Steve was not ok. He wasn’t ok when Kayla told him that psychopath terrorized her, he wasn’t ok when he jumped before he could acquire his own memory of violently emasculating him, and he wasn’t ok when his face hit the recently salted pier amidst the grating sound of his best friend singing off-key. What was most not ok at the moment, however, was the nausea. Normally the sudden cold after having just been warm with Kayla’s arms around him would have been a very uncomfortable transition. As it was, however, the cool wood against Steve’s cheek helped temper the need to vomit. Somewhere in the back of Steve’s mind he acknowledged that this meant the slipstream was trying to stabilize.
“Whoa, whoa, Brother, what’s gotten into you?!” Steve vaguely felt Marcus’s arm around his shoulder as he focused solely on not tossing his cookies. “Hey, I know my singing leaves a lot to be desired, but it’s not that bad.” Steve grunted and would have chuckled, but his level of anxiety was so high on arrival that no amount of genial Marcusness would be amping it down just yet.
He let Marcus help him up but fought him when he tried getting Steve to sit down from where, apparently, he’d just keeled over. “I’m fine,” Steve spat. Which was ridiculous, because he clearly wasn’t. Fine people don’t just fall over and need to be helped up, and their mood doesn’t just pivot from giddy to bitter in, literally, an instant.
“Steve, you are not fine, man.”
No he most certainly was not. He tried getting his head on straight as the jump sickness abated, but in every other way he was spiraling. His wife had just gone through something traumatic because of the life he used to lead, he wasn’t there to stop it, and then he added to that trauma by ripping through the very virtue that her attacker was after. He knew somewhere in his head that none of this was actually his fault, but he felt responsible.
Steve’s head cleared enough to know that he could go one of two ways right now. He could either calm down and find a way to accept that this had happened and move on to figuring out when he was, or he could lose his sh*t. He was so tired of adjuisting – constantly adjusting to his ever-changing surroundings before he even had a chance to get used to wherever he’d just been. Being ripped away from 1989 was a serious blow that he still wasn’t dealing with, mostly because the jumps weren’t giving him any time to do it, but also because he couldn’t face it. So, the serious turmoil continued to live within him, and he could literally feel it like a skein of ice in the pit of his stomach. But the sound of his best friend’s voice did provide enough stability to focus him; so he chose to go ahead and calm down.
It wasn’t hard to figure out that he was somewhere in the late ‘80’s, and as he adjusted his patch he knew this could be any number of conversations with Marcus. The man looked exactly the same year in and year out, so he wasn’t giving Steve any real visual clues. Then again, he really could barely care less when this was, because the act of giving a damn was going to take considerably more effort than he was willing to put into it. The relief he felt in landing in shared time, however, was evidence that at least a thread of hope still within him.
“I’m ok,” Steve said more convincingly this time.
“Come on, who do you think you’re talkin’ to, here?” Marcus leaned one knee on the step beside Steve, one hand on his shoulder, the other feeling for all manner of head issues, like fevers and bumps.
You’re a little late that was last jump, Homey, Steve thought to himself. Amusing in any other context, this was more of a manic stream of consciousness as he fought to focus. He closed his eye and took a very deep breath, then lied right to his friend’s face. “Homey, I’m ok, really, whatever it was is gone.” Marcus was still trying to find some source with his hand at the back of Steve’s head. This annoyed Steve, which was actually even more helpful in getting him into the here and now. “Would you stop that, I don’t need your touchy feely right now,” he whined as he angled his head out of Marcus’s doctoring hands. “I’m good.”
Marcus stood up straight and looked at him suspiciously. “Yeah?”
“Yeah. I just … got …”
“Over-excited?”
Sure. “Yeah, I just got excited, that’s all.” What am I excited about? Steve could see Marcus wasn’t really buying it but was backing off anyway.
“Yeah … ok,” he acquiesced clearly meaning the opposite. “Ya know, I shouldn’t be so surprised, you’ve always been a headcase.”
Steve cracked a smile. Which was a bit of a surprise, even to him, because he’d never felt so low. He rubbed his forehead with this fingers. “At least I can carry a tune.”
Marcus sat down beside Steve on the step and blew into his bare hands as the wind bit across the river. “The tune sounded ridiculous in the first place.”
An icy chill that had nothing to do with the frigid weather passed through Steve like a malevolent spectre. It was more than just the regular anxiety or trying to assess when and where; this time something wasn’t right. A memory was trying to break through the bitterness he’d taken with him from the one-room hovel he’d left a damanged Kayla in. “You don’t like … that song?” he said distractedly as he struggled to figure out why this all felt so very wrong.
Marcus looked at Steve sideways. “It’s a fine song, it’s just that you’re probalby the only person on this earth that thinks it’s a happy one.”
Just as Steve started finding a way to composure, this statement relit an anxious wick. Marcus felt it when his friend tensed up.
“Ok, that’s it, man, what is going on with you, come on.”
Steve dropped the pretense. “What day is this?”
“A day that ends with Y, now answer me.”
Steve stood up and went to the edge of the dock, as if the answer might be out on the water. “What day, Marcus?”
“Oh, don’t start that again.”
Steve spun around as Marcus stood up. “Start what again? Just tell me what day it is!”
“Tuesday?”
“You’re asking me?”
“No, you’re asking me! For the millionth time!”
That struck Steve very strange. “Tuesday when?”
“Ok,” Marcus sighed looking at his watch, “quarter after midnight, so technically Wednesday. Can you be normal again now?”
“No, the date!”
“The 26th! Christ, man, this is gonna be a long night if you can’t just pull yourself together.”
Steve was losing his temper. “What month, goddammit?! I’m not playin’ with you, here. I sound insane, right? I was normal a minute ago, now I’m not? Been there, done that Homey! I sound nuts because I am! Explaining it to you is like a twisted Groundhog Day from hell! So just throw me a f*cking bone and tell me the date!”
Marcus’s chocolate brown eyes stared for a beat. Steve’s light green one blinked back at him, his demeanor completely boggling. “Not two minutes ago you were the happiest I’d ever seen you in my life. You were about to get Kayla back out in the open instead of sneaking around, and you were singing and playing like it was the first day of the rest of your life.” Steve froze as a stiff wind blew through his hair. “Now you’re passing out and acting like someone lobotomized the happy right out of your brain.” Marcus’s words sent that ball of ice in Steve’s stomach straight up his spine. “It’s January 26, 1988.” Steve didn’t remember the date, itself, but all of this put together finally painted him the proper picture. And he couldn’t bear to look at it. He just couldn’t. “Now you can either tell me what the hell is going on, or you can tell me who you are and what you’ve done with the Steve Johnson I know. Right now.”
“Marcus … where’s Kayla?” But the truth was that he already knew.
“Where do you think she is, Steve? At the loft.”
“This isn’t happening,” Steve whispered. “This can’t be real …”
Marcus pulled Steve by his arm to face him squarely. “You’re seriously scaring the crap out of me, I mean it.”
“It’s election night? Tell me it’s not, please, Marcus,” he whimpered, “tell me it’s not election night!”
“You know that it is.” It came out as a plea, not an answer.
The world had fallen away as Steve turned and ran. He didn’t hear Marcus calling after him. All he knew was that his wife was being raped right now. This minute. By his brother. After he’d just promised her that he’d never let this happen again. All that advanced knowledge would make sure of it.
So much for advanced knowledge.
The mad run to save his wife would not live in his memory. He wouldn’t remember Marcus trying and failing to run after him. He wouldn’t remember that there was a key to the loft on his person at the very moment he realized where he was. The unlikelihood of this jump at this very moment did occur to him, and he would give it some attention another time; but all that mattered right now was that the rape had to be stopped.
Kayla knew before her tug even came that something very bad would be meeting her on the other side. She didn’t know how she knew, it wasn’t like there was a sign; she just instinctively … knew. The first thing she became aware of was the smell. She didn’t identify it right away, but her body’s sense memory absolutely did, and it reacted absolutely. Even the jump sickness, which was awful, was secondary to her body’s intense reaction to wherever she’d just landed. She immediately tensed up as that smell permeated her from the inside out. She existed in the next brief moment in the same state of weightlessness a rollercoaster produces before it plummets so fast that your stomach has to follow along behind the rest of you. Unlike a rollercoaster, however, this wasn’t the exhilarating anticipation of an amusement park ride. This was dreadful and terrifying. Just moments later, the rest of her awareness came roaring into her to meet what her body had already realized.
The smell in her nostrils was Jack. His arousal. His lusty sweat moistening his hair that rubbed against her face while he’d dug his head into her chest to bite at her breasts through the fabric of her dress. Now that horrible smell was all over her, and all she could do was inhale it again for the first time in 25 years. Memories so traumatic that she couldn’t move rooted her to the spot she’d jumped into, sitting with her arms wrapped around herself on the couch while she watched her brother-in-law on the other side of it. He faced her as he zipped up his pants and panted from his powerful release, his sated eyes drunkenly boring into her.
Hate coursed through Kayla. The memories that had just emerged hours ago when Ray tried to take her against her will were now tangible in the very real present where Jack had just succeeded. She felt the pain of Jack’s forced penetration, smelled his disgusting odor all over her, and knew his semen was swimming around inside of her like a disease. “You’ve made me wait so long that I’ve decided to make it hurt” They were Ray’s words, not Jack’s, but the two events were hard to separate in this moment, so she couldn’t help recalling them. She felt them like a slap in the face, adding to the hatefulness.
But then the look in Jack’s eyes normalized. The rush of the long-sought-after orgasm he’d used to punish her had abated, and the sweet man that Kayla had met in Hawaii all those years ago was looking at her with a horrified realization. That he’d raped the woman he loved. That he’d violently closed his fingers around her throat while he forced himself inside of her. That he’d actually ripped her dress with the force of his power. That he’d humiliated her into submission to her spouse. All of this passed over his features in only a second, but Kayla clearly saw it before he’d swallowed it down into the deepest recesses of his conscience. She hadn’t seen this momentary but patent remorse the first time through her rape, because she was in the moment of it then, processing it, unable to even look at Jack, let alone see the flicker. In this moment, however, Kayla did see it, and it gave her a reason to calm – because her awareness did not have to actually relive the act of the rape. Being spared the act, itself gave her real control over her own emotions and reactions right now. Her new perspective allowed the visceral hate for Jack to quell to something … slightly less – perhaps bitter resentment.
Arriving afterward didn’t mean the moment was insignificant, however. She was here, she felt it physically and emotionally, and the memories were there. The incident with Ray was also far too close in proximity to ignore. So, despite the fact that she didn’t have to experience either of these men raping her either again or for the first time, she was still completely shaken as Jack got up and walked around the back of the couch.
This isn’t happening. This can’t be happening. She became very numb as she processed the fact that it most certainly was happening.
“Kayla,” Jack said gently as he touched her hand that clutched at the ripped dress she was trying to hold together. Her awareness not having experienced the rape again, notwithstanding, she recoiled as much this time as she had the first.
That recoil was the first thing Steve saw as he flew down the spiral staircase.
“Kayla!” he cried, with desperate promise to have gotten to her in time. But then the second thing he saw was his beautiful wife’s face as her head turned to the sound of his voice. “Kayla …!” This time the cry was of devastation from the deepest, truest part of his terribly broken soul. Because he knew he was too late.
Jack withdrew his hand and gaped at Steve, Steve looked dejectedly at Kayla, and Kayla stared slack-jawed back at Steve; he’d jumped first, so she knew this was him. She said his name in barely a whisper, and Steve shattered.
His brother had violated her again. It wasn’t reality, it wasn’t surreality, it was unreality. Already out of his head before he even got here, he felt the control of his right mind slip completely away. He’d made a promise. He’d made so many promises in the last two years. But he’d failed, and those promises were left unfulfilled. Empty.
Steve’s breathing was labored and his hair wild. For a moment, Kayla was speechless and licked her dry lips with mixed feelings. She didn’t want him to see her this way – stripped down and vulnerable – any more than he’d wanted her to see him in 1982. But she was so happy to see him – so overwhelmed with relief that this time he was there – that she couldn’t speak. Steve let his head fall into his hand as the devastation filled him. Then just as quickly his eye found hers again. What Kayla saw there broke what was left of her heart.
Steve went to his wife as Jack, momentarily insignificant and all but invisible, watched in stunned silence. Steve walked on stiff legs to the end of the couch and took her in. He’d seen Kayla look so much worse than this. Sicker, more injured, angrier, dirtier, sadder. He thought he’d seen every part of Kayla that could be seen in every situation that could be imagined. But he was wrong. Because this was completely different – he’d never seen Kayla like this. Wrecked. Violated. Dishonored. Abused.
Raped.
He didn’t say anything to her, he just kept his eye locked on to hers. He desperately wanted to look away – wake up from this nightmare – but he couldn’t make himself do it and kept his gaze riveted to Kayla’s while Jack felt the walls start to close in. No one spoke.
Steve sat down on the edge of the couch and took Kayla’s right hand. His touch instantly made her feel safe. The hollow, heartsick shame that she logically knew should not be there after having already overcome it all didn’t just disappear, however. She also knew what seeing her like this was doing to her husband, she could see it on his face. For the first time the truth of what had been done to her was out in the open for Steve to see as it really happened. No buttoned-up blouses, no makeup to cover her bruises, and no brave face to keep it away from him. She sat before him with nowhere to hide and felt a timidity that shamed her. The rape didn’t shame her, the shyness it fostered in her did. She hated that she felt it after all these years, and she hated more that Steve could see that she felt it. What’s more, Kayla couldn’t help but feel revulsion at her physical state. That wasn’t new, she was repulsed then and was repulsed all over again now. She could feel between her legs that Jack had been there, and that smell … .
But this Kayla had two advantages over the one from this timeline. The first was life’s experience. Kayla’s rape was just one layer in a lifetime of layers that made up who she was at this moment. She didn’t have so many of them the first time, but now she did. The other was Steve. His gentle, loving touch upon her hand infused love, trust, and safety into her abused body, leaching so much of the darkness from her soul. Because her husband had come for her. Against the timeline, true to his word, he came for her like he promised he would.
Steve brought Kayla’s hand to his lips and kissed it as gently as a feather. Every bit of his love was in that kiss. Then he lowered his head, clutching her hand to his cheek in such heartfelt remorse that it started jostling Kayla out of her silence, because he didn’t know she was in there.
“Steve,” she broke the silence, “it’s me, I remember Stockholm.” Steve looked up, quickly. “It’s ok, I’m here.” That actually made it worse for Steve, because he assumed that meant she’d been here to relive the rape. He let out a strangled cry. Kayla stroked her thumb against his hand still holding hers and gently added, “I got here when—” it was already over. But she didn’t get to say that, because now was when Jack finally spoke up.
“And here is where you’ll be staying, Kayla.” Steve raised his head to meet his brother’s eyes for the first time, and both Kayla and Jack saw that the look in his eye had shifted. Gone was the devastation. Gone was the guilt. Instead, he was filling with rage. “You’re uninvited here, Steve.” He tried to sound threatening, but he wasn’t fooling anyone. “Kayla stays with me.” He drew her against him by her shoulders, and all the experience in the world wasn’t going to prevent her involuntary flinch out of his grasp. Steve still had her hand in his and used the forward momentum of her shudder to pull her to the safety of his arms instead of Jack’s.
“You don’t touch her.” Steve’s tone was so quiet it was deadly, causing the hair to stand up on the back of Kayla’s neck.
“Don’t touch my own wife? I don’t think so!”
Once again, Steve knew that he could go one of two ways right now. This time, he lost his sh*t.
“SHE’S MY WIFE! You raped her!”
Everything happened very fast from this point forward.
Steve pulled Kayla into a clutch so intentse that no one would have been able to pry him off of her. Kayla was repulsed beause every one of her senses felt every kind of Jack’s essence on her, around her, and inside of her, and she couldn’t bear to have Steve touching it. But her repulsion was no match for the protective shelter his hold brought her.
“Raped?!” Jack sputtered.
“I want you to go upstairs,” Steve seethed, though he continued to hold her against him.
“I didn’t rape her!”
“Steve, no, listen to me!”
“Right now,” Steve insisted as his eye fell dangerously on his brother. “Go on!” But he couldn’t find it in himself to let her go.
“I made love to her!” Kayla buried her head in Steve’s chest. He smelled so good. Like the snowy outdoors and cold leather and his shaving cream. She took him in and closed her eyes to the feel of his scent making her right inside while Jack went on with disgusting bravado. “And it was wonderful! I only wish I’d done it sooner!” Jack had said these exact same words to Steve so many years ago. Time, however, did nothing to prevent the long healed wound from being re-opened. “I never knew she’d be such a dynamo in the sack!” That lie was new. Jack puffed out his chest through his unbuttoned shirt as he foolishly came around the couch to advance on them. Jack’s last brutal statement and the strut to match it caused the last of Steve’s fragile control to break.
Steve stood up abruptly putting himself between his wife and the man he was going to kill, then he landed a heavy punch so solid against Jack’s chin that his knuckles felt the crunch.
“I’m ok!” Kayla insisted as she shot up after him. “Steve, please, it wasn’t me, I got here after!”
But Steve’s rage was blinding. “You raped my wife!” He took the step toward Jack that his brother had relinquished when he staggered with the blow. Still Jack pressed on.
“Your wife? She didn’t marry you, she married me! She just made love to me!”
“You. Raped. MY. WIFE!!!”
Before Kayla could stop him Steve launched himself at Jack. Every broken promise he’d made to Kayla …
“ … I sure as hell won’t ever let him rape you again! Ever! I won’t let him do it …”
… that he’d protect her …
“ … It’s never gonna happen again! That’s a promise Sweetness …”
… enshrouded him in hate …
“… I’ll never let him hurt you again …
… for Jack, for Ray, and for himself…
I promised you, and I won’t let him. I don’t care what happens.”
… as he pummeled his brother.
Punch after punch Steve leveled upon Jack as he tried to shield himself. He felt Kayla try to pull him off, he felt himself push her away, and he felt the bones break in Jack’s face as Steve continued to land one vicious blow after another. It felt good to punish this monster after not being able to punish Ray. It felt so very good to give him what he deserved after he violated Kayla that way. She was supposed to be as precious to Jack as she was to him. How could he do this to her? The sacrifice Steve had foolishly made for Jack’s happiness to the detriment of his own had resulted in the woman he loved being hurt so badly. So, it also felt unbelievably good to punish himself with hatred, too, for causing it. But hating Jack and hating himself and even hating Ray felt truly awful, beause that’s the way hate felt. What he needed to do was stop the enmity from coursing through him. But Steve was too out of his mind to stop. Too out of his mind to feel Kayla pulling desperately at him or to care that the blood was pouring out of the lacerations he’d made with his own hands. Nothing was enough to bring Steve to his senses, because his senses had already begun disappearing.
“You raped my wife!” Steve roared as he shook out his left hand and prepared for another punch. “You raped my wife, and now you’re gonna pay! You can go to hell, little brother, ‘cause this time you’re not getting my kidney! So, you go to hell, now, and I’ll see you there! You hear me?!” Steve wasn’t just punishing Jack anymore, either, because the next punch he landed was for what Ray had tried to do. “You sick f*ck, pedophile bastard!”
“Oh God, Steve, no!” Kayla was sobbing and screaming for Steve to stop. “This is not Ray, this is your brother, and I won’t let you kill him! I won’t let you!”
“Go upstairs!” Steve screamed at the top of his lungs.
“No! You come back to me, Steve, you have to stop or you’re going to kill him!”
“Good!” That’s what he wanted. And that was what he was about to get, because Jack had long since stopped fighting back and was now unconscious.
“Steve, please, baby, come back to me, please come back to me! Think about Abigail! Think about JJ!”
Finally, Steve pulled back the punch he was about to level upon Jack, who’d stopped being Billy Johnson so many years before this date. There was so much hate in his heart right now that he couldn’t see the man who would one day pull himself up out of a wretched existence and go on to become a gentle, loving brother, uncle, husband, and father of two children that Steve did, in fact, care very much about. Kayla used that opportunity to get between Steve and the bloody pulp of his brother.
“Shh, baby, listen to me look at me! You love them, I know you do! You have to stop this or they’ll never be born!”
Dah-dee.
Kayla’s words triggered something in Steve so crushing that he stopped breathing as an image of Emily calling out to him with her arms outstretched assailed him. He saw her. He heard her. He felt her.
Dah-dee!
“Please,” Kayla beseeched him, “you’ll never forgive yourself!”
Finally, Steve heard Kayla’s words. He heard Emily’s call to him. And he heard his own pain for failing them both. “I already don’t forgive myself.”
Kayla didn’t know that the chasm of abject grief he’d feared for days was opening up in front of her husband and went on, shaking her head as she took his face in her hands. “Steve,” her voice shook, “I jumped in after he’d already raped me! I only just got here! I am ok. I really am, I promse you. It didn’t happen again. Not to me!”
“You—you weren’t—here for it?”
Kayla shook her head. “No!”
Steve couldn’t process, he was so confused. “He didn’t do it? You stopped him?”
Kayla took a steadying breath but then quietly set him straight. “No, he did rape me. I can—feel—that he did. But I jumped in after.” Steve swallowed hard. “I’m ok, Steve. I am! Yes, it happened, but I didn’t have to experience it again.” She wanted to turn and see if Jack was breathing, but she dared not take her eyes off her husband. “And you’re here,” she said as a tear ran down her cheek. “You promised you’d come for me, and you did.”
“I was too late.” He barely got the words out.
“You promised you’d come for me,” she insisted over tears that poured down her cheeks. She took Steve’s hands and wiped the blood off with the long skirt of her ruined, blue dress. Then she looked him poignantly in the eye. “And. You. Did.”
Steve’s eye was wide as the chaos in his head readied its exodus. In those final seconds before the hell he’d been suffering with burst forth, Kayla saw exactly what was about to happen. She saw that her husband was in whole different kind of trouble right now. And she prayed to God that he let Steve finally find succor.
“Let it out,” she whispered, her palms back to cup either side of his face. “I’m right here.”
Finally, the dam broke, and a grief Steve had never known, literally, a single day in his whole life tore his heart right out of his chest.
Steve fell to his knees with a bereaved howl of anguish. The cries in the alley with the other Kayla were the beginning, but these cries with his rightful Kayla were so much more painful as he mourned – everything. He wrapped his arms around his wife’s legs as sorrow seared his soul with regret for failing her this night. For failing her the night she begged him not to let her jump, then not to leave Emily behind, yet didn’t come through on either. For failing Kayla by getting her pregnant and giving her a baby to love that she had no hope of keeping. For failing Emily the morning he created her. For failing her again when he left her behind the night he jumped. For surviving into the next timeline while his daughter that depended on him clutched onto the empty shell of her mother, dooming her to end her existence alone.
Kayla knelt down beside him, and he fell into her arms and wept. He could form no words, but he didn’t need to, for Kayla understood. She knew his grief wasn’t solely about not being able to stop her rape; rather, that was the catalyst that finally forced him to face all of it. So, she held him and would continue to do so as long as he needed her to.
Steve’s regret was deep, and it was unstoppable now. The emotions were like a runaway train as they continued to escape the place Steve had hidden them. Losing Benjy rose up from the depths. He’d failed to protect him from Stefano Dimera twice, and he ended up dead. Then he failed to protect his own son from Dimera during the hospital lockdown. He let Marcus die without being able to say goodbye to him. He failed Stephanie, too, allowing her to be raised without a father after vowing to her that he’d always be there. He’d left all three of his children, couldn’t protect Benjy and didn’t try hard enough to keep Pocket. He couldn’t even save Kayla from being raped a second time. What kind of man was he?
The pain left his body in wracking heartbreak, and Kayla cried with him. His pain was so hard for her, but she knew he had to release it as she had before him. He had to do this or he would never be ok again, and neither would they. So, she let her tender, healing kisses comfort him, and she let the stroke of her hand over his head and back nurture and love him as he cast out the anguish.
During this time, Jack did not stir, and they did not give him a second thought.
Finally their cries ebbed, and their tears stopped. Steve took shuddering breaths into Kayla’s shoulder while she stroked his hair. She bent down and gave him a final kiss on the side of his head, then she sat him up to look at her. He was a mess.
“I love you,” she whispered with a finger under his chin. She brushed his lips lovingly with her thumb.
“I love you more,” he rasped back.
“Oh, I doubt that.” The corners of Steve’s mouth inched up almost imperceptibly as his red-rimmed eye blinked another tear down his cheek. Kayla kissed it away.
“I love all four of you. So much that … I don’t know how to live through this. Our daughter is gone, Sweetness,” he sniffed. “Why can’t God let me raise any of my kids?” Steve’s voice was so tight and unfamiliar. She’d only heard him like this one other time, when he was saying goodbye to her on his deathbed and thanking her for his life. Kayla’s heart bled, but she had to let him get all of it out. “Why can’t God let me raise one?”
“I don’t know,” she said weepily. “It’s not fair.” Kayla was broken up, too. Just because she’d had this emotional break already didn’t mean she didn’t have any more tears to cry over her lost baby. She had plenty and always would. “You’re such a good father. The best. And they all love you so much.”
“Joey doesn’t even know me.”
Kayla was stunned. “That’s not true! Oh, Steve, Joey knows his papa. He’ll prove it to you when you see him again.”
“But we’ll never … Sweetness … I don’t know how to go on without Emily.” It was the first time he’d said her name aloud in quite some time. It sounded so bittersweetly beautiful coming out of his mouth. The sound of her daughter’s name when Steve said it … was so beautiful. “We’ll never see her again, and I don’t know how to go on.”
Kayla nodded. “I know.” Her own grief drew more tears down her face and made her chin tremble. “I’ll miss her for the rest of my life. And that’s how I’m going to go on.”
“What?”
“I’m going to honor her by going on. So, I can remember her every single day. So we can remember her together and keep her alive in our hearts. So we can talk about her conversations in her own little Hundred Acre Wood.” Steve smiled through his tears. “I have to go on so I can see her in your eyes. So I can remember how she’d run for the stairs knowing you were going to catch her before she got there.”
“It was her favorite game,” Steve huffed out a teary chuckle.
“Yes, it was! We both have to go on and keep living. Because when we get home we have to tell Stephanie and Joey all about her. They will know their sister just the same as Stephanie knew her father. She knew you, Steve. Not a day went by that she didn’t know you.”
“I wasn’t there.”
“You were. You were there every moment of every day, infused into Stephanie’s life. Photos of us were everywhere. She used to draw pictures of you and her.” Steve remembered, he’d seen some of them that Kayla had saved. “Stephanie’s just like you, can’t you see that?” He most certainly could. He mainly saw Kayla, but It amazed him how much his daughter was also like him. “You think she was born that way?”
“Yeah,” he laughed. It was a good sign.
“Ok, you’re right, she was. But it was a whole lot of nurture mixed with that nature. She knew you so well that if she’d have seen you on the street she would have recognized you. I made sure of it.”
“Oh, Sweetness.”
“And now we’re both going to make sure that she, and Joey, too, know Emily. And love her. And honor her life right along with us for the rest of our lives. Just like Stephanie honored and knew and loved you.” Now she took a very deep and cathartic breath. “That’s how we go on.” Steve could not believe what a wife he had. He could not believe that anyone on this earth was as lucky as he was that she loved him so much. “That’s how.”
Steve nodded and caressed Kayla’s face with the back of his hand. “That’s how,” he agreed.
They stood up and held each other very close for several moments. It was very intimate, and they felt very close to each other as they silently allowed the catharsis to wash over them. Finally, Steve faced the reality of the night.
“Are you hurting, baby?” he asked gently. Kayla felt so loved. His first words about what had just transpired here had been for her well being, not his brother’s. Only she wasn’t sure what to say, because she didn’t want the truth to undo what had just happened between them. She didn’t think she could take it if he backpedaled. Steve knew her well, though, and assured her that it was time to focus on her now. “You’ve been my anchor for a long time. My turn. I’m here, baby.”
Kayla smiled sadly against his chest. “You are aren’t you?”
“I am. And I’m not going anywhere. Ever. Please let me help you.”
Kayla took a shuddering breath and drew herself further against him. She nodded.
“That’s a yes? You’re hurting?”
“Yes,” she said softly.
“Inside?” Kayla shrugged a nod. Steve exhaled sadly. “We should take you to the hospital.”
Kayla shook her head. “I didn’t do that last time.”
“I think we’re past that with this jump,” he huffed.
“I mean there’s no point.” She finally drew back, and Steve saw all the evidence bruising her chin and cheek and neck. And that was just what he could see.
“He did this to you,” Steve said bitterly.
Kayla nodded then shifted her gaze over her husband’s shoulder. “And you did that to him.” Steve didn’t turn around. “I need to check him.”
“Kayla, no.” He backed up and held his arm out to block her. He didn’t want her to have to be near him. “I’ll call an ambulance.”
“Steve, let me check him.”
“Why does it have to be you?!”
“Because I’m here,” she said.
Steve didn’t know why he felt such a visceral reaction to this, but he just couldn’t fathom it. “No!”
Gently but very purposely, she pushed his arm back down.
“Yes.”
Without another word, Kayla squeezed Steve’s hand and very bravely faced the still form of her rapist on the floor. Her skin crawled even as she felt for his pulse.
“Is that four?” Kayla jumped. Being this close to Jack in this raped body after that massive offloading of emotion had left her touchy.
“Four what?”
Steve adjusted his patch very nervously. “People I’ve killed since we started jumping.”
Kayla looked up at her husband, who looked back at her with such apology. He would always feel the guilt of having caused this. Kayla didn’t know how she felt about Jack right now. She guessed if she’d been there for a second time through the rape that her feelings would be far less ambivalent.
“No.”
Steve blew out a breath. “Is he gonna die?”
Kayla shook her head. “Head trauma, I’m sure a concussion, two or three craniofacial fractures, and he’s going to need stitches. But he’ll live.”
Steve wasn’t sure how he felt about that.
“I thought for sure I’d killed him. I felt his bones crack.” Steve was oddly detached. He stared blankly at Jack and tried to see him as his baby brother. But this time was different than the last time, and all he could see right now was a man in another timeline, sitting in a hospital bed, insisting that he could make Kayla love him. Suddenly Kayla was in front of him again, and he could see that her rational reserve was starting to falter.
“My guess is that he’s going to wake up with a bad headache that won’t get any better when he realizes you rearranged his face.”
“And what about you?”
“I just want him out of here,” Kayla replied breathily.
“Sweetness, you need to be—”
“Please,” she whimpered, a lump in her throat. She was at her threshold and could not share any more space with Jack Deveraux. “I need—” her tears started anew, “—I need …” Steve gathered his wife up in his arms, and now it was his turn to take care of her.
Kayla sat on the far side of the room and watched as Steve called Marcus. He didn’t care what happened to him, but Kayla knew if they called an ambulance, they’d have to explain everything, it would be that much longer before she could clean up, and Steve might be hauled away for assaulting Jack. Steve begged her again to get checked, but Kayla refused. She knew how things turned out, and there was no point in in wasting any time with a rape examination or any kind of report to the authorities. “I think you’ve taken care of punishing him,” she insisted.
It was the middle of the night when Marcus arrived. They told him what happened, and he was just as sympathetic now as he was the first time, but neither of them wanted him to linger. When he started asking questions like how Steve knew to run over here and why Kayla didn’t want to report it or see a doctor, they both got very agitated. Kayla wanted nothing more than to take a shower and wash Jack off of her. She’d been able to put it all aside while Steve’s grief poured out of him, but now she was truly suffering every moment Jack was still inside of her like this. Steve just wanted to take care of his wife. So, like in every timeline they’d ever known him in, Marcus remained loyal and true, and he trusted the actions they chose to take, even if he didn’t understand them.
Jack started to rouse enough to let Marcus drag him out the door and into his car, where he then drove him to Salem University Hospital and out of Kayla’s sight for the rest of this jump, which would be coming to an end sooner than they knew.
Steve stroked Kayla’s face one last time before she got in the shower. “Are you sure you don’t want a hospital, baby?” Kayla shook her head.
“Steve I have to get him … off of me.”
Steve swallowed. He knew what she meant. It killed him that she had to do this again. “But—”
“No buts, I don’t need it.”
“But, baby, what if—”
“There is no what if!” she lost her temper. “We know how this goes! I don’t become pregnant, and he didn’t give me anything!” Steve swallowed; this was hard to hear. But that was just too bad, he told himself, because this wasn’t about him.
Steve took her into his arms. “Ok, baby. I just want what’s best for you, that’s all. Whatever you want. I’m here.”
“Thank you,” she muffled into his chest. Then, finally, behind the closed door with her husband waiting for her on the other side, Kayla climbed into the shower where she cleansed her naked body of Jack Deveraux for the second and what she prayed to God would be the last time.
The minute she came out, Steve took care of his wife. He rubbed her feet and towel dried her hair, and he tried to give her some food, which she refused. He didn’t try to get her out of her robe and into pajamas he just laid her against him on the bed so that he could support her.
“I really am ok,” Kayla assured him as she dug her face into his chest. It had been so long since she’d burrowed into him; it felt so good to both of them.
“How much of it did you have to relive?”
“Not that much, to be honest. He was already off of me by the time I jumped in. I don’t think I was there a whole minute before you were suddenly there on the stairs.” Her heart suddenly skipped a beat. Steve felt it when she stiffened.
“What is it?”
“How long were you there? Did you – oh, God, Steve, did you have to watch—him—me—”
“No, baby.” The disappointment in his voice was thick. “I would give anything to have gotten there sooner.”
Kayla relaxed. “I’m glad you didn’t. No one should have to watch someone they love be violated like that.”
“You’re wrong. It’s an easy price to pay if it means I could have stopped it.” They lay silent for several moments.
“I kind of want another shower. I just feel so dirty.”
“Kayla, you’re not!”
“I know. In my head I know. I’m past this emotionally, I really am. But I’m still in this body,” she said. “And … I still feel … it. Him. I can feel him.”
Steve tried not to fly off the handle, but knowing that she could still feel Jack between her legs upset him so much. This was not jealousy or some selfish territoriality. This was deep sadness and compassion that Kayla was suffering. “Is that how it was before?” She heard the concern in his voice, but Kayla leveled a wary stare upon her husband anyway. They’d never discussed the physical trauma of Kayla’s rape. He’d asked her to tell him once, but then he stopped her when he couldn’t hear it anymore. He saw her hesitance now and couldn’t have her doubting him. “I know what you’re thinking. That I cant handle it.” Kayla didn’t reply. “I’m different now. We’ve both lived a long time from who these two people were then. Your problems are my problems, Sweetness. You don’t have to carry them all alone. I know you did that last time. Too busy takin’ care of me to let me take care of you. But, Sweetness, I’m your anchor no matter how hard it is. Please, baby,” he kissed her forehead. “Tell me.”
Kayla felt so safe and loved in the arms of her husband. So she did as he asked, and for the first time she told him about it.
“I knew before I even jumped away from Chicago that it was going to be bad. I felt it. Like a storm was coming when you can just feel it in the air. I don’t think about that night anymore. I really don’t. When I see Jack sometimes I’m reminded. When Stephanie …” Despite Steve’s best efforts to stay calm, his blood pressure went up at this seldom spoken reference to what Ford Decker did to his baby girl. “But when I smelled him I couldn’t believe it. I just couldn’t believe I was here.”
“You could smell him?”
“All over me,” she said tightly. “I’ll never forget that smell. Couldn’t you smell it when you were … near me? Steve shook his head. “I didn’t even feel the nausea, I was too numb.”
“I arrived on the pier with Marcus. My head was still in what happened to you in Chicago.” Kayla nodded and said she knew. “The minute I figured it out I tried to get to you. Didn’t know you were already here ‘til you told me. But it didn’t matter. The second I realized you were in that nightmare I tried to get to you. I ran here so fast that I don’t even remember doing it. I ran so fast, baby,” he whispered.
“I know.” Kayla leaned up for a kiss, and Steve brushed his lips gently across hers. Then she settled her head back up into Steve’s neck. “I knew he’d already done it – that it was over before I got there.” She paused but then said it. “Because I could still feel him inside me.” Steve didn’t move a muscle. He asked her to share her burden, and he wasn’t going to let her down. It’s not that he didn’t react, she could feel that he did. But he didn’t freak out. Instead, he kissed the top of her head and held her tighter. Kayla melted into him. “My body wasn’t ready for him, and … that’s a pain that’s unmistakeable.”
Steve craned his neck to look at her. He understood what she was saying – no lubrication. Forcible penetration while she was dry. “Sweetness. I didn’t know it was like that.”
“Now you do,” she said softly. “Still with me?”
Steve sat her up. “Forever.” Kayla’s eyes were dry, but they held a strain that pinched at her brow. Steve wanted to press his naked body against hers and infuse all of his strength and love and commitment into her. He wanted her to feel his soul. He wanted to strip away this memory and take it solely within himself. Instead he pulled her robe aside to reveal her clavicle and placed his lips upon her bruises. He kissed away the evidence of Jack’s touch from her neck and her chin. And he caressed the mottled bruise on her cheek with the back of his hand so that the last touch it felt was one that worshiped her.
“I noticed something this time, though,” she said as she cocked her head curiously. “Jack looked … sorry.” Steve gave her a doubtful look. “It was just like a second, but he did. He looked so sorry.”
“He wasn’t sorry, baby.”
“He was. I’m not giving him a pass,” she insisted in answer to Steve’s incredulous look. “But I saw it, he was terrified at what he’d just done – that he was capable of doing that. But then it was gone, and he was Jack again. I didn’t notice it the first time, or maybe I blocked it out.”
“I hate him right now,” Steve rasped. “I love him in 2009. And I loved him when he fell off that roof. But I hate him right now.”
Kayla took Steve’s hand into hers. “I know.”
An unbelievable fatigue swept over them both. They were so tired, Steve from the emotional purge, and Kayla from the trauma of the evening. Without another word, they spooned into their favorite position and were both asleep.
Kayla was not in the bed when Steve woke up in the morning, and he panicked. She appeared a moment later wet from the shower, her robe tightly wrapped around her. Steve looked at her in confusion. “I know it’s not rational, but I couldn’t help it,” she said. Steve understood immediately.
“Don’t be sorry,” he said with sleep in his voice. “Whatever you have to do.”
Kayla sat down on the bed and just took Steve’s hand. He let her play with it for several moments, easing them back into reality. “I guess we’re still here.”
“Yeahp.” He brought her restless fingers to his lips and kissed them before placing her palm on his cheek. “How you feelin’?”
Kayla gave him a small smile. “Better.”
“Yeah?”
She nodded.
He rubbed her knee. “No more pain?”
Kayla shrugged. “Not really. Little discomfort at this point. It’s better.”
“Can I get you anything, Sweetness?” She nodded. “What?”
“Tell me you love me.”
Steve gave her his own small smile and opened his arms. “Come here.” Kayla crawled into his embrace, and he told her what she already knew but would never tire of hearing. “I love you, Sweetness. I’ve loved you since the day I met you. I loved you when I couldn’t even remember you. I’ll never stop loving you.”
They spent the entire day in the loft and did not leave. They stayed close to each other, and they talked. About everything. Especially Emily. Once Steve had released that dark pain that had threatened to swallow him whole, he accepted that the only way to go on was as his wife had said – by remembering her. Talking about her. Honoring her. So he did. They held nothing back. There were tears, but there was also laughter.
And a lot of phone calls.
What they really wanted when they weren’t talking was to be in bed sleeping, because the fact was that they were emotionally and mentally exhausted, and Kayla’s body was damaged and needed rest that she didn’t have the luxury of getting the first time around. But the phone rang off the hook, because Jack’s beating did not go unnoticed. Marcus was completely unwillilng to provide any insight into why he was bringing the assemblyman-elect into the ER this way or how it happened, but Jack was talking to anyone who would listen. The senator and Angelica were, of course, furious and had gotten the Salem PD involved. As a result, the phone in the loft did not stop ringing until they finally just took it off the hook. They weren’t oblivious to the consequences of last night’s actions, they just didn’t have the energy to care. Sure, the effects would be pretty bad if they were here a long time, but for all they knew they’d be gone in a day, and both of them were just … tired. Tired of being anyplace, anywhere, anywhen, and anybody.
When Roman showed up at the loft himself to bring Steve in on battery charges, Kayla didn’t open the door. The phone had been quiet enough for them to find their badly needed rest for 27 whole minutes when the pounding began.
“Kayla!” Roman shouted from the hallway, waking her instantly. “Sis, I know you’re in there, you’re car is parked in the lot!”
“He’s said that one before, hasn’t he?” Steve asked snarkily.
“At least once or twice.”
“Kayla, I know you’re hiding Steve in there, so just open up so we don’t have to do this the hard way, come on!”
“Can you believe I let that guy stand up in our weddings?”
“Steve, come on, you love John.”
“Yeah, well right now I’m not a fan.
“Kay!”
“You gonna get that or should I?” Steve asked resignedly.
Kayla puffed out a breath with the pull at her diaphragm and blinked. It was too good to be true, but there it was. “Neither,” she replied, “‘cause we’re not going to be here to answer it.
Steve sat up fast. “Are you sure?!” He took one look at her, though and knew she was.
Kayla nodded and closed her eyes to the spin of the room. “Too quick. Not stable.”
Steve’s tug came, and he couldn’t wait for them to get out of this nightmare. “Shh. Doesn’t matter.”
Kayla knew this sign of instability definitely did matter, but she was out of time to dwell on it. “Hold me.” It was the last thing she said before she was gone.
Steve pulled her up into his lap and kissed her. “Right behind you.” Then he was gone, too.
The second Kayla arrived she knew exactly where she was. Again, the smell tipped her off. A weird mixture of mustiness, cedar, and the scent of the river on the wind that blew right through her. Despite her thick sweater, she was very chilly. And very, very dizzy. It was a very bad arrival, just like right after she’d left 1989, and she was very lucky she was sitting down. She reached for whatever she could, squeezed the wooden bannister her hand blindly found, dug in her heels, and somehow kept her gorge from rising. When it passed she opened her eyes and confirmed what she already knew.
“Steve!” She stood up and shouted for him again. He didn’t answer her, and there was no point in continuing to call.
She thought for just a moment sussing out the dates in her head but stopped when the little foot that kicked at her from inside her womb told her what she needed to know. Kayla sat back down and smiled. This was a pretty good place to be for the moment.
“Well, baby girl,” she said as she rubbed her pregnant belly, “I think your papa will be making an appearance pretty soon.” Stephanie answered her with another kick.