The last thing Kayla expected to see and hear when she blinked into existence at her next destination was Steve’s animatedly celebratory face and his exuberant whoop of victory. He looked almost exactly the same and was, in fact, wearing the exact same black shirt, only this one was buttoned and tucked in. He wasn’t the only one whooping, either, other people were there at what she immediately knew was the Cheatin’ Heart. Most of the ones who weren’t cheering were giving half-hearted boos. Kayla blinked several times and leaned heavily on her pool cue. More déjà vu from a time that was re-lived instead of originally lived, she’d done this same thing to get her bearings and let the jump effect pass when she jumped into her first pool game with Steve. This one was like the last, however, and passed very quickly, for which she was thankful.
“That’s game, baby,” Steve said as he strutted past her. He consulted the score of the pool game she’d, apparently, just lost, and proceeded to tease her arrogantly. “Now according to my calculations – hey cheer for me!” Steve interrupted himself.
“Calculations?” Kayla said out loud starting to realize exactly where she’d just gone.
“You owe me five … ten kisses.”
“Kisses,” she repeated non-committally as she tried very hard to control her reactions into as much neutrality as possible. “We’re playing for kisses, here.” The absent sound to her voice sounded to this Steve like a pout of defeat.
“Ten of ‘em, you wanna check my arithmetic, here?”
“No,” she said rather sheepishly as she reached for the details, “I-I believe you.” Steve was grinning at her like a man whose plan had come to his intended fruition. He had no idea that Kayla was fighting with everything she had to maintain a controlled expression.
Everything was happening so fast, she couldn’t adjust, and in the next few seconds that ticked by an overwhelming sea of thoughts crashed through Kayla’s head. She couldn’t have described it any other way, it was a deluge of thoughts coming at her from all directions and crashing at a singular point in her brain. For one thing, she couldn’t shake the feelings of intense rejection by her husband. Just because she was in a new destination didn’t mean all that didn’t just happen a minute ago. Only that’s not the guy that was standing here right now, and separating the two was difficult in her current resentful state. What was worse was that she knew that he loved her with everything he had in him. She heard him say he thought she doubted him. She didn’t doubt him. It was that she didn’t doubt him that made it so awful. She knew that this rejection wasn’t real, it was born from something else he was shutting her out of – just like when he pushed her to Jack. That’s why she felt like that awful morning he’d left her, because it was so similar, even if he wasn’t hiding anything from her this time. For another thing, she needed his comfort so badly after her emotional release at the house. This she was truly livid about. Positively livid that he was more driven to protect the timeline than he was to be there for her. Somewhere deep down she understood that he was trying to protect their future, but she couldn’t get at it. Finally, even as angry as she was, she was just as equally terrified for him, because it was very clear to her that Steve was bottling up his grief. Whereas Kayla had embraced her grief at the house, Steve was in a denial of his own. She knew that was going to eat at him until he broke. And he would break. When he did, it was going to be the worst thing that ever happened to him. Yet right now she was in a room full of people who were watching her, including Steve, and she had to catch up.
When she looked up he had tossed the paper and pool stick – which she recognized immediately as the one she’d given him all these years ago looking just as pristine and well-cared for in 2009 as it did right here when it was practically brand new – onto a nearby table. His face was wholly absent of the pain she’d just seen on it.
“Pay up baby.”
Kisses. They were playing pool not for money or bragging rights, but for kisses. It was one of Kayla’s favorite nights with Steve – one of those dates he didn’t qualify as such, apparently. This thought made the resentment show a bit on her face, but this Steve took it as playing hard to get.
“You want me to pay up with those kisses,” she said matter-of-factly.
“That’s right.”
“Here.”
“Yeah, right now, here.
Kayla was so angry that she couldn’t keep her Steves straight. She knew this one didn’t deserve her ire, but she couldn’t just turn on and off like that, it wasn’t a rational thing they were going through, so rationalizing did not come easily. She tossed her own stick onto the pool table, crossed her arms in front of her, and fixed her eyes onto the floor as she tried to just let it go so she could get through this jump until he got there. Steve hadn’t the slightest clue that the context of all this had changed and was, therefore, highly amused at how Kayla was playing along as the loser.
“Oh, come on, you don’t want all these people to think you’re a welcher now do you.
She looked up as he said this and spotted the very large and fresh bruise on the left side of his face. It shined with the purple crimson sheen of a punch. A series of them, actually. Delivered by his father. Who was an animal. Now all she wanted to do was reach out and touch it. Put her lips on it. Make it better.
Kayla didn’t really perk up, but she softened a bit. She remembered this night so well. In good ways and in very bad ways. This one was good.
“Well, I guess a Brady never welches on a bet,” she said with a shrug. She didn’t mean it playfully, but more as an inevitability.
“A Brady never welches,” he dared her, “so come on baby, here I am.” His face didn’t just hold desire, it held excited anticipation. He wanted his kisses. And she couldn’t help the fact that she wanted to give them to him. Because she craved and needed his touch. She also reasoned that they did kiss ten times over this pool game.
I think following the timeline is the answer, Kayla, we can’t make major changes anymore. You were right all along, from the very first jump. You were right!
She had no judgment right now if the kisses mattered. If they were going to be missed by whatever computers were living in the doctor’s lab if she failed to give them. What she did know was that she didn’t want this memory tainted. So, she put it all aside as much as she could and moved forward with what Steve had reasoned in the previous jump was the right way.
The bartender was encouraging her, the patrons were woo hoo’ing, and she just gave in.
“Come on,” Steve said, beckoning her toward him with his hands.
Kayla smiled almost shyly. “Ok, one,” she said.
“One,” Steve repeated, and his voice was so genuine – so glad to be getting his kisses.
Their lips met, and this was the same kind of kiss her husband had given her countless times before. Not like the angry ones they suffered through moments ago. This was a wonderful kiss he was giving her, and she gave it back to him. He pulled back from her, and his smile was full of delight just to be with her. Kayla’s heart jumped, and it was joyous and terrible.
“That’s one,” he said, his smile so wide.
“Two,” she barely got out, because the emotion was hitting her, but also because Steve’s lips returned for his next kiss before she could take a breath. His smile was the same when they pulled away, and the terrible had receded some as she let out a little chuckle; there was no way not be feel his joy, it was that infectious. He went in for the next one, and Kayla continued smiling back at him through it. Steve’s lips stayed with hers after that third kiss as long as they could before she’d fully pulled back, and when she watched him lick his lips her heart beat just a little faster. He loved her here; she didn’t just know it, she felt it. She felt the love coming off of him … and then it occurred to her that this was only days after the last jump … and her mind started to wander back toward resentment for his obstinance. His voice broke into her thoughts.
“Keep ‘em coming baby, now gimme three.” He had his arms held out to her, clearly enjoying every minute of this.
“Oh no, no, I already gave you three, don’t you pull that one on me, Steve Johnson. This is four!
“Oh,” he replied innocently, and this time Steve pulled her into him and really held her as his lips sought out a real connection with hers. He moaned softly into the kiss, and suddenly he wasn’t playful anymore. She felt it as plainly as she felt anything, this kiss was meaningful for him and held something far more serious than the winnings of a pool game. He didn’t want her to pull out of this one, she could tell by the way his lips tried to hold on even as hers released him. And the look on his face was so uninhibited. He wanted her. He loved her. He didn’t want her to stop kissing him. There was no smirk, there were no games. He took her by the arms and brought her back to him as she counted out number five, then did the same with number six, his face even more serious than before and holding significantly onto both of her hands. Mine she felt them say as they held hers.
Steve let his fingers curve around Kayla’s beautiful neck and gently brought her to his lips for a seventh kiss, which she smiled into. She was enjoying this, too. Not quite for the exact same reasons as she did the first time and as Steve was now repeating – but she couldn’t deny the warmth that spread through her when this man, devoid of the emotional hell that would torture him one day, loved her like this. And it felt so good to have that love expressed to her.
“Come on baby come on. Five,” he licked his lips of her kiss with obvious desire.
The crowd made clear comments on the hotness of this little show, Steve did nothing to hide the resulting flame that was burning inside him, and only one person in that room noticed when he froze for just a moment before gasping slightly for a breath. The sound was swallowed up by an innocent whoop.
“Eight!” Kayla said exactly at that moment. It was simultaneous, and she was already in the act of moving in for their eighth kiss as she processed these signs of his arrival. She knew it before their kiss connected, but when the feel of his soft, supple lips had changed to something filled with angst and tension, it was unmistakeable. She pulled back quickly, and Steve wasn’t sure if she looked guilty or startled.
Steve gripped her around the hips his hands had been holding as the the dizziness quickly passed. Someone was making kissy noises behind him, and the smell of beer and Kayla’s perfume assailed him with a longing that really hit him in the gut.
“Hi,” Kayla said. She didn’t even bother with the Stockholm question.
Steve stepped back from her and put his hands on his hips. He was so angry with how she’d jumped away. He didn’t return her greeting, he just sneered.
“Uh oh,” said the man making kissy noises. Steve ignored both him and the rest of the people starting to get restless for the remaining two kisses they had coming.
“That all you have to say?” he said in a dead quiet tone. She replied with a smirk of her own.
“Boo,” a woman complained.
“Steve,” Kayla tried to salvage this, “we’re playing that game of pool where you hustled kisses out of me.”
He didn’t take his eyes off her. “Having a good old time?” he accused.
“I think I’m doing what you said to do,” she insisted irately, “living the timeline. This is what we’re supposed to do, right?”
“Ok, ya’ll just lost me,” said a man with a huge cowboy hat that would have made them both giggle under any other circumstances, the thing looked ridiculous. That got Kayla motivated.
“Come on!” she yelled with an artificially inflated exuberance, “can’t finish what you started?”
“She’s gotcha there, Patch,” the bartender said. For once, neither of them reacted to that reference.
“We’ve only got two more left, I think I should continue to pay up, don’t you?”
“All paid,” he said as evenly as he could, the drinkers in their ‘80’s glory definitely unhappy about this.
“Are you nuts?” said the man with the cowboy hat as he licked his lips and sidled over to Kayla. “How ‘bout I take the two in change?” She took an immediate step back, not that it was necessary, because the man quickly re-thought it all when Steve rose up to his full height and advanced on him threateningly. Without another word the guy went back to the bar. Kayla smiled at this show of possessiveness.
“Now who’s the welcher?!” she tried to amp up the crowd, not to mention her husband, making hand gestures to get some more catcalls from them. Steve was getting more and more angry by the minute. She just jumped away without saying boo, and now she was pretending it never happened?
“Knock it off, Kayla,” he said very low under his breath.
And that was it for that. All the anger and hurt that she took with her from the previous jump that she’d found a way to suppress with the first eight kisses rose right back to the top and pervaded her thoughts with that one sentence. She walked right up to him so that her face was but two inches from his; his hands took her hips again, because that’s what his hands naturally did.
“No,” she whispered. The crowd liked this body language a lot better. “You said we have to live the timeline. This is what we did, we kissed ten times. I’m doing what you want, and it’s still not right? Protecting the timeline some more are you?”
He could feel her anger peeling off of her like steam. But he was mad, too. Her proximity didn’t have the usual effect, because he was too furious to see anything but red.
“You left without warning me,” he bit back in a whisper only she could hear but to everyone else looked like foreplay.
“I did not,” she narrowed her eyes and tried to pull away truly indignant. “I wouldn’t do that! I called your name, but you wouldn’t look at me!” She needed space. “Steve, let me go!”
“You did, Kayla. You didin’t say sh*t before I felt it, and when I looked at you, you were practically gone already! You had plenty of time to say the jump was here.”
“I did!”
“My name? You were right next to me on the bed, and you didn’t sound any different than any other time you say my name. Don’t pretend you tried!”
“I did try! You were just so mad that you didn’t want to hear me!” Steve knew there was truth in that. But he also knew there was truth in what he said next.
“You didn’t try hard enough to make me hear! You just left.”
“You are really one to talk!”
This whole argument was conducted very quietly in a very controlled little pocket of personal space apart from the crowd around them, which had already dissipated back into their own social circles. Now it was just the two of them, and the warmth that Kayla had found in those few short moments was gone.
“Let me go!” Kayla demanded again. But Steve held fast to her, unwilling to disengage. She wanted to play games, fine, he could play. “Let me go!”
“Now who’s runnin’, baby?” He was incensed, too, and brought one hand up to grip her shoulders and gave them a small shake. “I’m one to talk? What the hell is that supposed to mean? I’ve never just left. Never!”
“You emotionally left me.” That made the hairs stand up on the back of Steve’s neck. The shock of the truly awful statement made him finally release her, and the momentum from her efforts to pull away from him sent her sprawling to the floor. She cried out as she hit the hard tile, and when she looked up at him, she could see that she’d gotten his attention. Almost too well, in fact.
Steve’s eye was wide with the shock of that statement. Her long black skirt and red sweater with the gold detailing in the front was one of his favorite outfits. She looked so pretty, and the image of her from this night had stayed with him all these years. But he wasn’t seeing it or anything else in this room at the moment. Instead a very different image of his wife from the very same vantgage point assailed him – only she was in an absolute panic in this image, crying and begging him, as a heavy pair of roller skates kept her from righting herself, all while he watched and did nothing. And for the first time since he kissed his daughter goodbye, the fog of intense depression lifted enough for him to see clearly. Really and truly clearly. The stab to his heart at what she’d just said made him reach to his neck for the shell that wasn’t there. And this time he did more than the nothing he did when he found her with Shane on the pier.
“Sweetness,” Steve said with a very different tone as he kneeled down in front of her and tried to take her hand to help her up. But she was so disgusted and so terribly hurt that she wouldn’t take it. “Are you ok, baby?” Kayla detected the genuineness in his voice, but it was too late. Instead she scooted back to give herself room to try to pull herself up with the pool table.
“Don’t Sweetness me,” she said angrily. Steve pulled her up, anyway, but she wouldn’t let him hold on to her once she was off the floor and wrenched her hand down out of his grasp.
You emotionally left me!
It was one of the worst things he’d ever heard. That she felt abandoned. It made his heart finally feel something that he didn’t wall up and away from himself. He felt this. He opened his mouth but no sound came out. Kayla had plenty more to say, however.
“We can’t be together, because of the timeline, but you still got your comfort, didn’t you? Couldn’t get it from me, but you got it.”
“That’s not fair, I jumped into that, and I—couldn’t—help it!”
“But now you can! You can help it just fine with the real me!”
“Dammit, Kayla, I was mad, you’d just jumped away without telling me! I can’t just turn myself on and off!”
“Yes, dammit, Kayla,” she smirked.
Steve had to fix this. He took her by the elbow, but she wasn’t having any of it. “Please, baby, lower your voice, no one understands what we’re talkin’ about, here.”
“You think I care?! Wrong timeline. Against the rules. Right? Just like the last jump, which seems to me,” she said looking down at herself, “to have been maybe yesterday! Can’t be with me, have to send me away!”
“I was trying to protect us, Sweetness, I didn’t want to go through it again.” Pleadingly, he gestured to the corner of the room and begged her to have the rest of this conversation there. She didn’t budge.
“Oh, you’re lying to me now? Is that what you’re doing, you’re going to start lying again?”
“Kayla!”
“No! No, you can’t have it both ways! You say I have to follow the rules, but then when you get here you won’t do it yourself? You won’t kiss me?” she squeaked. Steve’s eye stung from the rejection he knew she was feeling. The fortress he’d built around his grief was being stormed by his wife’s devastation. “Well guess what?” Kayla was shouting now, and the whole place had turned their shocked eyes onto them. “I’m destroyed!” her voice shook. “I’m completely destroyed.” And now so was Steve hearing these words come out of her. “We just lost a lifetime, Steve,” her voice broke. “And you somehow think you’re the only one that gets to decide what we do next and how we do it. I was begging you to put your arms around me and mean it!”
She was right about a lot, but she was wrong about that. “Don’t you say that!” he spat back. Now he was mad, again. “Jesus, Kayla, I know I was trying to make you go back to the loft, but I always mean it. Baby … my God, how can you doubt me like that? Huh? How, baby, tell me how!”
“Because you are pushing me away! You’re lying to me and to yourself, and when the jump came,” she threw up her hands and succumbed to the truth that she no longer cared about repressing from not only him but herself, too, “yeah, I could have tried harder. I could have made damn sure you knew. But you had turned from me, and you still haven’t turned back!”
“I was—” He shook it away. “I’m here now! I am!”
Just then the door to the Cheatin’ Heart opened, and she took full advantage and ran through it, nearly knocking Adrienne over as she did. She was getting so good at running away from it all when it became too much, why should now be any different? Somehwere Steve registered that his sister was now in the bar and was calling his name, but all he saw was his wife running from him. Steve wasted no time running after her.
“Kayla!” he yelled after her.
“No!” she cried. She didn’t even feel the cold night air. “What, you’re gonna yell for me to come back? Gonna say you love me, Sweetness?” Steve hated her twisting of his pet name for her as much as she did, only it seemed so much worse coming from her like this.
“You promised you wouldn’t run from me!”
“That’s right, I promised not to shut you out when the time came! Well, the time is here, and I kept my promise on the last jump and the one before that, and in Stockholm, too! But you didn’t! SHE WAS MY CHILD, TOO!”
Kayla didn’t hear Steve’s stifled sob at these words that shredded his heart, she was too busy running. Running as fast as she could, though she had no idea where. It was a very cold February night, and the wind was whipping off the water and against her face. For a moment she thought about jumping right into that water and letting it drown her. Instead she turned down a street to get away from the biting wind, as well as the very real temptation to jump into that dark, cold river. She heard Steve calling after her, but he hadn’t caught up with her yet, and she didn’t look back before she’d turned that corner. Her anger was so raw, her emotions so painful. And now Steve should have caught up to her, but … he hadn’t. She wasn’t as fast as he was, why hadn’t he caught up with her? She couldn’t see the forest for the trees on anything right now, nothing made any sense. So she kept running down the side street that she’d known so well in her teens but that now wasn’t as fresh in her memory, and she did not stop. Steve never did catch up with her, and she could only assume he’d, once again, chosen retreat over comforting her.
The truth, however was that Steve followed her the minute she took off, but he didn’t get so much as a yard after her, because Adrienne had caught him by the arm and was going on in near hysterics. She wouldn’t let go of his arm or calm down long enough for him to get a word in edgewise. Moments ago, really, he was so worried about stopping Duke from raping his sister that he wouldn’t have wasted a second of this time with her, assessing when this was and if she was still safe from it. Except Kayla had just followed him into the deep end, and he had to get her out. This timeline was not going to last forever, and he had to go find his wife. This Adrienne with him just … wasn’t real. That woman who’d just run away from him and told him how abandoned he’d made her feel while he felt sorry for himself, even if he came by it honestly, was very, very real. The choice wasn’t even hard.
So Steve had extricated himself from his sister’s pleading grasp and took off after his wife. Who by the time he’d done so was now nowhere to be seen. Literally nowhere. It was very dark, the streetlamps along the river were never very good at illuminting much beyond their little pool of light, and Kayla’s dark clothing wasn’t going to do much for locating her. Even so, she couldn’t have gotten that far out of his eyeshot, and she simply wasn’t there, otherwise he would have spotted that blonde head of hers reflecting the light.
“Kayla!” he called. “Kayla!!” he boomed as loudly as he could. But there was no answer. He ran down the pier that banked the river and very quickly realized that he’d lost her. For the first time, she was evading him, and he didn’t know where she was. she’d disappeared quick. “KAYLA!!”
He stopped two blocks past where she’d turned away toward town, then turned in circles trying to spot her. When he didn’t, the terrible sense of something black fell over him. Anger that she’d let herself get separated from him on a jump, fear that he’d hurt her, and his own pain from her hurting him. He let out a strangled cry at it all and fell to his knees. “Sweentess!!!” he cried out as the floodgates really opened. But his cries stopped abruptly when he felt the tug in his diaphragm, and the nature of his desperation turned on a dime.
“Kayla!” he shouted out to her. “Hang on, baby, the jump is here! Just hang on, we’re jumping!” This fight was bitter, and it had lasted through two solid jumps, brief as they were. They were both mad, and they both did things that weren’t right. But Steve vowed to himself that he didn’t care how far the darkness sank within him, it was over now. He didn’t know how they’d deal with the instability of the slipstream, but he needed her so badly, and she needed him, and they were going to find a way no matter what it took. The air around him changed, and the neighborhood practically hung askew as the jump took him. “I love you, baby! Hang on!”
The next thing he knew his mother was sitting across from him. He braced himself for the dizziness, so he wasn’t the least bit fazed when it hit him, he merely swallowed hard, closed his eye, and kept it closed until the effect passed, which was, again, normal rather than extra strength. When he looked up, Jo was sitting there quietly, waiting for him to answer the question she’d asked before his awareness took over. Unfortunately, Steve’s head was a mess of desperation and wasn’t adjusting as quickly as it normally did.
“Mama?!” he said in a voice very different from the last one used by this body. He said it before he could assess his surroundings. Jo reacted with a face that Steve had grown very used to seeing in these jumps – overwhelming show to be addressed by him this way. He wasn’t used to her like this and cursed God for, amongst other things, making him have to start all over with her and everyone else again AGAIN. “Where’s Kayla?!”
Jo’s big eyes blinked in confusion. “Well, I’m not—”
“When’s the last time you saw her?”
“Weren’t you with her when they arrested you?”
“Say what?”
“Steve, what has gotten into you? Are you alright?”
Now Steve’s surroundings sunk in. He was in jail. So, no, he was not alright.
Panic swept through him. He had no idea who jumped first, which jail stint this was, or where his wife was when they jumped. They’d never jumped completely separated like this. The odds of it not happening after all this time were kind of unbelievable, but it was true, they’d never jumped while not in the same physical location, this was the first time, and it was completely unnerving. A million thoughts ran through Steve’s head, none of them good.
“Steve, you answer me!”
“I … what was the question?”
“What is wrong?!” she demaned in an exasperated whine that was so familiar to him that Steve actually laughed.
“Other than the obvious?”
“Is it because I mentioned Billy?”
“Billy? What about him, Mama?” There it was, that look again. “I mean Jo – what the hell am I doing? – Mama!” he commanded her attention. “Listen, this is important, what year is it? Why am I in jail?”
“Oh, my Lord, something’s happened! Guard!”
“Shh, Ma—Jo! Listen to me, when?!”
“1987! June! Now you tell me, what is this all about?”
“Summer … ’87?” Steve scrubbed a hand down his face then shifted just his eyes to his mother before his hand left his chin. “Deveraux? That’s why I’m in here?”
“If you mean Senator Deveraux, yes.” He didn’t want to unnerve her, but the people of this timeline and how they felt about his behavior were really the very last thing on his mind.
“And I was with Kayla? How long have I been in here?”
“It was just last night, so I don’t know, maybe ten hours? What’s that got to do with anything?”
“Time’s up,” the guard said.
“Time’s up, that’s just great.” The guard started for Steve. “Jo, listen to me, I need you to find Kayla and tell me if she’s – get off me, man!” he wrested his arm away from the guard, “just lemme get my damned sentence out! – tell me if she’s herself or not, ok?”
“What are you talking about?!”
“Mama! You trust me, and you go find Kayla! Then you tell me if she’s—acting weird like I am, ok? Can you do that for me? Make sure she knows where I am.”
“I thought she was there, why wouldn’t she know?”
“Let’s go, Johnson!”
“Please, Mama, just do it!”
The guard escorted Steve back to his cell, sneering at him as he answered Steve’s time and date questions. He knew this time quite well. He’d been arrested the night before at the loft where Roman had laid a trap for him. He knew Roman was well aware that the FBI agent, Ed Daniels, was the something rotten in this state of Denmark but was playing along for Steve’s safety, not to mention Kayla’s. He also knew that he saw Kayla twice during his stay here, once visiting him in that very room, then later that day up in Roman’s office as he filled them in on it all. He was sure today was that day, because he’d only been in this cage the weekend before no fewer than six people circled the wagons to break him out, so to speak, while he was being “transferred” by van to what probably would have been a dirt nap.
He remembered that his visit from Kayla was right after his mother’s, so he waited and hoped. An hour went by. Then another one after that. Lunch came, which he went ahead and ate, because he didn’t remember his last good meal, and then another hour came and went. Where was his visit from Kayla? This was not how it worked the first time. That meant that this version of her must have been altered by his actions somehow. That already, even from jail, he’d screwed up the history already written. Or … Kayla was here already and either didn’t know when this was and what to do next – or had chosen not to come. He tried not to be mad, because he was finally thinking more clearly and understood where her head was. But he couldn’t help the ire from joining the rest of his inner turmoil. He yelled for the guard to get Roman down there, but he was told in no uncertain terms to shut up. So he gave the guy the finger, told him to f*ck off, then sat on the bed against the wall of his cell and stewed.
Kayla was lost in her own haze of fury when the jump took her three blocks from where Steve had ended up and deposited her into his arrest. She was looking a shirtless Steve square in the face as he told her with that aggravated snark that seemed to live in him for use at any given moment that something wasn’t her fault while John, who was currently Roman, read him his rights. The anger she took with her from moments ago fit in perfectly, and she couldn’t help but let it play on her face here. The next thing she knew Steve was being forcibly pushed out the door by two FBI agents with Ed Daniels bringing up the rear. Moments later John was gone, too. She hadn’t yet said a word.
Now alone in her apartment with nothing but herself and her angry, hurt, irrational thoughts, Kayla went to the door and turned the lock. Then, as if she’d been programmed to go through these motions, she calmly went to the table and blew out the two taper candles that burned like a pair of torches carried by villagers out to take pieces of her broken soul. She didn’t need to confirm the date, she knew when this was. The black neglige she was wearing told her so if nothing else did.
Kayla was now the one flying without safety net. Her Steve wasn’t here. Even when she last saw him he wasn’t there. And now she wasn’t going to be, either. She remembered exactly what happened after this, the next morning she’d gone to fight with her brother about the whole thing, then she was taken down to see Steve. That’s how it was supposed to go. But what was the point in retracing those steps, so he could find some reason he couldn’t be in the same room with her? She knew what that was really about, she wasn’t stupid, she knew her husband. He was in the worst kind of hell, and he wasn’t processing. She ached for him and the pain she knew he felt with a compassion that threatened to crush her, that’s how much she loved him. But she needed him, and his refusal to give her the solace she so desperately needed was another layer of pain that had just about broken her in these devastating moments after losing Emily. Knowing why it was happening was beside the point, her emotions were in need of succor, and Steve was right there yet chose not to be. So, she made a choice not to be anywhere, either. She was not going to see him tomorrow. She was not going to see anyone tomorrow.
Kayla’s feet took her up the spiral staircase in that same numb stupor Steve had engaged in. She was so tired. She didn’t know when she last slept, was it before they jumped away from Emily or after? She’d only been at this for a handful of hours, but already she was tired of living timelines that Steve was too out of sorts to live with her. She was tired of running in a constant state of anxiety to find him or worriedly waiting, herself, to be found. Timeline be damned. Her life be damned. She didn’t want to be anywhere, including right here, all she wanted to do was go to bed. Alone. So, that’s what she did.
Kayla literally felt it when she’d slipped out of consciousness and prayed to God that she stay that way for as long as possible. God answered that prayer by letting the dreamless sleep fall upon her with a heaviness that kept her very safely out of harm’s way – that harm being her own awareness. Her subconscious knew that she was on the cusp of a breakdown and that for her own survival, she had to go away. So, it sent her there, to the heaviest sleep of her entire life.
When her subconscious knew it was safe enough for her to come out again, it started to wake her up. Very slowly, in small phases, she began to come out of her cocoon of nothingness where little repairs to her emotional stability had mended enough of the damage for her to let herself out into the land of the living again. It took many cycles of opening her eyes, taking in her gauzy surroundings, then closing them again before she opened them for the final time in the early afternoon. She’d been asleep nearly 16 hours.
Her first wakeful thoughts were very clear. She knew exactly where she was and what, for the first time, she hadn’t done. I didn’t go find Steve. A resigned kind of sadness fell upon her. Like a childhood hero fallen from grace. It was like a blemish upon the purity of their existence in the slipstream.
The heavy knock on the door below was not Steve’s. She didn’t always know when it was Steve knocking on her door, but she always knew when it wasn’t, and this was not a knock that was his. She was still in the black neglige, and her hair had come out of the French twist in unkempt flyaways, yet she absolutely didn’t care. She didn’t even care if it was Jack down there. Her whole existence was completely meaningless in this wholly irrelevant timeline, no one other than her primary Steve was going to matter in the minutes, hours, days, or even months that she was slated to be here, so whomever it was could see her in any manner of undress and frowziness, because, really, who cares?
When Kayla slid open the loft door Jo was already back in the elevator. She immediately came back out and started talking a mile a minute to Kayla about having seen Steve and that he was acting very strangely. Kayla was neither surprised nor affected by what Jo had to tell her. She noticed when her mother-in-law eyed her up and down but kindly said nothing of her appearance. She also noticed that Jo was waiting for some explanation. Kayla didn’t offer any, however, and respectfully shooed a very concerned and quite dissatisfied Jo out of the loft with no return message for her son. The one question she’d had was now answered: Steve had arrived. She didn’t take any pleasure in knowing he was worried sick at the fact that she’d not come for him. All she felt was a hopeless pointlessness in continuing to go through any kind of motion. She looked at the phone and then lifted it off the hook and slid it into a drawer where she wouldn’t hear the loud busy signal. She then went to the freezer and found the paydirt that any amount of chocolate ice cream would always be and settled into the couch with it in one hand and a remote in the other. Why not? It wasn’t like she was going to have to worry about her waistline.
Two hours later, Kayla jumped. An empty pint of chocolate ice cream lay on the couch beside her, the television set to the PBS station where Sesame Street had just ended. Steve preceeded her by the usual 12.2 seconds and felt his own sense of abandonment when he did. Because for the first time they didn’t find each other and spent the entire jump apart. Steve didn’t go to find his wife because he couldn’t; this one was up to Kayla, and she didn’t go find her husband because she … wouldn’t.
When Kayla next sucked in air, the nausea was significant again. She managed to keep down whatever was trying to come up and just held on to whatever she could reach, which happened to be her bathroom sink. In the loft. Again.
“Great,” she said. She looked at herself in the mirror, and she was visibly younger here. This was definitely the loft, so it couldn’t have been more than a year before the last time she’d looked in the mirror, but she looked a lot different to herself. Maybe it was because she’d been used to her appearance in her most recent presence in 1989, but there was no doubt about it, she felt much younger here. She realized that her hand was on her belly and immediately removed it before shaking her head. Then she threw on the white robe that laid across the bed and came down the stairs, though she had no idea why she was bothering.
Hope was in the kitchen when she got there, and Kayla nearly hit the ceiling she was so startled.
“Whoa, Kayla,” she laughed with sympathy, “Sorry, I didn’t mean to scare you.” Kayla’s reaction wasn’t nearly as good natured as Hope’s apology, and Hope furrowed her brow. “Hey, are you ok?” She immediately went to her sister-in-law and put a hand on her arm.
“I’m fine,” she snapped.
Hope crossed her arms. “You are not fine. What is it? Tell me.”
The phone rang and Kayla cursed loudly. Hadn’t she just taken it off the hook? Yep, she rolled her eyes, just not here. She sighed loudly and avoided Hope’s questioning eyes as she answered the phone.
“Hello?” she answered suspiciously, though the tone was directed at Kayla, rather than the person calling.
Steve had called three times yesterday, which was when he’d arrived, and Destination Kayla thought he was a little nuttier than he’d already proven to be. Today he was at the dock working with Bo, because that was where he was supposed to be. He was not expecting Hope to answer, because at this time she and Bo had already moved to Victor’s mansion. So, he wasn’t quite sure what to say when he heard Hope answer – and answer strangely at that.
“Uh … yeah, that you, Hope?”
“Uh …,” she mocked “yeah.” She pulled the receiver from her ear to look at it accusingly, then looked to Kayla before putting it back to her ear. “There a bug goin’ around or something?”
“A bug?”
“Yeah, first Kayla, now you.”
“Kayla? She’s sick or something?”
“I dunno, Kay, you sick?” she asked her.
“Yeah, I’m real sick,” Kayla exhaled heavily.”
“You are?” Hope asked surprised.
“She is?”
“Kay, you want me to stay with you?” Hope reached out to Kayla’s forhead to check if she was warm, but Kayla pulled away and mouthed, I’m fine.
“Sweet Thing, lemme talk to her.” The conversation really felt like he was back home in 1989 and he was talking to her from port somewhere.
“Yeah, hang on.” Then she handed the phone to Kayla. “It’s Steve.”
“I know.” She took the phone. “Hello,” she said quietly.
Steve rubbed at the bridge of his nose. “Stockholm?” he said immediately, the edge clear in his voice. For just a moment, Kayla stayed silent. “Kayla?” he repeated ready to lose his sh*t.
“Yes, I do. Remember it, I mean. I’m here,” she said. Hope was still eyeing her with her arms folded across her chest. When Steve exhaled, she could hear the relief. Then it was quiet on his end. She didn’t say anything or try to fill the silence, she simply waited for him to say something else.
“What’s he saying?” Kayla waved her away and turned toward the fireplace. Hope rolled her eyes and went up to the bedroom to do what she’d come for in the first place, which was to pack up the last of her clothes. Finally, Steve spoke again.
“When did you get there? Did you wake up this way?”
“No. Just got here a few minutes ago.” Her tone was slightly south of neutral, and she didn’t add anything more.
“I’m on my way. Don’t leave.”
“What do you want me to do, sprout roots?”
So, it was clear now, Kayla was still mad. Fine, so was he. “Don’t leave,” he repeated with a seriousness of his own.
Hope answered the door when Steve arrived 20 mintues later. She’d asked Kayla if she wanted to get dressed, but Kayla simply said no and didn’t elaborate when Hope looked at her like she’d grown a second head.
“You know that robe shows every curve, right? And you’re not wearing a bra?”
“Hope, please. I know you’re trying to understand, but I do not want to talk about it. I’m fine, though. Ok?”
The knock came before Hope could say anything more, and she gave Steve a very significant look that clearly said to behave himself, then kissed him on the cheek before lugging herself and what was her final suitcase of clothes out the door and left them to it.
Steve was struck by Kayla’s appearance, which was very different from the last several jumps he’d now lost count of. Steve looked different, too. His hair was shorter and hung ruggedly in his face so that he often had to toss his head to get the errant blonde pieces out of his eye. He was wearing a light wash denim jacket over a tight grey t-shirt, and very tight jeans. Kayla was still in her white, satin robe, and her hair was up in the simple, high pony tail she’d arrived in not even half an hour ago. Neither had said anything yet. They both ached to hold each other while simultaneously feeling immense hurt; so they each stayed put, Steve by the kitchen counter, Kayla by the couch.
“Hi, Sweetness.” Steve said first.
Kayla softened slightly. “Hello.”
He adjusted his patch nervously, then laid his arm on the counter before catching her eye. After a few more moments of mutual silence, Kayla crossed her arms in front of herself protectively and broke their eye contact to look at the floor. For some reason, it spurred him forward.
“I got here last night. Called you right away.”
Kayla nodded. “I see.” She continued not looking at him, unmoved from her spot. “So, when is this?”
“Was it on purpose?” he ignored the small talk. Kayla shifted her eyes toward her her husband for just a moment before looking away from him, heat rising in her cheeks. Steve saw the guilt settle upon her face, which was all the answer he needed. “First time for everything.” His pain began to throb in the pit of his stomach, and he felt physically ill. “I was stuck in a jail cell. How could you let the entire jump go by without coming to me?”
Her voice rose for the first time. “How could you literally push me away from you and not kiss me? How could you stand there and lie to me through two straight jumps?”
“You’re saying it was payback?! You spent the entire jump without me as payback?!”
“It’s not like we were there very long.”
“It doesn’t matter! I wasn’t across an ocean, I was across town, and you knew it! You made a choice, Kayla. Do you know what that did to me?”
“Well, you didn’t come look for me, either!”
“Are you serious? I was in jail!”
“I mean before!”
Steve was completely confused. “What the hell are you talkin’ about? We were at the Heart before that!”
“Yes, the place you wouldn’t kiss me! You know I felt about this tall,” she squeezed her thumb and forefinger together, “it was bad enough you wouldn’t kiss me, but then you didn’t even come after me.”
Steve was incredulous. “When you ran? The hell I didn’t! I ran after you and screamed for you, but you were nowhere! I didn’t see where you went it was so dark! And when that jump came and I didn’t know where you were, I was a basket case. You really think I wouldn’t run after you? How, baby, how could you think that?”
Kayla started to feel like she’d done something very wrong, but his refusal to kiss her roared back to the top. “You refused to kiss me. That’s how.”
“You jumped without telling me!”
“You pushed me away and let the other me love you instead!”
“I’M F*CKED UP, KAYLA!” he roared so forcefully that she backed up a step. He hated the times that his temper caused these involuntary reactions in her, and this time was no different. The compunction in his face was enough for her, and she held up a hand to stay any more guilt running through him, because anger aside, she didn’t want to watch her husband suffer anymore. When he spoke again, his tone was the opposite, breathy and needful. “Can’t you see that I’m completely f*cked up?”
“Yeah,” she replied, her voice shaking. “I can see it.” Kayla shrugged in a defeated sort of resignation. Neither of them had reached out a hand to the other yet, and despite her efforts not to want it, she felt herself start to crumble without his touch. She sat on the arm of the couch that was right behind her. The silky fabric of the robe spilled around her legs revealing them to her husband, and she inexplicably felt shy about it. So, she gathered up the fabric and modestly covered her legs back up. The act of doing this, this sign of discomfort with him, made Steve more upset than he was already. This was his wife, and now she wasn’t just running from him, now she was hiding, too.
“Don’t do that, Kayla.”
“Don’t do what?” she asked, knowing exactly what she was doing and not liking it any more than he did.
“This is me.” Kayla shrugged, but he saw her anxiety beneath the act. “You’re mad at me. I’m mad at you, too.” She set her chin and glared at him. “It’s bad enough that we’re fighting like this. But you will not hide yourself away from me.”
“You mean like you’ve been doing?”
You emotionally left me!
God, he couldn’t take it. The sound of her words echoed in his head, and it was too much for him. He couldn’t keep it up. It had to stop somewhere, and so this was it, he was stopping it here.
“I want my two kisses now.”
Her mouth fell open as she looked up at him. “You’re a little late for that, that was two jumps ago.”
“What, there’s a statute of limitations on the two kisses you owe me?”
“Stop playing games, Steve.”
“Do I sound like I’m playing, here? I’m not.” His voice was completely earnest. “I want my kisses.”
“You should have thought of that in the timeline they belonged in. Have you looked at yourself? We’re really young. I might still be living in Cleveland.”
“You just moved back.”
“Then thre it is, isn’t it? We didn’t kiss here, don’t want to set things off balance.”
Steve nodded. “I deserve that. I know I hurt you, but I’ve just been trying to protect us. I need you to see that.” Kayla stayed silent. “But it’s got to stop now. We’ve gotta be done hurting each other.” Steve got on his knees and slowly laid his head down in her lap. Kayla felt something very bonded and very strong between them when he did. Her anger hadn’t really abated, but she felt the pull of her soul toward his, and it helped. Steve let out a small sound of something emotional when he felt her start to stroke her hand over his head. “I’m so messed up,” he whispered, closing his eye to the feel of her. “I’m just so messed up.”
“I know,” Kayla cried softly. “We both are.”
“I did run away.” He stayed where he was with his head in her lap and his arms holding on. He couldn’t look at her yet, because the lump in his throat threatened to suffocate him. One look from her beautiful and devastated blue eyes and he’d be gone. “I wasn’t trying to hurt you. And, God, Sweetness, I was not leaving you, I would never do that, baby, I never would.” He paused here and pulled back from her. Focusing on a shiny fold of her white robe, he took her hands in his, and she let him. “I’m afraid of what’s going to happen if we don’t live the timelines.”
“But when we were—”
“And I was also trying not to go crazy.” He whispered this, and it was all he could do to keep it together. “I don’t know what to do with the pain, Kayla.” He rubbed his palm against the warm fabric covering her thigh. “I can feel it starting to rumble inside me. Just touching you like this, I can feel it trying to make me insane.”
Kayla fell to her knees in front of him and held his face in her hands. “Let is out, Steve,” she implored him. But he closed his eye shook his head.
“I can’t. I—won’t come back—from it.”
Kayla angled his face so he’d look at her, and he finally found the strength to let himself. When the tear that fell from his eye reached her thumb, she could practically feel the pain infusing it. Her own tears began to blur her vision. “We’re in trouble, Steve.” He shook his head no. “Yes, we are. Our pain is so deep, and we have no one to support us but ourselves, because no one is going to understand us. We’re all we have. And we’re in so much trouble.”
“I can’t accept that! I just—I hurt so bad, Sweetness. I don’t know how to make the pain go away.”
“I’ve done this before.” Steve let out a sob and nodded. He knew. “It’s no easier the second time around. I know this hurt, and even though I got you back, my heart never became 100% whole again. Now it’s worse, because I know the man I love is suffering, too. We need help.” She sniffled and wiped at her cheek. “We’re both – doing things and – not doing things – hurting each other — trying to accept it all.”
“Help? Like professional help?” She nodded. Just because Steve was able to cut through his depression at the moment didn’t mean it was gone, and most of him wanted to let it take the wheel. But the look in Kayla’s eyes made him push it down deep inside. He took a very deep breath, somehow finding a way to control the storm inside of him, “I’m sorry I hurt you.”
“I hurt you, too.”
Steve nodded. “You did.”
Kayla leaned her face down into her palms and openly cried, not because she was hurt, and not because she hurt Steve, but because she was just so lost. “What are we doing?”
Steve finally found some strength for them. Kayla was clearly drained of hers, and it was now his turn. That moment at the Cheatin’ Heart when Kayla had fallen to the floor gave a slight resurgence, and he was refocused on making things as right as he could, even as his own despair worked against it. He picked her up from the floor and walked them to the couch. Neither one of them reached for each other, though they ached to. It was like they knew a floodgate that truthfully neither of them was ready for was being held at bay. They sat facing one another on the couch. Steve’s right leg was bent in front of him, Kayla’s were tucked beneath her as she faced him toward the kitchen.
“We should talk about this,” Steve said. Kayla was silent, but for the swish of her robe as she re-secured it. “The first thing you have to know is that I love you.”
Kayla whimpered. “I needed to hear you say that.”
“You know I do, Kayla, I love you. Now, I need to hear you say you don’t doubt that and that you never really thought I could leave you.”
Kayla refused to cry anymore and spoke with a clear voice. “I felt so—so—”
“Abandoned,” he provided with great difficulty. She nodded almost imperceptibly. “So did I. When you wouldn’t come find me at the jail.” Kayla’s sad eyes were were etched with such pain.
“I never doubted your love. I knew you loved me.”
“I do,” he said again and brought her knuckle to his lips.
“I love you, too.”
Steve let the corners of his mouth raise at hearing her say it back to him, but it was only for a moment before he went back to this serious conversation. “Physically separating is not the same thing as leaving. Separating to live whenever that was before, that was not about—,” he hated this concept and couldn’t quite control his tone as he spat it out again, “—leaving you. When you said you felt like—like what I’d done before you married Jack—” His voice broke here, and Kayla couldn’t let him go on.
“Shh,” she put her fingers to his lips. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry I said that.”
Steve shook his head and took her fingers from his lips to hold her hand in his. “No. You said it, and you felt it. Abandoned.” His voice shook. “I never meant for you to feel like that, I was just trying to protect us.”
“I-i-i-it wasn’t rational, I knew you were going through hell. I just couldn’t help it, you were pushing me away the minute we jumped from Stockholm. We were out of our minds, but we were still us. Something changed after that.”
“Damn straight, Kayla, the slipstream went nuts. Those jumps were something out of the nine circles of hell. Everything Rolf was saying before, it was happening just like he said. It was all destabilizing, and I had to get us out.”
Kayla stammered a bit with this, but then shook her head. “We’re in this together. When you wouldn’t say you loved me in your apartment, I knew what you were doing, but I couldn’t help it, I felt so rejected. When you told me you let her love you, but then you wouldn’t tell me you loved me, all I saw was red.”
“I’m sorry, too, baby, I’m so sorry,” he kissed her hand again. But, Sweetness, I didn’t have any control over it with the other you. And what happened it that alley, it shut me down. I had to. When I jumped in you were already there in the alley trying to love me, and I tried, baby. I tried so hard not to break down, but you put your arms around me, and I didn’t know what to do. Haven’t you ever jumped somewhere I was and it was hard to not let me love you? Isn’t that how that whole big jump started when I proposed?”
Kayla felt a chill. “On the plane. You said such beautiful things to me,” she realized almost to herself, “and you kissed me.”
He didn’t know this. He hadn’t paid that jump much attention, and now he wondered how long she’d been there. “Were we—what were we doing when you jumped in there? I—did you—without me, I mean, did you—?”
“I’d only just gotten there. You were saying that our souls belonged together and that we’ll always be together. Then you kissed me, and you got there right after that.”
Steve felt real relief there, and it encouraged him to go on. “You felt loved by me, right? Well I felt your love, too. And I was so broken up that I didn’t have the strength to tell you no, and when you held me I just let go.”
“I’m glad,” Kayla insisted, “I am. But why not me? Why couldn’t you do the same for me?
“Because all I could think about was saving us from those nightmare jumps again. Saving our kids. Saving our future. I don’t want to go through it again – I don’t want to go through any of it again! You’re all I was thinkin’ about. Saving us.” Steve dragged a palm down his face. “I’m sorry I hurt you,” he caressed her face. “You are my kryptonite, baby, don’t you know that? I have you near me, and I can’t stay away. I had to be strong, and letting you in like that, I knew I wouldn’t be able to live apart.”
Kayla wanted to say she understood, that it was ok, that everything was going to be ok. But it wasn’t in her to lie. It wasn’t that she didn’t forgive him, because she truly did forgive him. It was that she didn’t really understand how he could be so driven to push her away to fix the slipstream. She believed him. There was no doubt that there was truth in every single thing he was telling her. But she just knew on a molecular level that there was more. She wanted to ask him to stop holding back but was sure she should not. She could feel it coming off of him – the fear. It’ll keep. She could practically hear him silently insist it into her head. She chose a different direction instead.
“I jumped without telling you,” she admitted quietly. Steve steeled his jaw and looked up and away from her. She knew that move so well. He hated being mad at her. “I didn’t just say nothing, I did call your name.” He nodded. “But … I was so hurt and felt so much like … like …”
“I know what like.”
“I lashed out.” Now he crossed his arms and looked at her. The pain splayed across his body was physical. “Please say something.”
Steve shrugged without altering his protective stance. “What do you want me to say?” He didn’t realize how upset he really was by her actions until he heard himself.
“I don’t know,” she whimpered. “I know I was wrong …”
“Don’t ever do it again,” he rasped.
Kayla shook her head rapidly. “I promise.”
“That’s why I wouldn’t kiss you at the Heart.”
“I know.” She looked down.”
“No,” he tipped up her chin. “I started it. I know I did. You understand why I did what I did, right?” She shrugged non-commitally, and it ate at Steve that she wouldn’t just acknowledge that she understood (or worse, that she didn’t understand). But he went on. “Kayla, you’re the one that said it, we’re both doing things and not doin’ ‘em. We don’t have any shells to throw here, but we’re talkin’ it through. “I couldn’t believe you did that. I just couldn’t believe it.” He took a deep breath and went on. “You’d been there long enough to let the other me get back under your skin, right? Like the other you did to me in the alley?” She nodded. “But when I got there the anger was fresh. You were playin’ along, and were on your eighth kiss? Were you there for all of ‘em?” Kayla nodded, and his jealously spiked. He had to stand up. “Jesus Christ, I’m jealous of myself.”
“Been there.” Now he smiled, because it was amusing in a very sick sort of way.
“Yeah, well, that’s why. But then,” he started pacing, because this was tough, “you were there on the floor, and all I could see was you on the pier in those f*cking roller skates with Shane, and I wouldn’t help you up. You were struggling to get up … and I stood there,” he said incredulously, “and let you.”
“Steve,” she breathed.
“It was like someone turned on the light, Sweetness. It’s not like the rest of it hadn’t happened, but all I saw was my wife on the floor, and I put her there.”
“No, you didn’t.” He was behind the couch now, and she went to him, her pony tail bouncing as she did.
“Yes, I did,” Steve began to cry. “Yes, I did. It started in that damned apartment, but I put you there.”
Kayla took Steve’s face is her hands again. “I want to give you those kisses now.” Steve nodded and grabbed for her. “Nine,” she said. Then she took his lips with hers in a loving show of her devotion. He felt her regret for all of her actions in that kiss, but he also felt her love, because it was undeniably there. And he felt he black hell inside him reach for the purchase her intimacy provided. It wanted out. But he tamped it down when she pulled out of the kiss and soothed the hair out of his eyes.
“One more,” Steve said. There was no playfulness, it was a need that he couldn’t ignore, to feel his wife there.
“One more,” Kayla promised. Their lips met again, and it was healing and terrifying and sad and beautiful.
Now they finally held each other. “Then … the last jump,” she said. Steve nodded. “I’m sorry about that, too.”
“I know.”
“I was mad about the kisses.
“I know,” he repeated.
“It was wrong.”
Steve pulled back and tucked a stray hair behind her ear. “A woman that moves heaven and earth to find a one-eyed needle in a Tuscany haystack must be really mad if she doesn’t grease her brother’s palm to see that man in a jail just down the road. I knew what was going on.”
“I’m sorry, anyway.”
Steve pulled her away from him and held her at arm’s length. Then he kissed her forhead and went to sit on the spiral staircase. “Did Mama find you?”
“Yeah.” Kayla explained where she was during that jump and was terribly saddened by it all. “It’s the first time we spent a jump completely apart, not even a phone call.”
“We can’t ever do that again, Sweetness. Not on purpose. Promise me.”
“I promise.”
“I promise, too.”
They were finally at the point where they felt like there was nothing more to say. They didn’t really feel fixed. But they didn’t feel quite as broken, either. The real problem was they just didn’t know where to go from here. Steve had arrived the day before this and established that she’d just permanently moved from Cleveland and was now working at the Emergency Center while he spied on Bo at Allied. It occurred to Kayla that she didn’t even know what day it was. Steve told her it was Sunday and that no one was expected anywhere. So, the question was … what now? Steve was still very worried about the slipstream and felt that they needed to live the timeline. But he couldn’t put Kayla through any more, not to mention himself. He missed his wife. So, he suggested that they work their jobs and do what they did originally, but they’d sleep in the same place, one night the loft, one night the apartment. Steve was shocked when Kayla said no to this.
“I think we should try living apart,” she said.
Steve blinked. “Say what?”
“I’ve had a lot of time to calm down and think, and … and I think … well, I think you’re right about the timeline. It’s obviously unstable, It was another bad jump coming to this one. I think if we do things wrong, we’re going to put it at risk.”
They were in the kitchen making something to eat by now. Steve was boiling some pasta, and Kayla took out two beers that were still in the fridge from when Bo had lived there. Steve raised an eyebrow, because Kayla’s drink of choice had been water or coffee for as long as he’d known her. Sometimes a can of pop or an iced tea. Beer was not her go-to drink in her own home. He tucked it away and reacted to what she said, instead.
“No, I don’t wanna do that.”
“Yes, I think you do.”
“I changed my mind.”
“And so did I. You said the other day that we’ve been nothing but with each other for almost three years.”
“I didn’t mean that, baby.”
“You’re right, we have been. Even when I’m at work and you’re home with—” She slapped her hand down on the counter hard and drained her beer. Steve felt the pain in her words as much as she did, but he did not like how she’d just self-medicated. He started to tell her so, but she went on before he could. “Even when we’re not physically in the same room, we’re always together and have only ourselves. It wasn’t until the very end there that we had Marcus. I think the space will do us good.”
There it was. the “we need space” line. It terrified Steve. This must be how she felt when he was pushing her away in his apartment, and he hated himself so much. He was a piece of sh*t for making her feel this way.
“We don’t need space.”
“We do. I think we should try living apart and see how it affects the jumps. If we stay a normal amount of time—”
“What the f*ck is normal?!”
“—how sick we get,” she ignored his building anger, “and start paying really good attention.”
“Kayla.” His tone was a mixture of warning and begging. “I don’t want this.”
She took a deep breath and finally just said it. “Steve, there is something you’re not telling me. I don’t know what it is, but there is something else inside of you that you won’t share with me. I think if whatever it is wasn’t there you wouldn’t have tried to get me to stay at the loft in the first place.” Steve pumped his jaw. “I believe you, you don’t want this. But I think – I think you need this. And I know that you’re right about the timeline and the jumps. I really do know in my gut that you’re right. So, we should try it and see what happens.”
Steve looked away from her with angry frustration and poured the pasta into the collander. He had to actually hunt for it, because the dishes weren’t in the same place as when he and Kayla got married on the long jump they last lived here. “I thought you said living apart was bad for us now.” Kayla got another beer. “Put it back, Kayla!”
She glared at her husband. “Since when do you have a problem with me having a beer?”
“Since you never drink beer at home, you chugged your first one, and now you’re going for another, that’s when since. I know what you’re doing, and it stops now!”
“Don’t tell me what to do!”
“Don’t do stupid sh*t!”
Kayla’s eyes flared. “You are the one who wanted to live the timeline, this is the exact time we should, because you were being a complete asshole here, and now I agree and you’re giving me crap?!”
They stared at each other, their eyeballs swimming in their ire, and then like someone let the air out of them, they threw themselves at each other and just held on tight. For a long time. Steve took one hand away from his clutch to grab the bottle and pour its contents into the sink. Kayla heard it and dug her head into his neck. He felt different here. His muscles were harder than back home in 1989.
“I think I’m going crazy,” she said softly.
No that’s me, Steve said only to himself so his wife wouldn’t know. Instead he shushed her.
“We’re in trouble.” It was the second time she’d said it, and Steve still didn’t want to hear it. Steve shook his head, but he didn’t contradict her or try to tell her it wasn’t true. He couldn’t say anything, all he could do was get through this moment, then the next one, and then the next one after that.
They pushed around most of their pasta on their plates, some of it actually made it into their mouths. They both felt the routine of 1989 pulling at them, and it was a struggle not to go check on Emily or feel like they were missing something. There was nothing to miss. They didn’t say much. They were both keenly aware that they were not talking about their daughter.
It wasn’t long before they couldn’t avoid discussing where to sleep. Kayla held on to her belief that they should try this apart. Steve didn’t know how to feel about that. He was relieved that he wouldn’t have to fight to keep from breaking down as he craved her intimacy. He was also relieved that they’d be protecting the integrity of the timeline. But there was a real gut-level fear in him that Kayla was right about what she’d said back in his apartment – that this was bad for them.
It took a few tries for Steve to leave his wife alone in the loft. But he did. Kayla watched him get on the elevator, Steve watched her stand in the doorway, and they separated. They spent their last waking moments saying goodnight on the phone. Then they were alone, both of them finding what felt like solace but was really just a coping mechanism in the numbness that clinical depression brought, and let it staunch the pain before lulling them into sleep.
The next morning the ony reason they went to work was to protect the timeline and their future. Normally Kayla struggled with her clothing options, but today she just took out whatever was closest to her hand, settling on a simple black skirt and yellow top. She put her hair in a French braid, because that’s how she wore it then, and she wasn’t that far removed from this the last time she was happy. Steve had a much harder time getting out of bed. He called her at the Emergency Center before he left for the dock, and they talked briefly. They went through the motions of the day, and Bo’s disdain for him at this time did not help things. Bo asked him several times what the hell his problem was, because he was acting … weird. Steve brushed it off and pretended to care about the shipping manifests he had no memory of while delegating almost everything to everyone else.
They did that for the next three days. They went to their respective workplaces, spent every evening together, and did nothing more than sleep when they separated for the night. Kayla tried talking about things, but Steve wouldn’t. She found herself pining to talk about any of their children, but whenever she tried Steve got a faraway look in his eye and refused to do more than nod. So she gave up, and they did not speak of the last two years of their lives. They did not make love or show any kind of physical intimacy beyond an embrace here or a kiss goodnight there. Kayla still felt an imbalance there that chipped away at her every day. She needed her husband’s comfort. She needed his physical touch. She needed it with a desperation that was practically tangible, but Steve wasn’t giving it to her, not really. He’d hold her, and she’d let her fingers play in the stubble of his beard, but she felt herself at a figurative arm’s length. Steve pined for it as much as his wife did, but he hadn’t had the emotional break that Kayla had at the house, and still felt like it was the very last thing he could control, his emotions. He wanted to bury himself inside her and love her, but if he lost himself, he’d lose their future, too. As a result, they both felt the melancholy and, with it, their connection to each other weaken with each passing day.
On the fourth day, Steve heard Bo call out to a man named Zach. Steve didn’t remember this worker – he didn’t remember any workers from Allied, it was more than 20 years ago at a job he held for a matter of months. But for some reason, Bo calling out the name that would one day belong to a son he’d lose affected him deeply. He knew this transference as it was happening, but there was nothing he could do to stop it. He was very quickly overcome with searing emotion and had to run out. Which is exactly what he did.
Half an hour later he was a bloody pulp laying on the pier. Victor Kiriakis had gotten very impatient waiting for Steve to deliver information on Bo, so he’d sent men out to beat the sh*t out of him for motivation. Steve did not see this coming, and his somewhat altered state didn’t help him put up much of a defense. So, like last time, he lay one hell of a mess on the pier. This time he was in worse shape, and his already damaged eye socket was fractured. This time he couldn’t get back up. This time Kayla did not find him there, because she hadn’t passed there on her way home. When he didn’t show up after work she called, but, of course, there was no answer. She tried not to get angry like last time. She tried to find a reason that he wasn’t there. It was one of the many times she wished there were cellphones here that didn’t look and feel like hand tools.
If she’d still been awake at 10pm, she would have started searching for him or called the hospital. But depression is a terrible cancer. It invades every part of you, in some ways so subtly that you don’t realize that it’s taken you over. So, by 7pm when the last kid’s show had ended on the PBS station – and she would have done anything to be giggling with any one of her children over the antics of Oscar the Grouch and Big Bird – she ended up falling asleep on the couch. She felt herself starting to drift off, and that was actually just fine with her, it was so much better to let the haze take her than it was to need her husband’s comfort when he wasn’t there. What she didn’t know was that Steve lay in a hospital bed under heavy sedation after a cop found him in an unconscious heap. He wasn’t a John Doe, because Neil Curtis knew who he was. But neither Kayla nor anyone she knew got any phone calls, because as far as anyone in this time knew, he had no connections to anyone worthy of this kind of notification. Steve never gained enough consciousness to make himself understood. They got a scrawl of a consent on a form so that they could treat him, and then before he could say Kayla’s name clearly enough he was out with the sedative.
Kayla jumped in her sleep just after 2am, and Steve’s outcold awareness followed her into that slipstream right on schedule.
When Kayla next opened her eyes, she could not have been more shocked.
“Well, hey there, Blue Eyes.”
Kayla opened those blue eyes of hers very wide. She was laying in a bed she didn’t know. In a room she’d never seen before. With Chris Kosichek grinning at her like the cat that ate the canary.