his head while tapping his temple that he didn’t remember. Then something Jack had said rang a bell for him. “Funding … I think this is the day he comes over with a check for the Community Center.”
Kayla didn’t understand a word of that and crinkled her eyebrows in question.
Steve ushered them back in and repeated it in writing with the pad of paper on the kitchen counter.
I think he’s right, she thought to herself. She nodded and signed “yes” with an unenthusiastic bobbing right fist. Then she wrote out, A lot going on right now.
“Yeah,” Steve said. Then wrote back, trying to piece it together.
They did their best to do just that in written words. It was slow and frustrating, but they were sure that Jack was going to be coming back shortly with word of the Community Center funding being restored. They were also fairly sure that there was a party at Victor’s sometime soon.
“And the Knifer,” Steve said. “S-E-N-A-T-O-R,” he finger-spelled, “trying to kill you,” he finished with a point then a finger across his throat. Kayla nodded resignedly. You’re not leaving my sight, Steve wrote.
Kayla gave him a half grin and shrugged with a nod. That was fine by her. In fact, dropping this entire discussion of who’s where and what next was fine by her, because she really just didn’t care. She didn’t want to go to work, she didn’t want to navigate people, she just wanted to leave. She wanted to take all the money they had, get out of town, and wait to jump again, however long that took.
Right now, however, she was starving, and so was her husband. So before they did another thing, Steve jumped in the shower while Kayla put together something to eat. They communicated with clipped written sentences and broken ASL as they ate. The challenge in communicating with his wife made Steve want to climb the walls before he suddenly brightened up with a thought. He tapped Kayla eagerly and spelled out her sister’s name.
“K-I-M … Kim? My sister?”
Steve nodded. Then he wrote out, she can give us a crash course. Steve’s smile quickly faded with Kayla’s continued lack of enthusiasm. He’d thought this was a great idea; they needed the help, plus it fit the timeline nicely since that’s just about how it happened last time, and they last thing they needed was to make any big changes and risk another 1971 right now.
“What’s wrong?” Steve spoke as he signed. Kayla shrugged and waved it away as she turned to pace. Steve turned her back around gently by her shoulder. “No. Tell me, what is it?”
She hasn’t liked me lately, she wrote out.
He crossed his arms across his chest and pointed to the ground. “She loves you right now,” he said.
Kayla nodded. She knew that. But just yesterday she really kind of didn’t. And no matter how many times they did this Kayla couldn’t just turn on and off for people. Steve was generally a little better at that unless it was Jack.
I just don’t want to see anyone right now, she signed.
“What?” Steve replied out loud.
I don’t want to see K-I-M, she signed again, or A-N-Y-O-N-E.
“You gotta go slower, I can’t read the fingers that fast, Kayla.”
Kayla crinkled her brow and shook her head. What?
“SHIT!”
That, Kayla understood. She threw up her arms and let out a growl of sheer angsty disgust. Then she collapsed into the couch, crossed her arms, and stared at the wall to her right. Within seconds she felt the cushion beside her move with her husband’s weight. When she didn’t feel his hand immediately upon her, she turned to look at him over her shoulder.
“Kayla, I don’t get why you can’t talk.” It was pigeon ASL if ever there was a thing, but Kayla heard him loud and clear.
You think I haven’t tried?! she pointed to her throat and practically shouted to him.
Steve got it that her ASL was better than his, but why she couldn’t talk right now he didn’t get at all. Frankly, neither did she, and it only made things worse. She tucked her leg up under herself and gave him a “what do you want from me” glare.
Steve went back to his pad of paper while Kayla tried to be patient. When he looked up and handed her the pad, she saw the troubled frustration in the deep green of his eye.
I need you. We don’t remember enough ASL. She can help us remember and remember where we need to be. Kayla pouted. Her mood had soured considerably in these moments. Steve, meanwhile, continued not understanding what was going on in Kayla’s head, specifically at this point her reluctance. Was this about Kimberly? He knew things never got back to normal with them before they jumped from LA, but as far as he knew Kayla had just spent months with her in better times.
Kayla just wanted out of there. She grabbed the pencil from Steve’s hand and started to write that she wanted to just leave Salem, but when she saw his face she did a doubletake and softened. She could feel her husband’s stress coming off of him in waves and realized how unsure he felt and that he truly needed this more than she did. So she let out a breath and palmed his face.
“Ok,” she mouthed as she caressed her thumb across his scar. Then she wrote back, I don’t know why I can’t talk, I really don’t. So ok. Let’s call Kim.
Steve took her hand from the pad and kissed her knuckle. Then he signed Thank you, Sweetness. Kayla smiled at the long unused sign for her pet name – two fingers to his lips, combined with touching those same fingers down his sideways palm. Steve smiled back at her reaction. “Yeah,” he said, “I remember that one.” Kayla chuckled with real mirth at the way he used his own made up hand movements for some signs, like tapping his head for the word “remember.”
An hour later not one, but two siblings were at the loft door.
“Jesus Christ, man, what’s it gonna take?” Steve whined while Jack stood sheepishly beside Kimberly at the sliding door’s threshold. Kimberly wasn’t quite sure what to make of it but was, clearly, unhappy to see her sister’s rapist standing beside her.
“I just want to give this to Kayla,” Jack said in an insistent tone that belied his nervous manner.
Steve grabbed the envelope that he remembered held the news of the Community Center funding out of his brother’s hand. “Funding, right? Good. Thanks. Go now.”
“I—how did you–?”
“Go now,” Steve growled.
“Aren’t you the one who called me?” Kim quipped.
“Not you,” Steve said as he ushered her in by her elbow and slid the door hard behind her.
“What was that all about?” Kim asked, turning quickly upon entry.
Steve rubbed at the bridge of his nose. “Just forget it, we’re done with him for at least the day. I think.”
“Oh, for the whole day, huh? So you’re Carnac now?”
“Trust me, better not to ask.”
“Uh-huh …,” she replied while the question remained clearly asked in her face. “Ok, then,” she gave up.
After a deep sigh to reset himself after his second Jack scene of the day, he asked, “So, how you doin’?”
“Oh, I’ve been better.” Steve didn’t know what to say to that, because he couldn’t keep up. After he stammered a bit she added, “You called?”
“Yeahp. Your sister and me. We need your help.”
“Speak of the devil,” Kim replied as Kayla came down the spiral staircase.
Kayla saw that Kimberly was there smiling at her. This is the Kimberly I know, she thought to herself for the first time in, literally, years. The genuine warmth that had been missing for so long was like a bloom of sunlight. She stopped slightly in her tracks, Kimberly opened her arms, and Kayla ran into them. Steve let the sisters have this moment but soon started explaining why they’d asked her to come over.
“Listen, uh, I hate to break this up, but … we need your help.”
Kim blinked as she held her sister. “I find it hard to believe anyone would need my help. In fact, I’m surprised you want me near Kayla at all.”
Now Steve blinked. “What? Why?”
Kim released Kayla and patted her still damp, undone hair before turning to Steve. “I think we both know why.”
Steve had no clue, and he was so tired of playing along. “Just tell me, Kimberly.”
“Come on, Steven, don’t tell me you haven’t heard the rumors,” she said, managing to sound accusatory and sheepish at the same time.
Ok, this had to have something to do with the prostitution. Maybe a murder accusation? It didn’t matter, he just needed to get on with the lessons. “Kim, listen. Rumors are worth about as much as a screen door on a submarine. What I know is that you’re a good person, you love your sister, and she needs your help. I don’t care what people are saying.”
Kayla sensed that something was amiss, here and signed her concern to Steve from behind Kim. Steve held up a hand to her. “Hold on, baby.” Kayla nodded and then raised her eyebrows in concern when Kim turned back to look at her.
“Listen,” Steve said. “You know sign language. We need a review course.”
“How do you know I know sign language?”
“You used it when you were counselling kids,” he said in non-answer.
“Wait, what do you mean a review course?”
“I mean a crash course.” But Kayla was signing, what’s happening? to her husband, because she hated being shut out of this conversation, and Kim started in with the third degree.
“How do you know that sign?” she asked with surprise.
“What, you think Peggy would let us leave the hospital without some basics?” Steve was proud of his fast thinking.
“Oh. Of … of course. Gotcha.”
“We know a few, but not enough to really communicate. We’re going nuts, we gotta be able to talk to each other.”
“So you need me to help fill in the gaps.” Kimberly turned to her sister and took her by the hand. “You want my help?” Kayla smiled and nodded at what she’d correctly guessed Kim had said. “Ok, yes,” she smiled, truly delighted. “My sister needs me … and the truth is I could really use the distraction.”
They got down to business right away. Kimberly sat them down at the table and started very much like she had the first time around – with full sentences. In a perfect world, the right way to do this would have been with the alphabet, their names, the W-words, and how to express them all with facial expressions. A crinkling of the brow for who, what, when, where, and why. A subtle raise of the eyebrows for surprise or acknowledgement. Luckily, they had a foundation for it all so they didn’t start off completely lost before they even began.
Kimberly was clearly impressed with how quickly Steve and Kayla were “learning,” and they were, actually, pretty impressed with themselves at how much had come back to them just in the hours Kim was there. In fact, the more they remembered, the less sure Kayla was that they really needed as much help as Steve thought.
Around 3pm they were taking a break when the phone rang. Steve motioned to Kayla that the phone was ringing, Kayla’s eyes got big, and neither of them noticed how confused Kimberly was.
“You gonna answer that?” Kim asked him.
“I’m not sure who it is,” he answered her while looking to Kayla for direction.
“Yeah, that’s how it works. The phone rings, you say, ‘hello,’ and they tell you who’s calling.
The crack focused Steve, and he chuckled at her wit. “See, teachin’ us all kinds of stuff.” Then he got up, picked up the receiver, and hoped for the best. “Hello?”
“Hi Steve!” replied Adrienne’s adoring voice.
“Adrienne?” he replied with relief after several beats.
“Yes, silly, you sound weird. Is it Kayla? How is she?
“No, she’s fine. Everything’s fine.”
“Ok, good,” she replied reassured. “Listen, the reason I’m calling. I wanted to invite you and Kayla to a Kiriakis party here at the mansion.”
Already? That was faster than I remember. “Oh. Yeah, when is that?” Kayla was now standing in front of him watching his demeanor and gesturing to know who was on the other end of the phone. “Adrienne,” he silently mouthed very succinctly.
“Tonight,” Adrienne said with a guilty whine. “I know it’s kind of late notice.”
“Yeah, baby, it’s a little last minute.” Kayla was poking Steve for details, and when he finger signed P-A-R-T-Y, Kim’s jaw dropped. Kayla, however, was too vehemently signing a string of no, no, no, and no, for either of them to notice.
“I don’t think Kayla’s ready for a party.”
“Can you ask her? Maybe it would cheer her up.”
“Uh … hold on.”
Steve covered the mouthpiece with his hand and ruminated uncomfortably. He didn’t want to go to this. Kayla didn’t want him to go to this. But he went last time, and all he could think of was the last jump surely being an effect of making changes.
“Maybe if you just come with me,” he gestured. “We were both there last time.”
Kayla didn’t know what he said, but it appeared he was suggesting they go to the party. From the look on his face, he wasn’t any more interested than she was, which produced a renewed round of negative gestures from her. “N-O,” she spelled, followed by a very animated snap shut of her two fingers against her thumb: NO.” Then she crossed her arms and glared at him.
Kim glared at them both.
“Adrienne, I’m sorry, we’re not gonna make it.” He shook his head as he said it and was relieved when Kayla visibly relaxed a bit.
“Aw, please?” Adrienne whined like the annoying little sister she truly coveted being. “I really wanna see my big brother tonight.”
“No, baby, Kayla’s only been home a day, we’re gonna stay put. You have a good time with Dimples and your friends tonight.”
“Ok,” she grudgingly accepted. “Love you, big brother. Tell Kayla I’m thinking about her.”
“You, too.”
Steve hung up and squeezed Kayla’s hand. “No party,” he said. Kayla let out a breath and smiled before leaning into him for an embrace. Then they sat back down. “Ok, where were we?”
“Steven?” Kim asked. “Where did you learn to finger spell?”
Uh oh. “You showed us.”
“No, I haven’t gotten to that yet.”
“Oh right, must have been Peggy.”
“You said Peggy showed you the basics.” Kimberly was signing as she spoke, and Kayla was now rubbing at her forehead.
“The ABCs are pretty basic. We’re a quick study.”
“Yeah,” Kim said with serious doubt, “a real quick study.” She studied her sister’s face and knew there was something they weren’t telling her. “What’s going on here Kay?” she signed.
Kayla was not in the mood to make anything up or try to explain herself. So as best she could, she signed not to ask, that she wouldn’t understand, and to just please help them learn.
“I won’t understand, huh?” Kim looked down at the table, then looked back up sadly into her sister’s eyes. “Well, we’ve all got our secrets, don’t we?” Kim let out a heavy sigh, clearly more about herself than her sister. “Ok, I won’t ask questions. On one condition.” She now directed this to Steve but kept on signing. “I need somewhere to stay.”
“Why?” Steve had no idea what was happening with her and Shane right now.
“No questions. I don’t get to ask, so neither do you. Is it a deal?”
On the one hand, having a houseguest was the last thing either of them wanted. But the first time through this, Kim had stayed with Kayla the whole time Steve had been in Washington DC; so on the other hand, this actually made Steve feel a little better. Kayla agreed, and they all got back down to the ASL lessons.
They broke for dinner, and Kimberly made a quick trip to get some things for her stay in the loft. By the end of the night Kim was set up in the guest room. Kayla knew that in normal circumstances her sister would want to talk to her about her own problems – confide and connect. Kayla was relieved that this wasn’t one of those times, because she didn’t think she’d have been able to do it. If it had been LA, or even the last jump, Kayla could have managed it. But not this time.
With this jump, Kayla had hit a very real wall. It had been too many jumps, too much chaos uprooting a hard-fought happiness. She had promised herself back when she’d left Emily that she’d never let herself get attached to a jump again. They both had. But they’d spent more than four years in LA starting at the turn of the millennium. She’d managed to keep herself as detached as she could for a time, but after a year, and then another, and then another after that, you can’t help what your heart wants. The brain wires itself to its surroundings, its responsibilities, and its people. Real or not, primary timeline or not, your existence takes over, and you can no longer say no. She and Steve had talked so many times about how proud they were of their daughter and how she’d turned out in this alternate existence where she got to have a father. They knew they could jump at any time and had learned the hard way how to deal with it – together. Only when the time came, they weren’t together. They weren’t even adults. They were in a truly foreign time without each other, and for Kayla, she had to manage truly alone for months before her Steve had arrived.
So, now? Now she had no emotional bandwidth left. She was tired. She wanted to recover from the last, horrifying jump after not being able to truly recover from leaving their lives in the LA jump before that, and she didn’t want to be responsible for whomever she was right now. Maybe that’s why she couldn’t talk, because something inside of her was rebelling, or just refusing to bother. Or maybe she was just broken now. But one way or the other, she didn’t have it in her to manage her extended existence with family and friends that weren’t actually real.
So, that Kimberly was holed up in the guest room where she was alone with her thoughts on the ruse she and Shane were pursuing at the moment was truly the best case scenario for Kayla.
Will I still be here tomorrow? she wondered. Will I have to be here for months or years? I just want to go home. But … where is home? Kayla fell asleep in the arms of her worried husband who knew she wasn’t adjusting this time, and it scared him.
The next day they were back at it with Kim. Kayla tried to swallow down the truth that her heart was not in this so that Steve and Kim wouldn’t notice. But she didn’t want to be here in this timeline trying to make a go of things any more today than she had yesterday. She really did try to focus on the lessons Kim was giving them, but with every passing minute she was losing the ability to keep that mask in place.
Steve noticed that Kayla was basically elsewhere, but he was desperate to learn the signs he would need to really, truly talk to his wife. So he did something exceedingly rare; he passed whatever was going on in Kayla’s head like other items on the buffet he’d passed over before so he could concentrate on himself. His focus was keen, and he absorbed everything Kimberly was showing them like sponge. Even so, they were both surprised at just how much they’d actually remembered with the slightest of nudges from their instructor. It wasn’t syntax or grammar they cared about, it was pure vocabulary. And in just those hours that Kimberly had sat them down these two days, it was like a library of books they’d forgotten they’d read had all started coming back to them.
Before the day would come to an end, they’d get more phone calls from family, Melissa would show up at the loft digging for information about who this Billy person was, and Steve would watch Kayla’s emotional mettle continue to disintegrate.
When Steve came out of the bathroom that night, Kayla was sitting on the bed cross legged against the headboard with a pad and pencil in her lap. He looked down at her and knew before she even started signing that she had reached the end of her proverbial rope. He sat across from her in the same way they’d done so many times before and waited for her to start talking. She stared down into her lap, and Steve tipped her chin up to look at him. Courage, he signed. Kayla nodded and smiled sadly. Then she began.
I can’t stay here, she signed. I can’t stay in this timeline, being who this Kayla is supposed to be. I’m so depressed. I don’t want to do anything but sleep. Like maybe if I just keep my eyes closed that when I next open them I’ll wake up at home.
Kayla signed the best she could, filling in their gaps with written words. Steve didn’t interrupt her, patiently letting her get it all out.
Please don’t make me stay. I can’t do any of this without you. But please, don’t make me stay here. I won’t survive it this time. I—
Steve stayed her stirring hands. He’d heard enough.
“Yes, you will.” He signed as he spoke. It was rough and choppy as compared to Kayla’s slow, smooth signs, and his hands dropped some of his spoken words, but he refused to relent. “Sweetness … I’m scared we’re going to break the slipstream if we make more changes. There’s nothing you can’t survive. You’ve shown me.”
Kayla shook her head. Not this time. I’m shutting down. Steve frowned as his eye finally took on the troubled worry he’d been fighting for the last three days. You see me shutting down. All he could do was nod.
“I know,” he bobbed his fist yes.
I … can’t … stay here. Steve knew she meant in this timeline; but he also knew that she meant a lot more than that. Kayla picked up the pencil. “Please,” she wrote, “I’m begging you—”
Steve took the pencil from Kayla’s hand and scribbled forcefully over the word, “begging.” Then he looked up into her searching eyes. You never have to beg me for anything. He neither signed nor wrote nor even spoke this. He simply rendered it directly into her heart through the depth of his soul.
The profound meaning and devotion finally broke Kayla’s resolve, and silent tears poured from her eyes.
I know we’re not as good at the sign language as we were before, and I don’t know why I can’t talk, but … Kayla trailed off.
“But what?” he signed.
Unbidden, her inner voice insisted she open her mouth and speak. She insisted back to herself that she’d already tried, and it countered back with snide condescension. Did you? she asked herself. Are you sure about that?
“I TRIED!!!” Kayla shouted. Her voice was loud and a little hoarse, but it was hers.
Steve drew back in shock and cracked a smile so wide it forced his eyebrow up into his hairline. “Baby! You spoke!”
Kayla felt her vocal chords vibrate within her and parted her lips in amazement. Well, what do you fucking know, the voice mocked her.
“Do it again!” Steve encouraged, “Go on!”
Kayla swallowed and then at a volume she guessed was lower she said, “S-s-s-teve? Can … can you … hear me?”
Steve’s eye misted. “Sure can, Sweetness!” he continued to sign. “Can you hear me?”
Kayla’s face fell as she shook her head. “I … I can talk, though.” Told you, it said. “Shut up,” she whispered out loud.
“What?”
“Nothing,” she smiled. Now she took a deep breath and exhaled it heavily. “Just, thank God.” It felt so good to know she had her voice. But she didn’t actually feel emotionally better, and it only fueled her resolve to sit out this jump. So before another word was said, she continued. “You were right, we really did need Kim’s help, that was a good idea.” She smiled and squeezed Steve’s hand. “My smart husband.” Steve smiled back and reveled in the sound of her voice that he’d spent months without. But he didn’t like that her tears hadn’t actually stopped. “But I still can’t stay here. You understand me, and I understand you.”
“My ASL sucks,” Steve insisted.
“It’s good enough. We’re good enough now. I don’t have it in me to do this, Steve. We,” she signed as she spoke, “need to pack up and go. And we need to figure out how to … make it stop. How to get … home.”
Steve held his wife’s face in his hands and wiped her tears with his thumbs. “Ok,” he said. “Ok.” He pulled Kayla into him, held her in his lap, and let her cry while he tamped down the fear of how the slipstream was going to react to this.
First thing the next morning Steve and Kayla separated to have two separate conversations that they’d never had before. They were nervous to leave each other now that a threat like 1971 proved itself real, but it was the fastest way to make everything happen. Kayla and Kimberly’s conversation was going to be weird, but not nearly as weird as the one Steve was having with Shane.
“I’m sorry, you need how much money?” Shane asked in utter bewilderment.
“Twenty-thousand.”
“Dollars?”
“Better than rubles.”
“You can’t be serious,” Shane said incredulously.
“What, I’m good for it.”
“You are? So, we’re going to be robbing a bank, then, are we?”
“We’re getting out of Dodge, Shane. I need the money to get Kayla somewhere safe.”
“Alright, well, wouldn’t a hotel do, mate?”
“Short term, sure, but I have no idea how long it’s gonna take.”
Shane glared at Steve from across the decorative table in the foyer of what would one day become the Dimera mansion but for now was still solidly an ISA stronghold. Steve couldn’t help but chuckle, because after all these years he could plainly see that his on-again-off-again-friend just didn’t know what to make of this at all.
“Look, it’s not just the money, I need a favor.” Shane’s glare turned to something else entirely at the notion that the money alone was not the favor. “You ever have dessert before dinner? I used to call that ‘pressert.’ Get it, pre-emptive dessert? Well, one day, you’re gonna need me to do some stuff for you and the ISA.”
“I highly doubt that,” Shane refuted.
“Trust me, you will. So call this a pre-payback. And it’s not like you’re doin’ it for just me. You’re doin’ it for Kayla. You care about her, right?”
“She’s my sister-in-law, Steve, of course, I care about her.” Then Shane’s demeanor changed. “Well, she is for now, er … Kimberly and I are having problems.”
“You’re totally faking it, dude.” He and Kayla had worked out last night that this was when Kimberly was working an undercover job for the ISA and had to pretend they were broken up.
“I’m sure I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Shane protested.
“I don’t have the patience for this, Shane, just stop. I know what’s going on.”
Shane pumped his jaw. “Kimberly told you?” he whispered for some unknown reason, as they were alone in the house.
“Don’t blame her, now, she didn’t do nothin’ wrong, we just know.”
“Who’s we?!”
“Kayla and me. We’re not gonna say anything, and Kim can stay in the loft as long as you guys need her to. Kayla’s talkin’ to her right now. But Kayla’s not safe from the knifer,” which was absolutely true, “so we need to get out of here.”
“That’s why you need the money?”
Steve nodded. “And it’s why I need you to make things right here. I don’t know how long we’ll be … if our … jobs … apartments … how long we’ll need ‘em.”
“And exactly what job am I fixing for you?”
“Just … take care of ‘em, wouldja please?! Just tell the hospital that Kayla’s on sabbatical or something, but just so you know, we’re not coming back.”
“’Til when?”
Till never. “Dunno.”
“Weeks?”
“Maybe more.”
“You’re asking a lot, Steve.”
“I’m gonna deserve it.”
“Oh please, the pre-payback? That’s supposed to convince me?”
“Are you my friend right now or not?!” Steve shouted.
Shane flinched at the unexpected decibel level. “Yes, Steve, I am. But …”
“No buts, man! I need to get Kayla right and get us home! The only way to do it is to leave, and I just need you to trust me! I’m tellin’ you I know things, and I know about this undercover thing Kim’s got goin’, she didn’t tell me, I just know. So, if I know that, isn’t that and you sayin’ you’re my friend enough?”
“Alright!” Shane relented. “Alright, fine. I’ll help you. The money’s not a problem. The fixing things everywhere else is the hard part.”
Steve gripped Shane’s arm in appreciation and smiled. “Thanks, dude. You always come through one way or the other, ya know that?”
Shane blew out a breath, not so sure he wanted to get involved in this, but he couldn’t jeopardize the undercover operation, so he just went ahead with it. “You need the money right now?”
“That would be good.”
“Don’t tell me, you want cash.”
“You got it?”
Shane rolled his eyes and disappeared into the library to fetch the money from the secret room.
Kimberly, in the meantime was trying to process what Kayla was saying to her back in the loft.
“Sis, try that again, I think I’m so happy to hear your voice that I heard you wrong.”
“No,” Kayla said as she also snapped her two fingers shut against her thumb, “you heard me right. Steve and I are leaving and not coming back. You can stay here as long as you want.
“Not coming back?” she dropped her smile, as well as her ASL. “You’ve just made a huge improvement, what are you talking about?”
“I still can’t hear, Kim, you have to keep signing.”
“Speaking is a huge step,” she added back the signs, “you can’t just – what do you mean leaving?”
“I mean we’re leaving Salem.”
“But, where are you going?”
Kayla shrugged her shoulders. “Away from here.”
“Kay, that doesn’t make any sense.”
“Why? Bo and Hope sailed away, maybe we’ll do the same thing.”
“But they’re … Bo and Hope are …”
“Parents. They have a toddler with them, and they’re just fine out there on their boat.”
“Oh, so you’re buying a boat now? Gonna sail away?”
Kayla shrugged again. “Maybe. Maybe we’ll just drive until we hit the ocean.”
“Sis, you’re talking nonsense, now, you’re scaring me. What’s gotten into you?”
“Kimmie … I know you and Shane aren’t really broken up, you’re doing some kind of ISA undercover thing.” Kimberly turned away from her so as to hide her reaction to the truth of being found out. Kayla turned her back around. You can stay here, do whatever you need to do. Steve is calling in a favor from Shane so we can disappear.
“I don’t get this, why do you have to disappear?!”
“The Knifer. And truthfully, I’m just not ready to come back. I need to leave.”
“Shane … is helping?” Kayla nodded. Kim finally met her eyes. “When are you leaving?”
Today, she only signed.
“Do Ma and Pop know?” Kayla shook her head. “Jeez, Kay, you’re gonna break their hearts.”
Kayla couldn’t tell her sister that their parents weren’t real any more than she could tell her that she wasn’t real. “Tell them for me. Please. It’s the last favor I’ll ask. Tell them I’m fine and that Steve is protecting me from the knifer after the explosion. They’ll understand.”
Kim was apprehensive but hugged her sister and agreed.
Ten hours later, under the cover of night, Steve and Kayla pooled all the money they had along with the twenty grand that Shane had given them and headed for the pier. Many years ago and some months from now it was and would be where they’d be married. Tonight it was where they pushed off in the small houseboat they’d paid for in cash from the same dodgy but reliable friend that Steve had used so many other times. No paperwork, no records, no way for Harper Deveraux or Jack or Melissa or anyone else to find them. “It was this or an RV,” Steve said. Kayla smiled, and it was the first truly genuine show of hope that he’d seen from her since this jump began.
Kayla needed to go home. But first she had to figure out where that was, because the truth was she really didn’t know where that was, anymore. But she did know that it was time for them, once and for all, to try to get there. She took a deep breath of the Salem air and felt her husband’s arms embrace her from behind. I love you, she held up the one-handed sign as she laid her head back against his shoulder. Steve kissed her temple and rubbed his cheek on her soft hair. The motor propelled them down the river, away from Salem. They did not look back.