Kayla stroked her thumb very lightly across Steve’s knuckle while she watched his chest rise and fall. She was still in the position she’d woken up in and was unwilling to move. Their sleeping forms facing each other, Steve had their clasped hands held to his chest. Her overstimulated brain didn’t give her that many hours before it couldn’t help but re-engage. It was too overwhelmed with the fact that Steve was here. With her. In this bed. In this life. Now she watched him in very deep sleep. Deep, she realized … but not restful. Because he, she now really understood, was not at rest. She knew this was Steve, she could feel in every way that he was authentically him. But she also could feel that part of him was missing. Almost like he’d come back wrong. No, not wrong … bothered. There was a vexation that ran through him like a hidden river through a mountain range. She traced one finger of her free hand very lightly down his jawline and really looked at him. His face should have been relaxed in its slumber, but instead his brow was drawn up slightly. His grip should have been sleepy, but instead he held on to her with a strength that bellied that fact that he was actually sleeping. Steve should have found serenity in their reunion last night; but it was clear that what he’d found was continued … distress.
We didn’t make love. You gave your love to me, but you wouldn’t let me give mine to you. It was sex, but it wasn’t a joining, and it wasn’t even mutual. Kayla knew he was loving her when he’d given her that pleasure. It was more than just sex, she felt his love as her body shook. Why wouldn’t he let her give him that same pleasure? Was it appeasement? He said it wasn’t, insisted it wasn’t. She saw his raw emotions splay across his face when she said she felt cheap. He was upset when she suggested it was pity. But … was it? Was he pacifying her? Maybe his anger was at himself because it was true. She didn’t know. And for the first time, she was thinking very carefully about it all instead of reacting.
Kayla observed the lines in his beautiful face. Lines that would have gone unnoticed day to day if only she’d been there to live those days with him. Now all at once, they seemed premature to her. And there was just no getting around the fact that he looked very different. The ten years separating them were hard on him. It didn’t matter to her or diminish her attraction to him, but it did make her think.
Now watching him like this, she thought about the last four days and was beginning to understand. This thing troubling him had been there from the moment she’d found him. She hadn’t really gotten it until just now. But in this moment, it was clear to her that it was there then, it was still there now, and it was hurting him. It was preventing him from finding peaceful sleep. She wanted to love whatever it was out of him. She wanted to let him find the love inside of her that lived only for him deep within her soul. She wanted to connect with him in that way that only making love to him would provide.
Kayla leaned over and placed a loving, lingering kiss on his cheek below his patch then whispered, “I hope you’ll let me love you soon.”
Steve was so far inside himself that a mack truck could plow into the bedroom and he might not hear it. He was dreaming. He was on top of Kayla, and she was so beautiful. He wasn’t aroused, but he had her legs up over his thighs, anyway, and plunged himself inside her. When he did she screamed, and when he next looked down she was the haunting vision of what he’d taken in after running down the spiral staircase in an attempt to stop Jack from raping her. He cried out for her, and she sat up and palmed his cheek. “She is me.” She said. And he realized with sick dread that if that were true then he was going to hurt her no matter what. The last thing she did before he woke up was kiss him in that special spot beneath his patch where his scar used to be and said, “I hope you’ll let me love you soon.”
Steve slowly came out of his deep and unrestful sleep with no memory of the dream he’d just had, destined to linger on the periphery of his memory. Kayla was curled up beneath his chin and looked up at him when she felt him start to rouse. “Kayla? What time is it?” Steve was stunned when she said it was just about noon. He’d had more sleep in the last three days than he’d had in the whole week previous, yet he felt more worn out than he had any right to. He went to stretch and for the first time in hours released Kayla’s arm from where he’d been holding it against his chest. Kayla sucked in her breath at the sharp pain this produced. “You ok?” he asked.
“Yeah,” she chuckled mildly, “just a little stiff.”
“You sleep weird?”
She shrugged. “Don’t worry about it.” Something in her demeanor, however, made her an open book. He propped himself up on his elbow and rubbed his thumb over her bottom lip.
“Kayla tell me.”
“It’s nothing, you were just … holding me. I was afraid if I moved you’d stop.”
“Why would I want to stop holding you?”
“For the same reason you—” but she cut herself off. She did not want to go here. “You know what,” she smiled, let’s just forget it. I loved the feel of you holding me while we slept, and I didn’t want it to stop. It’s as simple as that.”
Steve looked doubtful and knew damn well there was more to this. And he knew what, too, her eyes told him so. Ten years of separation could not stop those eyes from telling her secrets to him, and right now those eyes were telling him that she was feeling insecure because of the one-way nature of this morning’s activities.
“I love you,” she said softly.
“I love you, too, Sweetness.”
That this morning did not fix anything was a fact that remained unspoken but no less understood. Steve could see it in her eyes, and she knew that he saw it there. They were naked in bed, and it was a very awkward combination that made them both uneasy. Kayla looked like she wanted to say something, and Steve wasn’t sure if he should stay and let her say it, or go shower to run away from it. Moments later when she next spoke he was still there. “There’s something I want to do for you. Can you trust me to let me do it?”
“What’s that?” he asked as neutrally as possible.
She held out her arms and said, “Let me hold you.”
“Only if I can kiss you first.”
“You can kiss me anytime you want.”
“What if you’re on rounds and Dr. Sam is right there?”
“Then he gets to watch.”
“What if you’re—”
“Are you going to kiss me or keep coming up with challenges?”
Steve’s lips were soft and warm, and Kayla wanted to feel them in other places. Instead she let him sink down into the bed and lay his head between her breasts. They were soft and warm, too, and if Steve wasn’t feeling so conflicted, he would have rubbed his face into them before lifting her leg to slide into her. None of that happened, though. Instead, Kayla’s arms enveloped him, and she stroked the strands of his short hair in her fingers with great affection.
“I have loved you for a very long time,” Kayla said after he’d spent several moments in her comforting arms. “I never stopped. And I never will.” God he loved her so much. Knowing that he could have chased away her loneliness so many years before he really did was a cruel thing to know. Steve squeezed her and turned his face to kiss her ribcage. She shivered but did not act. “I think there are things you’re not telling me,” she said softly. Steve closed his eye. She was so damned perceptive in every timeline he’d ever known her in. He sighed heavily, and she knew she was right. “Steve, there is nothing you could say to me that would make me stop loving you.”
Steve hated lying to her. Especially when she knew it was happening. He’d gotten so much worse at it as the years went by, not better.
“There are things I’m not telling you.” Steve had no idea he was going to say it until he did. Kayla’s breath stilled for a few moments, but then her fingers continued their comforting strokes.
“I know.” They didn’t change their positions. If anything, those positions intensified with Kayla’s fingers caressing even more comfortingly and Steve’s hold on her even stronger. “There’s nothing you can’t tell me. I won’t be mad, and I won’t turn you away.”
“You may not believe me.” Stop it, he warned himself, you stop it right now.
“I’ll believe anything you tell me.”
“Sweetness … even if you did, it’s more complicated than just XYZ”
“That’s ok, I can give you time for the entire alphabet.” Steve let go of a laugh. “I’m serious, do you need the day, ‘cause I can ask Kim to keep Stephanie another night.”
“No!” Now Kayla stopped at Steve’s abrupt reaction, and he realized he needed to reel it in. “I’m sorry, I just mean I don’t want to be without her another night,” he said leaning away to look at her. “I want to spend time with my daughter.” Kayla felt a bittersweetness here, because the sight of him with Stephanie was joyous. But he didn’t say he wanted to spend time with his family, which built her insecurity about whatever it was going on inside of him. Steve picked up on this right away and made it right. “I want both of my girls at home with me.”
Kayla nodded and gave him the slightest smile. “I’m going to get up and take a shower,” Kayla said. Steve was kind of surprised.
“You are?”
“That ok?”
“Well, yeah, baby. I just – you’re not gonna—” Steve was flustered by his wife’s unexpected end to the conversation. “I just told you there’s stuff I’m keepin’ from you.”
“So what do you want me to do, make you tell me?”
“No. I’m just surprised.”
“Things aren’t right. Not just because of this morning, but because I know you. I haven’t known this Nick Stockton person you told me about, but I do know Steve Johnson, and I know that,” she took a breath, because this was harder as it went on, “this morning wasn’t how it should have been.”
“I’m sorry—” he began, but Kayla cut him right off with the pads of her fingertips to his lips.
“Shh. Don’t be sorry. You said I have my husband back, and I believe you. So, I’m not going to push.” She would be lying to herself if she said the look on his face didn’t contain a healthy dose of relief.
“Other women?” Steve reacted, but she plowed on. “I don’t expect you were celibate. I don’t care.” Steve laid a very doubtful look upon her. “Ok, I care! But it doesn’t change anything. Back to being a bad guy?” She shrugged. “It wasn’t you. None of it matters now. Whoever that was, it’s not who you are now. I know who you are now. Steven Earl Johnson. The love of my life. My husband.”
“Sweetness,” he tried again, but Kayla absolutely would not allow him to say anything. And shook her head as she placed another finger on his lips.
“You say you’re home. That you’re not going anywhere. That I’m not dreaming. Is that true?”
“It is, baby, I promise you that it is.”
“Well, I’m not going anywhere, either.” Steve couldn’t help it, he made a pained sound. Because what she’d just said couldn’t be farther from the truth. And he couldn’t tell her. Kayla sat up quickly with anxious worry “Steve, do you think I might leave you?!”
Something intense came over Steve, He pulled himself up to mirror her, then attacked her lips with his. She cried out with the unexpected action, but she immediately succumbed to him. The kiss was quick, but it was passionate. He released her lips, then took her face in his hands. Steve wanted to roll on top of her and bury himself inside her hot sheath. He wanted to rock with her as she met his thrusts with her own rolling hips. He wanted to feel her climax build and hear the pleasure he was giving her in the moans and whimpers he’d brought out in her this morning. He wanted to feel her hands push him inside of her by his buttocks. He wanted to hear himself call her name in lusty sexuality that begged for her to let go. He wanted to feel his cock slide in and out of her while her tightness surrounded him. He wanted to explode inside of her and hear her tell him she loved him. And he wanted to do it right now so he could prove to her that she was the only woman in the world that he wanted any of that with.
“I know you’ve been through hell,” he said with barely controlled fervor. “I don’t want to hurt you. So you listen to me. I love you. I want you. You’re right, it didn’t go how it should have this morning, but I do want you. You’re not leavin’ me! And I’m not leavin’ you! I can’t tell you everything, baby, I just can’t. I want to.”
“You can!”
“I can’t! I need time! But until then we stay together! No matter what!”
Kayla embraced him around the neck and held him tightly. “Ok. I won’t push you. “I’ll never leave you.”
Yes you will. “Neither will I.”
An hour later Kayla was tidying up the kitchen after the quick lunch she’d made for them. Steve’s hair was short enough that it was already almost dry from the shower he’d just taken – alone – when he walked into the kitchen. They were passionate and intimate in the past few hours, but now they were tiptoeing on eggshells again.
“I, ah, need to go to the market. We’re pretty much out of food.”
“Yeah, sorry ‘bout that.”
“Don’t be, you need to eat. I don’t think I even noticed that the food was going more quickly.”
“Oh, you noticed. Those two Fuji apples didn’t get gobbled up by the ghost your landlady thinks lives here.”
Kayla’s jaw opened in surprise. “I’d forgotten about that.”
“Guilty.”
Steve paced around nervously and adjusted his patch. “I wish I could go do it. Haven’t left this house in almost a week.”
Kayla desperately wanted to ask him when they could go to the ISA and start the process of outing him, but she just knew in her gut that the answer to that was wrapped up somewhere in the cat’s new name and the other things she wasn’t telling him. Steve noticed the strain in her face and hated that he was doing this to her.
“Can you feed—Kitty? If you don’t she’ll just yowl ‘til you do.” His reaction to this request wasn’t particularly weird, so she deduced that the problem wasn’t the cat so much as her name. They kissed lightly, then Kayla left for Albertson’s. When she did, Steve dutifully fed Kitty, which did, indeed, end the insistent meows. Then he opened a beer and drained it. He had to calm his angst or he was going to implode. He then opened and finished a second.
Kayla, I did something this morning, and I can’t take it back. I’m afraid you’re never going to forgive me. I always thought the other Kaylas and other Steve’s – the destination versions of ourselves – weren’t the ones that really mattered. But this other you is real, baby. This other you wants her husband back, and every time I don’t let her have him I see the rejection in your face. I don’t know what to do or how to be or what’s right and what’s wrong. I just love you so much. And I can’t stand seeing you in pain. Do you know what it does to me? Did I ever tell you what it’s like to see you cry? Your eyes get so sad. They get red and swell up, and it makes that blue of yours so bright it hurts to look at. I feel it in my heart. I’m too selfish to take it like a man. I can’t take it when you’re hurting, Sweetness. I can’t take it. Last night I couldn’t take it. So, I made it better.
Steve stared at the blinking cursor as his heart pounded. Guilt spreading thickly through his veins
You wanted me to make love to you. I couldn’t do it, so I
Made you come? Who writes that? He’d said these words to her a million times. He’d used the word “f*ck” as a command and not an adverb. The words “pussy” and “dick” had left his mouth plenty of times, and she liked it when they did, too. But to write them down? He felt … weird.
touched you instead. Your
Steve looked over his shoulder. At what he didn’t know, and realized he was being stupid. He needed to just get this out. He backspaced.
You were naked. I put my fingers inside you and made you come, Sweetness. I tried not to. I tried to wait for you, but this is still you!
I was missing you so bad I got in your bed while you were at work. I don’t know why I got naked, but I did, and when you got home, you got in with me. When I said no to you, you didn’t understand. It was just like we said it would be, the other you was so hurt. Like I was rejecting you. You thought I didn’t want you. You were suffering so bad, your heart was breaking. Again! After being lonely for so long. I tried to tell you it wasn’t true, but you didn’t believe me. Hell, I wouldn’t believe me, either! But god, the pain you were in. When I said no to you, it hurt you so much. Remember when I didn’t remember you yet, and you wanted us to make love? I said no, that it wouldn’t be right. It was that same look on your face. It was so cruel, I was there but I wouldn’t let you have me. And here I am now doin’ that to you again! Well don’t worry baby you really let me have it. And I couldn’t take it. I wasn’t strong enough.
So, I gave that to you. Without you. And I liked it. It was just my fingers, but I wanted it to be the rest of me. I wanted to be inside of you. I wanted it. For the first time in so long, baby, I want sex again. I wish you were here for it. For what I did. But you’re so smart, baby, you knew something was wrong. You started to call it a pity f*ck, and I almost lost it. You were wrong there, it wasn’t pity, it was pain. Yours. I made sure you knew how much I loved and wanted you.
Kayla I feel guilty. I feel like I did something wrong. You’re at the store right now, but right before you left, I wanted you so bad. I don’t think I can go another night in bed with you and not make love to you. Think back to December of 2000, baby, and tell me, if I’d shown up and refused to make love to you, would you be ok with that? You’re this Kayla in six more years. When I hurt her, I’m hurting you. Even if you don’t remember it when you get here, I’m hurting you.
Steve impulsively hit the send button, but then he had another thought and started a new email.
By the way, remember Dr. Oncology Dude that felt you up at that party? He’s got it bad for you. I think you’ve talked to him every night. He’s not going to give up. We had a fight last night about it. Before we– what do I call it, Kayla, messing around? Heavy petting? I feel stupid, that’s teenager stuff. Before we did it – well before my fingers did it. Before I did you. Now I sound like a prick. Great.
He thought about getting up for a third beer but he was on a roll now. He was buzzing a bit from the first two he’d chugged in quick succession and was not as judicious in his words as he otherwise would have been.
Your doctor boss has the hots for you, and I am going to tear his nuts off if he gets out of the bullpen with you, baby, forget even first base. But it’s ok for me to put my fingers in you and make you scream before all of you gets here. Right? That’s ok? But it’s not ok for you to flirt with him and make him want you. You flirted with him to try to make me jealous. You thought if you talked real sweet to him that I’d change my tune and get crazy. Well, you were right. You always were the smart one.
And I’m the asshole who wouldn’t say I love you in Chicago. And now the same one who cheated on you with you.
There’s something else that happened on this jump. When I first got here. It’s haunting me. Because I don’t know how to let myself say the words.
Oh, and then there’s Shane. We have to call him and have him help us get Dimera off my back so I can leave the house. I haven’t left the house in f*cking ever. Been here 12 days, nine of them in the house. Can’t wait to ask him for a favor. At least this time I’m local.
Who was he writing these to? Kayla? That’s how it started, but somewhere along the line they became more of a journal. A coping mechanism for not just living with Destination Kayla but loving her, too, while he waited out Prime Kayla. He hit send again, then went to his usual spot to watch for anyone outside that shouldn’t be there.
When Stephanie arrived home, Steve was hiding in the loft. Kim strolled on in and plopped herself onto the couch. Kayla tried to shoo her out, but Kim wasn’t quite getting the message and continued to make small talk, mainly about what a handful her daughter was.
“I didn’t give Ma half this much trouble, Kay, I’ll tell ya.” Despite Kayla’s best efforts to get her sister out of the house, Kayla couldn’t help but protest.
“Please. You gave Mom and Pop more grief than the rest of us combined. That includes Bo.”
“Hello? Best and the brightest, here?”
That phrase never failed to get Kayla’s goat, which Kim was well aware of. Steve wondered why she insisted on using it when she knew how much it hurt her sister. Because her sister hurt her. “Yeah, well, f*cking Alamain didn’t help,” he whispered out loud. As Kayla was ushering her sister politely out of the house Steve wondered when it was that they had finally decided they were done hurting each other.
The moment the door closed Stephanie raced up the stairs. She hugged her father so hard that he let out a guffaw that could be heard in every room of the house, they were so happy to see each other. The three of them talked, and she proudly told her parents all about how normal she acted and didn’t say a word about anything.
She brought her homework into the loft, and Steve truly delighted in quizzing Stephanie on her vocabulary words. It was a good hour of this, her math times tables, which she knew up and down and were, truly, pointless, followed by US geography. This she was not as good at and couldn’t get the square states in the southwest or small states in the northeast quite right.
“You’re really smart, Papa, you know that?”
God, she sounded just like her mother. “Yeah, how do ya figure?”
“Mama always said you were the smartest man she’d ever known, and it turns out it’s true.”
“Naw, baby, your mom’s the smart one. She was always the smart one. Still is, look, she’s a doctor.”
“Yes, Mama’s smart, too!” she yelled down the stairs.
“Thank you, Baby Girl!” Kayla appreciatively yelled back up.
“But Mrs. Price didn’t remember which was Vermont and which was New Hampshire without looking. You just told me and didn’t even have the map in front of you. I’ll never remember those.” This conversation reminded Steve so strongly of Kayla’s inability to remember the tibia from the fibula that his breath literally got stuck in his throat for a moment. Just like he did for his wife studying her homework, Steve decided to give his daughter something to help her memory, too.
“It’s so easy, baby. Wanna know how you’ll remember that?” She nodded. “Vermont is the one shaped like a V. New Hampshire is more like an N. See? Look there, the point is on the bottom like a V, and the point is at the top of New Hampshire kind of like an N.” Stephanie’s mouth dropped open. “There ya go, Little Sweetness. See, you got this.” It did absolutely nothing to diminish how sure she was that he was the smartest man in America.
Steve climbed the walls while Kayla made dinner. He really needed something to do other than think about his guilt for how much he wanted that woman in the kitchen. And what Prime Kayla would have to say about it. And how she would handle what happened with Ava, against his will notwithstanding. And when he was going to start letting himself truly consider that that his Kayla was maybe lost in time, because it had been too long now. He really wanted to get in there and do the cooking, but Kayla wouldn’t let him help. So he snuggled with his daughter on the couch and watched a rerun of The Simpsons, which was already eleven years old, even then. The gears were turning in Kayla’s head, but listening to Steve and Stephanie laugh so heartily at the same time to this show that she remembered Steve laughing at before he was taken away from her made her smile with real happiness.
At 8pm it wasn’t Stephanie’s bedtime yet, but it sure was Kayla’s. She’d only gotten three real hours of sleep after a grueling 18-hour shift. She was so tired that she was having a hard time keeping her eyes open and ended up passed out on the couch. So this time Steve did the bedtime routine with Stephanie solo, positively loving every minute of it. There was a bit of melancholy to it, too, though. He loved it, but from the moment she got home, he’d been going through the motions of any dad of a 10-year-old. The motions that he was very unlikely to get to do with Joey and that he’d never get to do with Emily – ever. It lasted only a moment, though, before he pushed the sadness away and instead felt the joy of having this impossible time with Stephanie. That’s when she introduced him to Harry Potter. It was her favorite book. She said four of them were out now, but she was still reading the first one. Of course, Steve knew this entire story by 2009, but even in 2000, no one in America, even amnesiacs running with the mob, didn’t know about the boy wizard and some dude who shall not be named. But he dutifully acted like he was hearing about it for the first time.
“Mind if I read you a chapter?”
“Really?”
Yeah, really? He asked himself. Steve didn’t know he was going to say that. He was still not sure he said that. Nice move treating your daughter like she’s four. “Yeah … I … nevermind. I sometimes forget you’re too old for that stuff.”
“No, I’m not.”
“It’s ok, baby, You’re too old, I know. It just popped out,” he chuckled. “I missed that phase.”
“No I’m not! No, I would love it!”
Steve took her hair in his fingers, which was something he’d suddenly formed a habit of and reared his head back with doubt. “I dunno, baby, you’re almost eleven. You sure you’re not humorin’ me, now?”
“Papa, no, really! Mrs. Price reads to us every day.”
“Storytime? In 5th grade?”
“Yeah, but she calls it Reading Circle. It’s right after Gym. She says it’s so we wind down from our wind up,” she smiled. “She’s reading us her favorite book from when she was a kid, called Fudge, by Judy Blume. Do you know her?”
“Can’t say I do, Little Sweetness.”
“Well, I don’t really like that one, but I just sit through it. I like the picture books she reads better. Really long ones with the coolest stories. They’re not like baby books, they’re just not chapter books. They’re called “Picture Books” in the library, I don’t know why ‘cause some of them don’t even have that many pictures. Do you?”
Steve chuckled. “Nope, got me there, too.”
“So, I’m not too old, I promise! I … I’d really … like it. Maybe we can make it a date every night before bed?” And maybe if they had this standing date he’d definitely not be going anywhere.
“Yeah? You’d, uh, you’d like that?” She nodded. “Maybe a chapter a night?”
Stephanie nodded again, and her tone was very solemn. “Please, Papa?”
For a moment, the air got very thick with emotional energy Stephanie felt it just as much as Steve did. It was so heavy and so poignant that they both had problems holding back the tears that had pooled in their eyes. Steve didn’t know if it was the amplification effect or not, because he saw the emotion pass over Stephanie’s face, too, but it was intense. All he could do was take her hand in his and nod. When it passed, Steve nodded again.
“I’d love to read you Harry Potter, Little Sweetness. Standing date every night at 8 o’clock. Ok?”
“Great! Starting now?”
Steve grinned. “Lemme go check on your mama first, see if she’s still conked out. It was a rough day for her.”
“Papa,” Stephanie called to him in the doorway, prompting him to poke his head back in. “I love the Christmas lights. Thank you.”
“You’re welcome. They’re colorful and bright like you.”
Kayla was still asleep, so Steve hunkered down next to his daughter and asked her where he should start. She said since Steve didn’t know this story that he should start at the very beginning and that she didn’t mind hearing it again.
“Ok, let’s see here …” He found the first page and began something very special. “’Mr. and Mrs. Dursley, of number four, Privet Drive, were proud to say that they were perfectly normal, thank you very much. They were the last people you’d expect to be involved in anything strange or mysterious …’”
Steve found Kayla awake in her room when he was done with Harry and his delivery by enchanted motorcycle to the Dursley’s doorstep. She smiled warmly at him, though not without that underlying vein of hesitance.
“I heard you reading to her.”
“Yeah, whodathunk it, Steven Earl Johnson readin’ a book.”
“I would have.” Steve sat on the end of the bed and pulled her to him. He embraced her robed middle and laid his cheek on her belly. She stroked his hair, and they stayed that way for several warm moments. “Are you sleeping in here tonight or upstairs?” she asked with an impressively neutral tone. “I’m not pushing you. I just don’t think I’m going to make it another two minutes and wanted to know before I lose consciousness.
“I want to wake up with you,” he said softly. “Is that ok?”
“Anything is ok. As long as you’re with me – with us – then whatever you need to do is ok.”
Steve stood up and swayed her softly. “I don’t deserve you.”
She hadn’t danced with him in so long. It felt so good. “I am just the beginning of everything you deserve.”
There was just the one full bathroom in the house, so Steve officially moved a toothbrush into it and got himself ready for bed. While Kayla checked on Stephanie, he figured out what to sleep in, because he didn’t feel right sleeping naked. It was different than last night, his daughter was in the next room now, and she wasn’t an adult that knew how to knock. He thought a little modesty would be best here, so he left on his boxer briefs and changed into a t-shirt from his black bag that now sat in the closet. Kayla entered for the last time and announced that Stephanie was asleep. Then she announced something else.
“Sam called while you were reading.”
Steve immediately bristled. “Your boss sure calls you a lot.”
“He wanted to know if I talked to Kim about New Years. I’d promised him I’d ask today. Of course, I forgot.”
“Oh darn,” Steve smiled. But Kayla was not smiling. “What?”
“You’ve been home for more than a week. When are you going to get the ISA involved so that we can tell the world you’re alive?”
“When it’s—”
“Safe,” they finished together before she went on from there. “I know, that’s what you said. When will that be?” Steve didn’t say anything. “You don’t know, do you?”
Steve shook his head. “No.” Kayla looked to the floor and exhaled heavily. “I thought you said you weren’t going to push,” he said.
Kayla crafted her next sentence very carefully. “You’re right. I said I wouldn’t, and I won’t. I will wait as long as it takes. But it feels kind of wrong that Sam is pursuing me. That I’m letting him. He thinks there’s a chance with me, and it’s not fair to him. He’s a really good man, and I don’t want to lead him on.” Steve paced the short distance to the window, which faced the side of the next house. He looked out into the darkness and rubbed at his forehead. “Steve, I don’t want to give any other man a reason to think he has a chance with me when he doesn’t.”
The hairs on the back of Steve’s neck stood up, and the air took on a very different charge. The clear reference to Jack was far too close, and he did not take this well. He whirled to look at her. He tried to verbalize something, but there was nothing to say that she could understand. He needed his Kayla before any plans with Shane were made. Starting any efforts there with this Kayla would mean forcing the Shane reveal out of her, and the whole thing was going to be messy. He never wanted to go through that again, and he didn’t want her to, either. Not if they didn’t have to.
Kayla went to him at the window and squeezed his shoulder. “I’m sorry, I said the wrong thing, didn’t I?”
Steve took a breath and softened. He met her hand with his own and squeezed it back before angling his head back toward her. “I know I’m not makin’ this easy on you.”
“You know what, we have a couple days to figure it out. He’s off tomorrow and Saturday, I’m off Sunday, so I won’t see him until Monday. I was non-committal with Sam, because you said I might have to fake it with him, but I couldn’t put him off anymore, so I told him Kim was going to check her schedule. When you know what you need me to do, I’ll go ahead and do it.” She laid her cheek against his shoulder blade. “I’ll do whatever you tell me. You asked me to trust you, and I do. I’m not even asking why the cat’s name has to be Kitty now, but she is, and I even called the vet today to officially change it on her papers.”
Steve was floored. “You did?”
“Sure did.”
Steve turned to her. “Thank you.” She smiled sadly and nodded. Her eyes were so trusting. He wanted to tell her. He knew it could only end badly, but the last time he felt this compelled to share his plight like this was when they spilled it all to Marcus. What she said next was almost like she’d heard what he was thinking.
“When you’re ready to tell me, you’ll tell me. I trust you enough to let you do it in your own time.”
Steve turned and pulled her head to his chest, holding her close. “I want to tell you. But it’s complicated, and hard to take.”
“You’re here. God has brought you back to Stephanie and me. I can take anything you have to dish out.”
Steve leaned his face down to kiss the top of her head. “What if it’s bad?”
“Then I’ll face it with you.”
“What if it’s something out of science fiction?”
“Then I’ll let you beam me up.” Steve actually laughed at that. “You’re back from the dead, how much more can you possibly break the laws of physics?”
“I was never dead, baby.”
Kayla pulled back to study his face. “It can’t get crazier than that.”
“Yes it can.”
“You do remember Roman came back from the dead, too, right? Only it wasn’t him, Stefano just made John believe he was my brother? Anything is possible. Stefano did that. Stefano erased your memory. Thank god you remember me now, I don’t know what I’d do if you came back and didn’t know me.” The pain that ripped through Steve with that statement was very hard to remain standing through. But it also made him suddenly see his two Kaylas a little differently, too, and Kayla saw it when his expression slightly changed. “You think there’s anything I won’t believe?” Steve was still processing her comment on what she’d do if he didn’t remember her. When she next looked at him his expression was … hungry. She licked her lips and then swallowed. “When you’re ready for me to make love to you I’ll be ready for that, too. Because I love you enough to wait for you to want it for yourself.”
Steve couldn’t hold back any longer. “I do want it for myself. I want it so bad.”
“You take what you want, Steve. Or don’t. I’m your wife whether you do or not.”
“You are, baby,” he swept her hair back off the side of her face. “You are my wife.” Them after a brief pause. “What if I told you I’m from the future?”
Kayla shrugged. “I’d climb into your time machine with you so you could take me to our past and undo what’s happened to you. In the meantime,” she glanced down very pointedly to his crotch, “something really big is trying to get free down there.”
Steve smirked. “You lookin’?”
“Hard to miss,” she said sexily.
“I’m from the future.”
“Ok, let’s get into that time machine,” she chuckled.
I’m from the future, and the you that’s also from the future isn’t here yet. I’ve been waiting for her since I got here. Breaking your heart while we wait. Making you think I don’t want you. But I do want you. I love you more than I love my own life. And I’d die before I let anything happen to you whether your whole memory is inside of you or not.
After just a slight moment too long, Steve finally spoke up. “Let’s play a game.”
“A game? What kind of game?”
“Let’s call it 20 Questions, What If Edition.” Kayla really wanted to engage with him this way, but she had to be up in about seven hours and was barely staying awake. Yet the way he was looking at her, she couldn’t say no. “One rule. I ask all the questions.” Kayla immediately protested, but Steve brought her around with a playful kiss, which she loved and which succeeded in wearing her down without much of a fight. She knew there was a method to his madness, and if this was his way through it, then she had nothing to hide.
“Fine, go. I can’t promise I won’t fall asleep on you, though.” She crawled into bed, but Steve cocked his head in confusion. “What?”
“You gonna wear that robe to bed?”
“Yeah, why?”
“’Cause it’s a robe.”
“What, so now you don’t like what I’m wearing?”
“Don’t get your panties in a bunch, now, baby, I just thought you’d want those little feetsie jammies I know you love so much.”
“I think your memory’s not all the way back yet.” Steve laughed. She had no idea the irony running through that statement.
“So you don’t want those feetsie jammies, then?” He was going to beat this horse until it was dead.
“No,” she replied with the smugness that she knew he was hoping for, “I do not want those feetsie jammies. I’ve never liked little feetsie jammies. I like my threadbare robe.”
“Ok, down girl.”
“Don’t you down girl me.”
“Hush,” he commanded. Kayla grinned despite herself. “First question. You ready?”
“Mm-hmm.”
“Ok. What if I was serious when I told you I was from the future.”
Kayla rolled her eyes. “Come on, Steve, ask me a real question.”
“I am, baby, I called it the What If Edition, didn’t I?”
“The question is crazy.”
“All questions in the What If Edition are crazy. Playin’ or not?”
“Fine,” she whined. “What if you were being serious?” Steve nodded. “I’d believe you,” she yawned.
Steve looked away from her. “You’re just placating me, now.” Kayla was a little surprised to see that her lukewarm reaction annoyed him.
“For real?”
“I’m not just yammerin’ on at the mouth, here, Sweetness. Yeah, for real.”
Kayla blinked a couple times. “I … I would … I would believe that you believed it.”
Not, necessarily, what Steve wanted to hear, but better than being lied to. And what did he expect? “So, if I told you, baby, I’m from the future. I know all about what happens from now ‘til the end of the decade, you would think I was crazy?” Kayla looked sufficiently perplexed. “Hey, you’re the one who said anything is possible. So, you still love me after that or am I crazy?”
“You can be loony toons, Steve, and I will still love you.” Steve huffed out a chuckle, because he knew first hand that that was 100% true. If that were true, maybe other things would be, too.
“Fair enough,” he positively smoldered at her. She licked her lips, and he openly adjusted his dick, which had swelled to a comfort level now totally devoid of any comfort.
“Did you just touch yourself?”
“My baby’s gotten bold in her 30’s.”
“Did you?”
“I adjusted. You got a problem with that?”
“Nope, was just checking.”
“No more questions from you. Rules, Sweetness.”
“Ok, sorry. What was the question?”
“From the future. So you wouldn’t believe it was true?”
“N—Maybe?”
Steve was shocked. “Maybe?”
“Could you prove it to me?”
“I dunno … wait—I’m the only one who asks the questions, you have to just answer me. Yes, or no.”
“But I need clarification.”
“Yes or no?”
“Steve!”
“Yes, Kayla? Or no?”
Kayla crossed her arms in front of herself. “Maybe.” Steve smiled. It was so much more than he’d expected. It really was. And he was suddenly very, very galvanized.
“Next question. What if I left here right now in my time machine and went back to our wedding, would you be upset if I married you again?”
Kayla scratched her head. “I’m not wrapping my brain around this, am I there?”
“No, you’re here. Y2K you is here. Y2K me, though, travels to 1988 and marries 1988 you. So, I get to experience it again but you don’t. Would you be mad at me?”
She sat back against the fluffy pillows and really thought. “No, I don’t think so. I’m her, right?”
Steve nodded. “She doesn’t know that, but you left behind does.”
“Why can’t I come with?”
“Answer the question.”
“I think, no, then. She is me. We’re the same person. I wouldn’t be mad.”
That phrase. She is me. It was like the electricity had just been switched on, and something inside of Steve started to run wild. “Next question. What if I made love to you there?”
“But you’re making love to me.”
“You would be here,” he emphasized, “and you would not get to be there. She would.”
“But there is no ‘she.’ That person is still me.”
“Next question. What if I came back in my time machine and told you all about how I f*cked your brains out and how good it was, only you don’t have that memory, only I do.
Kayla rubbed her legs together. “Is that what you want to do to me?” she asked quietly. “F*ck my brains out?”
Steve’s penis twitched. “What do you think?”
“Is that another question?”
“No, but you can answer it anyway.”
“Yes.” Kayla’s eyes had become dark and wanton. Her arousal pooled between her legs. “I do think you want to f*ck my brains out. I think you wanted that this morning, and I think you’ve wanted it since you got here.”
Steve wondered how tightly that spring in his wife’s tummy was wound up right now even without having been touched yet. “This is the last question. So if I got to revisit you and be with you, and make memories with you, that would be ok?”
Kayla got very silent. “Are you visiting me right now? Have you left me behind in some memory you’ve made for yourself in the future?” She tenderly curled her fingers into the whiskers at the sides of his face. She sure felt like his Kayla. “Is that how you’re coping right now? Please tell me, I want to help you. Is that what you’re doing?”
“Something like that.” She was so close to him. He could tell that she was braless beneath her robe. Her beautiful hair was so blonde. It was tied back in a ponytail, revealing the hickey he’d given her last night. The gentle slope to her neck was so enticing to him he couldn’t help himself when he reached out to caress it. “You didn’t answer me,” he said in a low tone that Kayla’s body reacted to. He could see the pulse in her neck, and it was not slow, nor was it steady. Steve gently pulled the elastic out from Kala’s hair and combed it out gently between his fingers. Kayla sighed with the erotic pleasure of his fingers massaging her scalp. Then acting purely on instinct, Steve untied her robe and pulled it open so he could see her. He reached in and palmed Kayla’s soft breast in his left hand then kissed it gently. “Do I make love to her or not?”
Kayla swallowed. “In 1988?”
“In 1988. Without you. But with her.”
“How could you not?”
Steve pulled Kayla on top of him so she could straddle him and crushed his lips to hers. They kissed with the raw sexuality coursing through both of them, grinding against each other with erotic connection. “Jesus Christ I need your tits,” he whispered with a deeply licentious voice. He rubbed her left breast in his palm with an aggressive need that he matched when he captured her right in his mouth. Kayla divested herself of her robe as he sucked and licked and loved the feel of her on his tongue. Kayla loved it, too, and stifled a cry when she felt his tongue slide across her nipple. Steve moaned as her dusky tip suddenly hardened, calling to him to nip at her sharply. He wanted to make her feel it. Kayla moved his head to her other breast, and he devoured her with abandon.
Steve’s dick was steel. He thrust upward so that she could feel him, “Are you wet? I want you to be wet for me, Kayla!” Without waiting for an answer, Steve slipped his hand under the waistband of her underwear and slid his fingers easily through her folds. “Oh, baby, you are.”
“I am wet for you,” she panted a whisper. “I’m wet for the man I love!”
Kayla came in for a hot kiss, but then teasingly pulled back. “I know you want me. Know how I know?” He panted as he kneaded her breast. “Because you told me so, and I trust you.” Now he bucked his hips at her, connecting with her clitoris Her eyes slowly blinked with the burst of pleasure she hadn’t had in so long. “So, you take what you want. Or don’t.” It was the second time she’d said it tonight. And the last.
“Baby … can’t get pregnant.”
“I won’t! The timing’s wrong” she said in sexual fervor. “It’s ok, I won’t.” Steve trusted her, too.
In seconds, Steve had tugged her underwear down and then rolled on top of her. As soon as his cock was free of his briefs he impaled her hard and deep. She couldn’t help her sharp gasp when he entered her. It was the first time in eight years.
“Are you ok?” he said softly. He was aching to thrust, but he could feel how long it had been. “Am I hurting you? I don’t want to hurt you, Sweetness.”
Kayla leaned up for a kiss, and Steve obliged her. Kayla shook her head. “You feel good. You feel so good, Steve.”
Steve leered. “Good isn’t good enough, baby.” Hovering above his wife, he began to withdraw very slowly, then he slid back into her. She inhaled another sharp breath at how much he filled her, but the feeling of her husband inside of her again was ecstasy. Truly ecstasy. It was so good and so breathtaking and such a miracle and the pleasure so intense that she couldn’t even cry.
Kayla thrust her hips at him, encouraging him to repeat his thrust and to keep repeating as many of them as he could until the world ended.
“Do you know how much I love you, baby?” Steve whispered into her ear?
“I love you, too.” Kayla lifted her head and kissed Steve’s tattoo. “I will always love you.”
Steve had found a rhythm as he slid his cock in and out of her, stimulating her clit so the pressure would build inside of her. She rolled her hips into him and clenched so that her incredible tightness was that much more pleasurable for him. They whimpered their gratification in soft sighs, careful to keep their voices down, reading each other’s body language to give and enjoy their pleasure.
They rolled up to a sitting position, straddling each other with Kayla just a bit higher so he could tease her nipples mercilessly as they rode each other. The look on her face was full of coital pleasure, Steve couldn’t look away. She looked absolutely beautiful.
`
Their lovemaking was so full of passion that they couldn’t control themselves. It was hot, it was lusty, and every erogenous zone was charged with sexuality. Their hips slammed against each other in perfect unison, the impulses running through Steve’s cock and up into his groin unbelievably good. Kayla couldn’t speak. Steve’s erection wasn’t just thick, it was long. That combined with this intimate position allowed it to stroke both her g-spot in just the right place, as well as her clitoris. The pleasure was positively intoxicating. She never wanted it to stop. But it had to, because Steve couldn’t take more than another few seconds.
“I’m waiting for you, baby,” Steve grunted between thrusts. “I’m not comin’ till you do.” Kayla could only clutch on to his shoulders and buck harder against him. Her sexually aggressive reaction to him forced him to spurt, and he swore. “Sh*t! Come, baby!” Then he wrapped his hand around the back of her head and kissed her with hard, wanton lips before forcing her to look him in the eye. “I love you!” With a final stroke Steve exploded his cum inside the wife who’d missed and longed for him for ten years. Kayla froze in his arms, twisted her face into orgasmic bliss, and came as wave after wave of unspeakable pleasure washed over her. She’d thrown her head back as her vagina contracted hard around him, milking more cum from his already spent cock. Steve blinked hard with every release of semen from his body.
Still joined in their leg-entangled position with their bodies pressed together, Kayla lifted her head and gazed half-lidded eyes at her husband. She looked like an angel as they held each other closely. “God, you look so amazing, Kayla. I’m so sorry I waited so long to make you feel this good.”
The oxytocin coursing through her body made Kayla feel very tender. She touched his face lovingly with her fingertips as her eyes watered. This act of coupling with Steve for the first time when she thought she’d never have this again was so beloved to her that she couldn’t put into words what it meant to her. All she could do was release the emotion.
“Shh, baby. Don’t cry.” Only Steve couldn’t follow his own advice. He shook his head as he tried to keep his lips pursed tightly. But the way she looked in his arms, and the way his absence and his return had affected her was too much, forming a lump in his throat that threatened to choke him. “Don’t cry.” Kayla held him tightly as the strangled sound escaped his lips. She held him as the love and joy poured out of him. She shook in his arms with her own tears as his culpability spread through him. And she kissed his tears as his devotion to her beat in his heart.
“Thank you for coming back to me,” she wept so softly against his shoulder, finally finding her voice. “I never knew how much I missed you until just now. I thought I knew how much, but I didn’t. I didn’t know. Until now. They wiped each other’s tears away, and Steve looked into Kayla’s soulful eyes. She really was the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen. “You make me so happy, Steve.” There was a sadness that still ran beneath the surface of his gaze. “I want you to be happy, too. I want to make you happy.”
Steve didn’t answer right away. Instead he studied the contours of her face. How that deep contentment she felt right now was shaping her features and how the tiny muscles in her jaw and corners of her eyes relaxed in bliss. He didn’t know how much longer this version of his wife would be here, but she felt like his, and there was no going back now. So, he was going to love her for as long as she was there with him. “I remember one time we made love, baby … you looked so much like you look right now. Like the weight of the world had been lifted off of your shoulders. Like there was no one else in the world but the two of us. We’d just given ourselves to each other after a long time. After being separated. I’d hurt you. I didn’t mean to, but I did, and the pain you’d lived with because of it was just like the pain you’ve been in for the past ten years. It was exactly the same kind of pain. What we did then – and what we did just now – was beautiful. Because every day you breath the same air as me makes me happy. No matter when it is.”
They wrapped themselves up in the sheets and kissed lovingly for a long time. He felt cherished in her arms and was grateful that he could make her feel the same.
Rolf looked at the numbers the computer was generating in his lab and threw up his hands. He wondered if they were trying to make this more difficult for themselves on purpose. But when he saw the year the couple had jumped to he rubbed his chin. “Working for our mutual employer, I see. That might explain it.” He collapsed into his chair looked at the printout again. He didn’t know how much longer he’d be able to control the slipstream. If every jump went like this one it wouldn’t be long before he’d lose all hope of ever stabilizing it. It was late in the year 2000, now was not the time to jump in for another meeting. He’d arrive to computer chaos with the Y2K problem, not to mention the near impossibility of slipping away from Dimera at this point. So this was up to them. He was just going to have to wait them out. He was in for a bit of a wait.