I’m here, Sweetness. Jumped in this morning. You’re not going to like it. If you get this, don’t look for me, it’s not safe. I promise I’ll find you. I’ll always find you. Miss you baby. Love you. Both of you.
Steve tuned out the mix of Christmas music playing over the clickity clack of so many keyboards at the Internet café and went to adjust a patch that wasn’t there. “Dammit.” Instead he sat back heavily and stared at the screen as he thought about his next move. “I got news for you, baby,” he whispered to himself, “it ain’t Utopia.”
Steve’s consciousness had jumped into a body that hadn’t had more than two hours of sleep, and he really felt it as the fatigue tried to overtake him. And the guilt. He had no time to nap, though, and no time to dwell. Yet, those two things are exactly what he did. He was in the back corner of the very large and busy café, a spot he chose as much for the concealment as for the easy, back door escape route. So, he went pretty much unnoticed as he nodded off while dwelling on exactly how he got here.
He should have known that starting off this jump by vomiting on Victor Kiriakis was a bad sign. “Jesus Christ, man, what the hell’s the matter with you?!” Steve knew Victor’s voice, but he had no idea what time this was, and he never would because before he could get control of his insides he was spun out of control again and into the next destination. He felt himself get pulled into the fabric of time’s vortex like a stage hook grabbing him around his midsection. He was too busy trying to keep his wits about him during the chaos to feel any more aware than that, but he did acknowledge to himself somewhere in the melee of it all that getting pulled away from Victor after puking on him was the definition of dodging a bullet. The next place he ened up he at least recognized, because it was his apartment in 2009. Stephanie was laughing, but then she wasn’t, because she was holding him up, deep concern replacing the timbre of her words. He knew he wasn’t destined to stay just from the way his equilibrium was refusing to even out and barely got a good look at his grown daughter before being pulled away again; he did manage the words, Little Sweetness” with a bittersweet smile first, though. She looked over his shoulder and said, “Mom?!” with near panic in her voice, so he knew Kayla was there but he wouldn’t be sticking around long enough to see which Kayla this would be. He cursed Rolf that he wasn’t going to get even a moment with his daughter before he was gone.
When Steve’s awareness next found a destination, the effect was severe. Try as he might to hold it down, the contents of his stomach insisted on coming up again. This time he was already in a bathroom, and his body did what it was supposed to do by rote without the brain’s decision. He immediately fell to the floor and wretched directly into the toilet until his stomach was empty and his abdomen ached. Kayla was kneeling beside him. He didn’t see her, because he couldn’t open his eyes yet, but he felt her presence as surely as he knew his own name. “Kayla,” he croaked. She shushed him while rubbing his back in circular strokes, only before he could turn to look at which model of Kayla he had the effect settled upon him one more time. Before it took him he cursed Rolf at the top of his lungs, because this was hell. This was f*cking hell. He barely registered her desperate tone of concern, because his brain was in a panic over the fact that he was jumping before her awareness was arriving.
His final destination was a shock. So much of a shock that he momentarily forgot this latest hiccup with the slipstream. He was having sex, and it wasn’t with Kayla. To make things worse, the jump sickness was still nauseating. Maybe if he hadn’t consumed the copious amounts of alcohol the night before it wouldn’t have been so bad. Maybe if that alcohol hadn’t been mainly the best tequila money could buy before engaging in so much hot and hard sex all night long his body would have been rested beyond just two hours of sleep, and he’d have been able to plow through it and stop what was happening. But Steve’s body was shot in every way, including the load he’d just relieved himself of before his awareness had set in. Every part of him now overused and fatigued, there was nothing left for him to gather strength from so he could move past the shock of the reality that Ava was on top of him. He laid on the bed panting from his body’s efforts and watched her coital ecstasy while his heart started to bleed at exactly what he’d jumped into.
Ava was riding him hard and screaming “Patch” over and over again. Steve was desperate for this not to be happening. He wanted her off of him. The unmistakable sensation of having just ejaculated radiated in his groin, and he felt a twisted sort of gratitude that he wasn’t there for it. But the fact that he was inside of her was a nightmare.
“No … stop …,” Steve said in a surprisingly firm voice as he tried to shift out from under her, but Ava was somewhere inside her head, her climax literally upon her. He realized that his hands were supporting her weight as they clutched onto her small breasts, and Steve wanted to be ill, the guilt of this positively heinous moment flooding him with immense amounts of guilt. That’s when Ava’s orgasm rushed through her. “No!!!” Steve heard the tone in his own voice and felt the tear slip down the side of his face. He couldn’t believe this was happening. She was collapsed on top of him with two sets of lips uninvited upon his body, and he would have given anything for this not to be happening. And it occurred to him that this must be what violation of your sexual will feels like. That something like this, only worse, was how his wife had felt. He realized like an observer that he was silently letting another tear follow the first, but it wasn’t because he felt vulnerable or violated (which he did), it was because he had consciously, as his primary awareness, experienced sex with someone that wasn’t Kayla. And worse, that someone was Ava.
I love you, Kayla. I love you, Kayla. He chanted it over and over in his head as Ava’s climax rushed through her. Then she rolled off of him and moaned with satisfaction.
“Mmm … baby,” Ava purred. “That was … Mmm.”
Steve took this opportunity with them disengaged to roll away from her, unsure how he was going to get out of this. Luckily he wouldn’t have to think too hard, because Ava gave him the very out he was looking for. She swung her legs down and stretched like a cat as she sat on the side of the bed.
“That’s our last time, Patch,” she said as she rolled quickly back to kiss his shoulder, then she got out of the bed. “Till later,” she smiled. “Hey, are you sleeping again?”
Steve thought about faking it so she’d just leave, but she smacked his ass, so that wasn’t an out anymore. “Typical man, rolling over and going back to sleep! Do I look sleepy?”
“No, you don’t.”
“F*ck no!” Then she let out a flirty laugh. “I wore my poor Patch out. Good, I’ll wear you out some more tonight.” Sound good?”
“Yeah,” Steve croaked. What else could he say?
“Ok, I’m going to the other room to get ready.” Then she looked at the clock and chuckled. “We really did it all night. Hope you have some left in you. Now don’t look.” With that she disappeared through a door Steve was barely registering, and he was alone in the bed he’d just as good as cheated on Kayla in as far as his mixed up and devastated heart was concerned.
The jump effect had drained away, but the hangover, abused body, and guilt had brought him to his limit. He ran naked to the bathroom and violently threw up. It was the third time in this series of jumps, and the purge was intense. The first two times it was a side effect of the slipstream; this time it was his conscience. Black, evil regret left his body in deep wretches, each one like penitence for arriving inside of Ava’s body. As if he’d had any choice about it. As if the concept that it could happen had never been discussed. As if he’d chosen it. As if he’d wanted it.
He didn’t have a choice about it. They both knew it could happen. He hadn’t chosen it. And he didn’t want it. Yet, the purge continued into dry heaves when there was nothing left in his stomach. Finally, his body let him stop.
The effect had now long since passed, but the physical impacts of such severe vomiting were, unfortunately, still there, and it was all Steve could do to drag himself up by the sink to get cold water on his face and down his throat. His stomach was starting to revolt when the cold liquid hit it, but he managed to keep it down. Finally, he looked in the mirror. If he was with Ava, then he knew how old he was; still, he did not recognize the man staring back at him. This was a much older face than any he’d seen on himself since 2009. Crowsfeet gathered at his eyes, cheekbones stood out more prominently over cheeks that weren’t as full, and his skin was noticeably more weathered than when he last saw himself. Most of his hair was secured in a low pony tail behind him, but he could see from the strands that had come out of it that it was very long. He hadn’t seen this face in at least three real time years, because he’d spent all of them inhabiting younger bodies – bodies most of him felt like he belonged in, anyway, thanks to all those missing years (many of which, to this day, he could not remember). In fact, this body was several years younger than the one he left in 2009 but still much older than he was at 35, so it was all just the same to him – I’m old. Steve forced himself to get over the shock so he could take stock enough to get out of here.
This was not any bathroom he knew in recent memory. Clearly, it was a hotel room, but from the cheap feel, he figured it to be more of a high-class motel than a low-class hotel. The smell of sex on his body threatened to do him in, and he was reminded of when Kayla said she could smell Jack. Steve had to get Ava off of him even as his heart went out to his wife in true understanding.
He felt a little better when he got out of the shower, a towel wrapped around his waist. Bright, golden sunlight met his eye when he drew open the heavy drapes. He’d just started to take in the distinct landscape with dread when a knock came at the door to the adjoining room.
“Patch?” Steve hadn’t been called by this name in quite some time and really didn’t like it. That combined with her voice made his heart leap into his throat. “Baby, are you still in there?” Steve swallowed. If this was what he thought it was, then this was not good. “Don’t open the door, it’s bad luck!” He desperately looked around for clothes but was pretty sure they were all in the other room. He closed his eye with more of that dread. “I just wanted to say I love you before we go over.”
Steve had to make a quick decision. Answer Ava or don’t. He knew exactly where and when he was, now, and he even without the sex it was bad, because this was the day the two of them were supposed to get married. That also meant this was the day Dimera’s men caught up with him after his brief escape while, simultaneously, leaving her at the altar. Clearly, the slipstream was rebelling with yet another jump into unshared time; if he was really lucky it would pull him away from here right now. Only another couple seconds had ticked by, and now Ava was getting insistent.
“Baby, why aren’t you answering me, you got some other blonde in there?”
“Kinda, yeah,” Steve whispered.
“Patch!”
“Yeah,” he replied, “yeah, I’m here.”
“Don’t open the door! What took you so long?”
“I was in the bathroom,” he said truthfully.
There was a brief pause before Ava continued. “You sound a little off.”
“Yeah?” he asked very, very carefully as he struggled to come up with a plan.
“Yeah. You do. You’re ok, aren’t you?”
Steve rubbed at his forehead. “Yeahp. Just hung over.”
“Hung over? You were hanging just fine a little while ago,” she cooed. Must have caught up with you as my afterglow set in.”
Steve cringed, but he had a gut feeling that right now he had to play this one very close to the timeline. So, he put on the best act he could while scanning the room for anything that would help him. “That must be it, baby.”
“Patch, you’ve got half an hour to perk up.
“Ok, I’ll try to perk up,” he said through a forced smile he hoped she could hear.
“Try?!” she laughed. “I’m in a white dress here, it’s short, and you’re gonna get hot just watching me walk down the aisle. Now, no calling this game on account of tequila,” she smiled, “I’ve got plans for us.” Her tone was sexy and suggestive. “You forgot to move your bag, so it’s safe to go in now.” That explained why the room didn’t have much in it. “I’m going to that field I told you about to pick some flowers for my bouquet, and I’ll see you at noon.” Brief pause. “Ok?”
“Yep, I’ll see you there.”
“Patch?”
“Yeah?”
“Are you sure nothing’s wrong?”
Steve was between a rock and a hard place. He’d been praying to jump, but since that prayer was going unanswered, he had to get out of there. That meant the same thing it meant the first time through here, leaving Ava at the altar. He was so angry right now that he was having a hard time thinking objectively about her. She was not inherently bad, she’d been made that way by her father’s drugs … and a little bit by his abandonment. Maybe he could stop her from spiraling into the insanity that would keep her a prisoner in her father’s compound for so long and ultimately end up in Shawn’s death. If he could stop her future frame of mind, then it wouldn’t be there as the catalyst for his desperate decision to get into bed with her in 2008. Pushing past the anger and violation, he wanted to stop it all from happening even if his head knew it was bad for the timeline. So, in the ensuing seconds he weighed his options.
He could open that door, pull her into the room, sit her down, and tell her exactly who he was, that he had a wife and family. Make her understand what was happening to him and why he had to go, or at least explain that she was in just as much danger from her father as he was from Dimera and that this day was going to end badly for both of them whether he married her or not, because Stefano’s men were on the way. None of that, however, was going to end in Ava stepping aside and saying, well, then on with you to your real wife.
On the other hand, he could back out of the wedding without the explaining of his real backstory. Instead he could make some other reasonable excuse, like telling her he was seriously ill and couldn’t get to the chapel. But he’d basically said that very thing twice, now, she wasn’t having it, and he didn’t need any reminding that he was just fine when they were having sex just a minute ago. Steve winced. Kayla’s gonna be devastated, he acknowledged to himself. I’m devastated.
So that left the only real option he felt he had. Fake it like he was already doing, then run. Because the truth was that none of this was real. Ava wasn’t real, this person he was right now wasn’t real, and he couldn’t do anything for either of them. He had to think of his real wife, jumping into this timeline where she worked at Cedars Sinai as a resident while raising their ten-year-old daughter. That’s who was real. Steve Jonhnson was real. That’s all that mattered. Not Ava. Maybe if they were in their own timeline, and he had a chance to do things right and prevent so many things, namely Shawn’s death and the mess that nearly broke them up – then maybe she’d matter. But this Ava in this timeline that wasn’t going to live on in any meaningful way? Did not matter. Technically, this Stephanie was as temporary as this Ava was, but this was his game right now, so his rules. Stephanie mattered, and that was that.
“I’m just fine, baby. You go off and pick your flowers, and I’ll see you real soon.”
He heard Ava take a sexy breath in and out. “Mmm, baby. You sure will. Tell me you love me before I go.”
He didn’t want to do it. “I think we should wait to say our vows in the chapel.”
“Not our vows, Patch. Just tell me you love me.” Her voice dripped with sensuality. And insistence.
“You gotta wonder, Ava, baby?”
“I gotta hear it. Come on, say it. You know what it does to me.”
He looked at his watch. It was 11:27. That gave him half an hour before he’d be missed. Time was ticking, and he needed her to go. This woman is not real, and neither are these fake words. “Your Patchman loves you, Ava baby.” Then he swallowed hard at how much it bothered him to say it.
Steve could almost her her smile on the other side of the door. “I love you, too.” Then without another word she walked away to whatever field of flowers grew in the desert. Steve got moving the second she was gone.
In the next eight minutes he’d thrown something on, then taken every bit of his clothing, clean or dirty, from every drawer, closet, and floor in both rooms, and stuffed them and the toiletries into the black, travel bag he recognized as his, then closed it up with a desperate zip. He found a shocking amount of cash in Ava’s suitcase and blinked hard. Then he remembered, they were eloping against her father’s wishes, so credit cards to track them were out. Instead they took the thousands of dollars in cash that Ava had access to and stayed off the grid. Steve had no problem taking almost all of it.
11:35.
Steve was shaking with adrenaline. He knew he had to get as big a head start as he could, but he had to be smart. If he messed this up and got himself caught this jump was going to end in a bigger nightmare than it already was. He had to head off any attempt at being followed. So he took a handful of precious minutes to do that.
Ava,
I know you’re not going to understand, but I can’t be the man you want me to be. I have a job out east, so I’m going to go do it. Please don’t try to come after me, I’m not a marrying man, and NY is a dangerous place. It’s better this way.
Patch
The note wasn’t as much for Ava as it was for Dimera’s men, whom he knew were just about to catch up with him. Misdriection to the exact opposite region of the country was his only hope right now, on both counts. Those men coming after him any minute were a threat to him and, by extension, Kayla and his daughter. If he were to have any hope of finding them safely, then his priority was going to have to be protecting them first.
11:38.
Just in case he was being watched, he took his bag, shoved it out the bathroom window that opened into the alley, and followed it into the hot Las Vegas sun shining straight down on him.
The jump sickness had, surely, worn off by now, but he was still feeling sick. He didn’t remember feeling like this in the real timeline, so he assumed that the jump effect was not playing nicely with the copious amounts of alcohol still in his system, not to mention the physicality he’d just gone through. The heat kind of sucked, too. He was able to successfully plow through it as he looked for a car to try to steal. Unfortuantely, every car there was later model to the time and had enough theft prevention to thwart him.
The voice he heard not that far away from him ran his blood cold. “No wedding day for this soldier.” Steve froze as he spotted the two men in black suits. He was crouched down next to a Honda Accord and watched them carefuly. “You take his car, I’ll take the chapel.”
“You sure we’ll spot him?” the other man asked.
“How many Nick Stocktons can there be with long hair and an eyepatch getting’ married in a piece of sh*t chapel in Las Vegas? Yeah, I’m sure we’ll spot him.”
“What about the girl?”
“She’s mafia. Avoid her if you can. Otherwise get rid of her.”
The wheels started turning in Steve’s head while he watched them from this relatively safe distance as they walked with purpose away from him and toward the chapel. He knew he had to abandon his car before this conversation, but now he realized that this was going to be so much harder than simply acquiring wheels. Long hair. Eyepatch. Even if he could hide his hair, the patch wasn’t blendable. But even that wasn’t his biggest problem.
Get rid of her.
The words were about Ava, but there was no question that if they caught up with him in LA they’d apply to Kayla and even Stephanie, too. Like all of the scenarios that involved the time before he’d woken up with no memory, this wasn’t just tricky, it was dangerous. They’d dragged him kicking and screaming from a wedding chapel, who knew what else they’d do. Kayla knew this worried him, but they’d made their decision – they were not separating. Now that the time was really here, though, he couldn’t help thinking it though again.
“What do I do, baby?” he murmured to himself, “I can’t lead them to you and Stephanie, I just can’t.” He looked at his watch. 11:57. You can’t stay here, either. “Time to go.” Forgetting any car, Steve took off on foot in the other direction from the chapel and ran.
Downtown Las Vegas was not a safe place. It was better in 2009, and it was certainly a lot seedier in the ‘80’s than now in late 2000. But it still wasn’t for the average yuppie. Every manner of underworld type could be found here from pimps to madams, and from high-priced call girls to two-bit hookers. Every type of sexual need could be fulfilled here, and no matter what your drug of choice was, it was choosable. Nothing was free, but everything was accessible for the right price by the right person, and not a one of those people were neighborly. Steve chuckled at how unmatrimonial the atmosphere really was here, considering the number of chapels per capita. The stress was amplified by the effect that he was well aware of at this point, so he thought about his beautiful, classy weddings to Kayla, especially their last one on the pier, to help focus him.
Steve knew now that the first thing he had to do was stop his hair and, especially, his patch from giving him away. Old man sunglasses were not going to do the trick in this millennium, so he let his desperation to get out of here guide a choice that was, frankly, unthinkable to him. But he knew it wasn’t just a good move, it was his only move.
The wraparound Oakley knockoff sunglasses covered his left eye pretty well. They wouldn’t have done the job quite as well before his surgery, but now the bone of his brow was workable, even if his eye socket wasn’t. That and the Dodgers baseball cap, which he’d tucked all his hair into, were pretty effective. Then he made his careful way to the Greyhound bus station on Main Street and Carson Avenue. It was only four blocks away, but that was far enough to allow the paranoia to begin weeding its way through him. These were Stefano’s men coming after him. Not even your run of the mill organized crime like Vitali, but a man with access to the worst kind of punishment. Stefano Dimera disappeared people. He transformed them out of existence until their souls had to take refuge in the deepest recesses of their existences just to survive. Stefano Dimera was the man who bought him from Lawrence Alamain and then tortured the sensory sh*t out of him until his brain wouldn’t allow him to remember his wife and daughter. His mother, sister, and brother. Wouldn’t allow himself to remember his own name.
Otherwise get rid of her …
The stab of panic that kept sweeping through him that he might bring serious trouble to his wife and daughter swept through him again, only this time it brought something else with it. The stench that almost brought him to his knees as he leaned against a building wasn’t really there, it was only a memory – a new one he’d made on a three-year old jump, not an old one from when he was taken, as those were still inaccessible to him. But the thought of being taken back to his cell for more sensory torture, devastating images of his murdered wife, and deprogramming was enough to terrify him. In this moment, even though he knew he had to get to them, the terror of putting them in danger overcame him. He couldn’t let his emotional need to be with his family come before the need to keep them safe.
He was just steps from the bus station, now, but he couldn’t move through the fear for his family raging through him. What was happening to him? Why was he suddenly terrified? If he’d seen Kayla go though this, he would have known it was a panic attack, but experiencing it, himself, was more confusing.
Steve was breathing hard, his eyes darting this way and that until he caught sight of his watch. The big, leather strap holding the large watchface was already broken in and comfortable … and it was the same one that he would still be wearing the night before he began jumping. Kayla loved that watch. It was familiar to him. It was his. And so were Kayla and Stephanie. He let his fingers roam along the contours of the timepiece, subconsciously trying to shake himself of the fear. And it worked, because a new thought started to re-motivate him.
We’re not an us now.
“No!” he said aloud. Then he repeated it in his head. No! He and Kayla were an us. They’d started talking, finally. He’d allowed the pain of losing Emily out so that her words, hands, kisses, and love could start healing him. So his could heal her. He couldn’t allow all that to unravel so that their us could slip away. He could keep them safe. He had to. He leaned as flush as he could against the white brick of the Plaza Hotel & Casino and took some deep breaths, forcing himself to calm down.
“You lost, little lamb?”
When he snapped his head to the left to look at the source of the female voice, his eyes got big. A very young woman was hanging out of what appeared to be a stage door. She looked like something out of the Pamela Anderson handbook. “Oh, this sh*t I do not need,” he said aloud. The woman looked offended eyes out from under very long, straight, peroxide, blonde hair that was hanging in heavy layered pieces with thick bangs outlining her face. Her matte, pink lipstick overly defined her well-endowed lips while dramatic swaths of pink and gold lined her eyelids. The black mascara fanned out her lashes, and without a doubt, the largest breasts he’d ever seen up close spilled out of a flaming red, one-piece v-shaped outfit designed to just barely cover her nipples and, obviously, hairless crotch. There was more skin showing than covered from her neck right down to her public bone. It was an image meant to titillate and be stared at – the camel-toe at her crotch was so clear that it was very plain that her purpose was sex. “You need your little Bo Peep?” she batted her eyes at him, “‘Cause I’m real good at making sheep come.”
Steve wasn’t having any of this. This bad girl sexuality felt more to him like a picture in Hustler magazine than a live woman standing in front of him. “You cannot be serious. What is this a test?!” She scoffed loudly. “Not lost,” Steve said. He may be a red-blooded, American male, but this was ludicrous to him. He had to get to the bus for LA. He had to get to Kayla. Before Dimera’s men got to him.
The girl tossed her head to the side and leaned her body out of the doorway while holding on to the jamb with her right hand. It made her breasts shift out of the skiff of fabric no longer covering all of her nipples. He was sure that was by her purposeful design. “Yeah? You sure, little lamb? ‘Cause I can get off on that pole,” she dripped sex in a high, raspy voice, “… or I can do it on your lap. Help you come home, waggin’ that tail of yours.”
Steve laughed. The whole thing was absurd. But it did give him the jolt he needed to emerge from the panic attack.
“Put those tits away, baby, I’m not interested.” Steve craned his neck to look over her shoulder. The girl got a confused look on her face then followed his gaze behind her before looking back to him with a pout.
“What, so you’re gay?”
Steve laughed harder. She had no idea, but she was bringing him back to a place where he could function again. “Yeah, I’m gay.”
“You are not gay.” She took a puff of her cigarette, which now Steve understood was the reason she was in that doorway half-naked to begin with, it was a smoke break from whatever strip club she was working. “Come on, lamb,” she exhaled in a cloud of grey. “It’s half empty in there, so the price is right. If you’re married, I won’t tell, and you’ll like it so much better than whatever same old, same old she gives you.”
Steve got a deadly look on his face when she referenced sex with Kayla. “You shut your f*cking mouth.” The woman had the good sense to comply. He felt the watch heavy on his wrist and suddenly felt a surge of purpose that completely replaced any remnants of the panic. When he looked up at her, the girl’s face had registered that Steve wasn’t remotely the lost lamb she thought he might be, and that an easy bill was not going to happen.
Steve pivoted on the ball of his booted foot and sprinted away. Before he turned the corner of the alley he yelled back to her, “Sorry to tell ya this, baby, but my wife is way out of your league.”
The bus was almost the end of him, as he made a Dimera goon loitering the lobby before either of them saw him. The simple ruse of hiding in plain sight was very effective, however, because it was clear that without his patch or long hair, these guys weren’t going to spot him. Still, he’d taken no chances and avoided using identification. One more year until 9/11, so there was still a lot of possibility here. Instead, he paid a college kid triple for the ticket to LA that he’d already purchased and just hoped the kid would be overlooked.
It took him just about four hours to get from Las Vegas to Los Angeles, and the first thing he did when he arrived at the coffee shop nearest to Kayla’s house was begin making phone calls. He tried her house first, but there was no answer, so he went ahead and called her cellphone. Which was the first time in all these jumps that he’d had the opportunity to do so. He was pretty damn proud of himself that he’d remembered all these numbers like Kayla and he had practiced, which made him even more disappointed, and a little surprised. when it went right to voicemail. Her did get to hear her voice on the outgoing message, however, and it made him smile. It sounded different than he remembered in any time, but still like her. The smile didn’t last, however, because his inability to reach her by phone told him that the likelihood of her arrival was lower than he’d hoped. Rather than call Cedars, which was going to be a serious cluster, he made one last phone call before he went on to plan B.
Alice Horton answered immediately, and did she ever sound old. He wasn’t used to her this way anymore, and truth be told he’d never gotten used to her advanced elderly state, so the versions of her he’d become reacquainted with over the last three jumping years were much more comfortable, anyway. He didn’t want to spook her, so he went straight away to the simple question that if she didn’t have the answer to he’d explain away as a wrong number.
“Hi. Do you have a message for anyone?”
“Excuse me, young man?”
Steve chuckled. “Not that young, but what I said was, do you have a message for me?”
“Not that I know of, but—” she paused very abruptly before finishing the sentence. “—should I?”
Steve sighed. “I was hoping you might.”
“Well, I don’t even know to whom I’m speaking. Though you do sound familiar.”
“Ya know what, I’m sorry, ma’am, I think I have the wrong number.” Alice was mid-sentence when he quietly hung up. He chuckled at her last words, because she was clearly ready even in her elderly years to suss out this new mystery. “Maybe next time, Mrs. H.”
It was looking very much like Kayla had not jumped in right after him and that there would be a gap in arrivals. But he had to make sure, so his next stop was the Internet café in Hollywood he now sat silently dozing in behind his concealing, mirrored sunglasses.
With the phone calls a dead end it was time to finally put this plan they’d not yet needed into action. He tried to log on to the discussed email address of [email protected] and entered the address for their house as his password. Of course, the account did not exist, because she was still Destination Kayla. Steve crossed his arms as he glared at Hotmail’s error message and ran the the facts through his head one more time. It was the last week of November. He’d jumped into the Christmas season of the year 2000, and Kayla was a second year resident at Cedars, bcause as a single mother it had taken her longer than the standard amount of time to get through med school. On the nights Kayla had to work, Stephanie stayed with Kimberly. For all he knew this might be one of those nights. He knew her address, but he was not going to be reachable in any official way unless he wanted to lead Dimera to his family. Steve took a deep breath and accepted it all.
With a heavy heart that really needed to feel the beat of the one living inside his wife, Steve created the email address, himself, and sent themselves the first, very carefully-worded email. Now it was done, and he couldn’t help it when his eye closed for a little while.
He woke up with a start and freaked out when his instinctual reach for his patch came up without one, but he remembered immediately and calmed. He felt naked without it, but it was very important to be completely unrecognizeable if he was going to stay free and clear of Stefano Dimera, so he forced himself to have faith in the heavily mirrored wraparounds.
“Ok, so now where do I go?” he whispered to himself. Google didn’t have the market cornered just yet, and Steve laughed out loud when the default search engine was Excite. But he went ahead and used it to look for somewhere to stay in the area of Kayla’s house, and BOY did it feel good to use the Internet again. It was almost like a physical satisfaction when all those little bits and bytes and megabytes of data made the desktop monster hum. He could spend all day here, but instead he focused on finding a place to wait out Kayla. However, in a weird reversal of how this kind of thing usually worked out for him, Steve had plenty of money with nowhere to spend it. Unless he wanted to rent an apartment of his own, which he couldn’t because that was a paper trail that would lead right to him, he had nowhere to spend it as far as housing went. The dives that would work under the table had to exist even here in Kayla’s solidly middle class Los Feliz neighborhood; but there wasn’t a good way to find any of them via the Internet right now.
That night he went to one of the crappiest motels in Hollywood, paid cash, and lifted a scissors from the front desk before disappearing into his assigned room. As he cut off a good chunk of his hair that he knew Kayla was going to have to fix once she got here, he decided that if he never saw another piece of sh*t motel room again it would be too soon.
It took all of his willpower to stay hidden. He went to the house that first Sunday night and watched from a concealed spot in the bushes so he could observe and make sure no one was watching Kayla and Stephanie. Then he spent two days watching his wife pull into the hospital garage in the Bluesmobile, his heart skipping a beat at the sight of her inside his car she’d kept and babied all these years. He’d then watch her leave at the end of the day. He didn’t get an up close view of her, but it was still clear that there was no sign of his Prime Kayla. The glimpse of Stephanie he pined for would have to wait, because he wasn’t willing to endanger her in case Dimera was on to him. So, even though he knew where her school was, he steered clear for now. He spent the entirety of those two days with his head down and his eyes open.
But watching Kayla from afar was killing him. He could only guess at her beautiful features the distance teased at, and he wanted more than this. So on Tuesday night after dark, Steve went to her very small two bedroom, two bath house that looked every bit the authentic Los Angeles bungalow architecture one would expect … plus a small one-room loft. And he knew all this because Kayla had described the house to him in pretty good detail, from the address all the way down to the appliances.
“It even had a loft.” Kayla chuckled as they laid in her bed in 1979 on one of the nights her parents were on their Eagle River vacation.
“What did, the condo?”
“No the house we rented.”
Steve had been nibbling at Kayla’s neck while playing with her nipples. Bo was out with those tools for friends, Bart and Ted, so they had the place completely to themselves. Steve was horny and wanted nothing more than for them to make each other scream now that they finally could, but this was the first time he’d heard this much about the house she’d lived in most of the 14 years she’d been in LA. So he pulled himself from her neck as she continued.
“It was a pretty small bungalo, but there was a small loft above the kitchen that had its own stairwell to the backyard. It was so much like our loft here, I couldn’t pass it up. It just made me feel … like I was home. Like you would have approved.”
“I wish I’d been there to see it.”
“Who knows, maybe you will.”
“I dunno, baby, I think 1979 wants to keep us.” He kissed her with a wet smack of their lips. “Better than you bein’ alone in LA.”
“I wasn’t alone, I had Stephanie, friends, Kimberly and I were pretty solid by then, and when I missed you, I’d go up to the loft sometimes and visit. Most of your things were there …” She let the sentence hang there as Steve looked deeply into her eyes. They were so blue.
“I hate that you were lonely for so long,” he said quietly. Then his face became puzzled. “Wait … I thought you said my stuff was in storage.”
“That was later. I couldn’t afford it when I was still a resident. Once they took me on staff we moved to the condo.”
“Why didn’t you just stay in the house?”
“Needed a better school. Franklin Avenue was a great grammar school, but we needed a better school district for high school, so we took the condo – only then I didn’t have room for as much, so I got the storage unit. I missed our little house, though, with the little loft. It was good for me at a time I needed it to be.” She chuckled again. “The place was worth so much more than we were paying for it.”
Steve suddenly felt very possessive. “If you tell me your landlord was a single dude that thought you were pretty you’re going to make me feel very territorial with my teeth.”
“Mmm … that doesn’t sound so bad. Wait, let me make up a good story, then, ‘cause – Uhh!”
Without warning, Steve bit down on Kayla’s neck and impaled her with his rock hard cock. She cried out, then she cried out even louder when Steve started sucking hard on her neck. They had five days before her parents would be home, and he wanted to see himself on her. The irrational thoughts he was making up in his head were driving a jealousy that was so intense that all he could do was mark her as his, make her come, and empty himself into her.
“I’m gonna f*ck you in that loft one day, baby. I promise you that.”
“What if we never jump there?” she gapsed.
“If we do, then I promise we will. I promise you won’t be alone next time. I’ll be there for you to visit instead of meaningless things!” Then he suckled hard on the supple skin of her neck.
Kayla had no words only moans and whimpers, and yes, screams, as Steve stimulated her clitoris with his cock until she couldn’t take it any longer and came apart. Marking her while he made her come was intense. The moment she started pulsing her orgasm around him he came, deep pleasure sounding in his grunts against her shoulder.
Kayla burrowed tightly into Steve’s chest and felt heady as they came down. “Your stuff could never be meaningless. They meant everything to me. From your car all the way down to your last scrap of paper, I felt you in every single thing. I loved the house, I loved that loft, and me and Stephanie felt you there with us every day.”
Steve was so touched. “Wait, why was it so affordable? Land lord take pity on you?”
“No,” she laughed, “I took pity on the landlady. She thought it was haunted.”
“Say what?”
“She couldn’t rent the thing, insisted there was a ghost there.” She saw the quizzical look on his face and shook her head. “We lived there almost ten years, and trust me, short of screaming pipes that I am quite sure she mistook for this ghost of hers, we never saw anyone who wasn’t fully corporeal. Trust me, it was the pipes, and we got ourselves a hell of a deal.”
This time Steve didn’t stay hidden in neighboring bushes and, instead, chanced entering the backyard. The house was quiet, his girls asleep, and he found himself staring up into the window of that loft. Kayla was in there, eight years alone without someone to love her. Ten years of believing he was dead. That’s when the idea came to him. It was … insane. It was completely insane. Only the more he thought about it the less insane it sounded. It only took a few moments more for him to want it so badly that there was no going back. He knew, now, exactly what he was going to do in order to watch out for them while waiting for his Kayla to arrive. He was going to stay right here in the house with his wife and daughter, hidden in that loft. Because that was his family. He belonged with them, he needed them, and there was no better way to protect them than by being right there if trouble came to call. This is gonna work, baby, he thought convincingly to himself as he eyed the staircase. I promise you it’s gonna work. Then he smiled into the dark. Oh, Kayla, I can’t wait to get a look at my Little Sweetness you’re raisin’ in there. I can’t wait to see our baby girl. And I can’t wait to see you, too.
Steve let out an nervous laugh with the significance of this idea. There weren’t a lot of ways this jump could have started any worse. But he was shocked to realize with a thrill that shot up his spine that Kayla might just have been right back at the light house … because it did have the potential to be Utopia, after all.