by Rysa Walker
I’m stunned by his outburst, and it’s a moment before I’m able to respond. “No, Trey. I’m not talking about overthrowing them, at least not to anyone other than you. The only thing I told Tilson is that I’m not a fan of the Cyrists, and that could just as easily be me not wanting to further upset an already angry old man. You said the same thing. And if I’d known it was Eve freaking Conwell’s house, I would never have agreed to go.”
His brow creases further, but he doesn’t say anything. After a minute, I remember the other thing I wanted to ask him. “You said your dad has some questions. How much have you told him?”
He shoots me an incredulous look. “Um . . . everything? I mean, I didn’t let him watch the videos that I recorded of the two of us in the other timeline. That was . . . private. Between us. But the one I made for myself . . . yeah, he watched that. I don’t know if he’s showed it to Mom or not, but I can tell she’s worried about me, and I don’t think it’s just that I’m starting a new school. I’ve done that every couple of years since kindergarten.”
“But . . . why, Trey?” It hadn’t even occurred to me that he might talk to his parents about this, probably because he hadn’t in the other timeline.
“You really need to ask that? If a guy you’d never met showed up on your doorstep with something like that, are you telling me you wouldn’t have talked to your parents or someone?”
Okay, he’s got a point. I’m silent for a few seconds and then say, “You’re right. I would have. It’s just . . . you didn’t tell them last time, so I guess I thought . . .”
We drive past the restaurant, which has a big neon cactus in the window. There’s no parking near the front, so Trey goes down a few blocks and pulls into a garage.
I don’t say anything until he switches off the car, and then I turn toward him. “So, your dad, does he believe any of this?”
“I’m not sure, Kate. I think the fact that the DVD included a file of his he’s never shared with anyone, not even me, may have convinced him. But he won’t admit it. The one thing I can tell you is he doesn’t want me involved in any of this. In fact, he’s made me promise that I won’t get involved in it. I’ve had to hide or face an argument with him each time I’ve called you. He says the Cyrists have friends in very high places—”
“Yeah, he said that last time. Before we went to the temple. You told him we were just checking on Charlayne. That’s when he mentioned the spreadsheet he was keeping. The one you put on the DVD. He was . . . nice. So was Estella.”
I can hear the note of regret in my voice. I’m guessing neither of them will be so eager to meet me in this timeline. My eyes start to water, so I look down to detach my seat belt and start to get out.
I’m about to close the door when I remember to grab my clutch from the floorboard. It still has the stupid Hello sticker on the front. I yank it off a little too forcefully and fling the sticker back on the seat.
Trey is behind me, and he grabs my hand as I turn around. “Kate . . .”
I don’t bother to hide the hurt in my eyes. “What, Trey?”
He just whispers my name again. And then his arm is around my waist, and there isn’t even a fraction of an inch between our bodies, and I can barely breathe, but who cares? He wraps his other hand in my hair and pulls my lips toward his, the kiss hungry, with an undertone of despair.
It feels like a very specific kiss, one I’ve thought of every day since I went back in time to save Katherine.
I don’t know how long we stand there. I just know that I don’t want the kiss to end. Ever. Because when it does, we’re going to walk into the restaurant and he’s going to tell me that we need to step back and keep things light or maybe end it altogether. And that conversation isn’t us. This is us. This is my Trey, right here, right now.
But eventually he pulls away and rests his hands against the side of the car. He stares at me for a long time before finally smiling. It’s a little bit haunted, however, and it doesn’t light up his face in the usual way. “We should get inside before they give our table away.”
He reaches down for my hand, but I pull it back. “Trey, maybe you should just take me home. I think I know where this is going, and I don’t want to have that conversation in a restaurant.”
“What conversation?”
“The one where you tell me all the reasons this isn’t going to work.”
He looks confused. “Um . . . Kate? Was I the only person here a minute ago? Because I’m pretty sure you were here with me.”
“No,” I say, fighting down the urge to just grab him and kiss him again. “I was definitely here. But . . . that kiss . . . it felt like our very last kiss that day at Katherine’s, before I left you behind. It felt like goodbye.”
My voice breaks on the last word, and he pulls me to his chest. After a minute, he tilts my face upward until our eyes meet. “I can’t remember that other kiss, so I’ll have to take your word on whether they were the same. But I have watched the DVD I made, Kate. Quite a few times. And I can promise you that other kiss wasn’t me telling you goodbye. It was me saying that we have to find some way to make this work, because I don’t want to lose you.”
The restaurant is noisy and crowded, but given that it’s Saturday night, we’re probably lucky to have a table. Mexican movie posters line the walls near the entrance, and the waitress leads us to a small table near the emergency exit, just beneath a tall, colorful painting of a cowboy, his hat pulled down low to hide his face. Trey and I make several attempts to talk over the music, the party of twelve next to us, and the couple behind us with two grouchy toddlers, but we finally give up on conversation and just settle for entwining our feet under the little table while we eat our fajitas.
The rain slacks off a bit by the time we finish, and Trey suggests we find someplace quieter to talk. We seem to have landed on one of the few blocks in the DC area without a Starbucks in sight, so we duck into a little café and order coffee and cobbler à la mode, supposedly to share. I think the dessert is going to be all Trey, because I just pigged out on fajitas. But it’s blackberry, and it smells really good when the waiter slides it in front of us, so I give in and try a bite.
When the cobbler is history and the waiter has topped off our mugs, Trey grabs my hand across the table, lacing our fingers together. “Okay, what I said back there in the garage? I meant it. We have to find some way to make this work. And I think doing that is going to require complete honesty and openness on both sides. Shall I start?”
I nod, and he continues. “When you gave me the DVD, I watched it a few times, and then I called Dad in. I knew it was me—I mean, the thing about knowing what I did that Saturday—”
I grin. “Yes. I’ve been meaning to ask you about that.”
He gives me a grimace, then he says, “Okay, first revision of the ground rules. Complete honesty and openness about anything we’ve done after age fourteen.”
I laugh. “Hmm. I’ll have to consider that one.”
“Anyway, I knew it was me. But, Kate, I’m pretty sure you’ve watched that video more than once, too. What did you see?”
Confused, I raise an eyebrow. “I saw . . . you, recording a message for the two of us.”
“Yeah, but . . .” He shakes his head. “That guy in the video was me, but he looked kind of rough. I don’t think he’d slept in days. He certainly hadn’t shaved.”
“You look good with a little scruff.”
“I’ll keep that in mind. But my expression . . . I mean, I looked hopeful, but underneath that, I looked kind of manic. Terrified. Like this was a last-ditch effort and if I didn’t get you back . . .” He shakes his head. “Anyway, look at the DVD when you get home tonight, and try to put yourself into my dad’s shoes. Or your parents’ shoes, if you were the one in that video. What advice do you think they’d have given you—even leaving the political and time travel aspects out of the equation?”
I think for a minute. Mom would have overreacted. She’d have been terrified and would probably ha
ve gotten a restraining order to keep Trey as far away as possible. And I would have known that’s what she’d do, so I wouldn’t have told her. But Dad? I’m pretty sure I’d have confided in him, and . . .
“Dad would have told me to be very, very careful. To think everything through and be sure I knew what I was getting into.”
He nods. “That was pretty much my dad’s response. He said I needed to be sure I was thinking with my brain instead of . . .”
“Your heart?”
“Sort of,” he says, with a wry grin.
“Oh. Got it.”
“Yeah, well—let’s come back to that point in just a minute. To get back to Dad, he was debating having me finish up down in Peru, at my old school. That says a lot about how worried he was, since that would have meant disappointing his own dad on the whole three-generations-at-Briar-Hill thing. And I said no, even though six weeks ago that was what I wanted—I mean, who really wants to switch schools your last year, you know? But I knew he was suggesting it only because he wanted to put some distance between me and you.”
I’ve only met his dad once, but that stings. I feel like a disease he’s trying to protect his son from, and as much as I hate to admit it, he has a point. I try to hide my reaction, but Trey can tell.
“Hey.” He raises our joined hands up to his lips and kisses my fingers. “He doesn’t know you, Kate. He will, eventually, and once all of this craziness is over, he’s going to see why I think you’re worth fighting for.”
I shake my head. “I won’t come between you and your parents, Trey. I don’t know what I was thinking, pulling you back into this. Your dad is right, I was selfish and—”
I try to pull my hand away and get up from the table, but Trey just grips it tighter. “What? Don’t I get a say in this? Sit down, Kate. Let me finish. Please?”
I slide back into the chair and stare at the empty dessert plate. He doesn’t say anything for a minute, just rubs the crease between my thumb and forefinger until I finally look up at him.
“As I was saying,” he continues, “I put my foot down on the whole Peru thing. Eventually, we reached a compromise. He’s been acting overprotective, but deep down, he trusts my judgment. I told him I’m not going to stop seeing you, but I will do my best to keep clear of this whole Cyrist thing. From what you’ve told me, there’s not much I can do to help anyway. I mean, I want to know what you’re doing—hell, I’m going to worry either way, but I think it’s better knowing than not knowing. But . . . I need to ask you a couple of questions, okay? First, about the whole timelines thing.”
“Okay . . .”
He bites the side of his lip. “I’m not quite sure how to put this, but that other version of me? Do you think he still exists somewhere? I mean, I’ve heard about this multiple universes theory where different realities sort of coexist. Do you think that’s what happened—you spun off a different reality when you went back and saved Katherine?”
I shrug one shoulder. “I don’t know. Katherine said they weren’t even sure about that in her era. I do know what your opinion of that theory was in the other timeline, however.”
“And?”
I squeeze his hand. “You said it was total BS. That the other timeline would end and we’d get a fresh start.”
He looks a bit skeptical but smiles and says, “Okay, I’ll defer to the wisdom of the other me. Now, the second question . . .” He stares down at the table for a second, and I realize he’s blushing. “Were we . . . have we . . . um . . .” He glances up to my face and raises his eyebrows.
“Oh,” I say as I realize what he’s getting at. “No. We haven’t. Close but not quite.” I give him a little grin. “I wanted to, but you were playing hard to get.”
“Really?” He laughs. “Based on every bit of evidence to date, I find that hard to believe.”
My expression grows serious. “It’s true, and as much as I hate to say it, you were right. You said we both needed to be able to remember our first time, and you wouldn’t have. And . . . again, as much as I hate to say it, that situation hasn’t changed. I can’t promise this timeline is stable, although I am working on that about seventy-two hours a day.”
“Literally or figuratively?”
“Literally. I should probably warn you that if this keeps up much longer, you’re going to be involved with an older woman.”
He grins like he’s imagining the possibilities. “I think I could deal with that.”
I nudge his shoe with mine. “Back to the present, Mr. Coleman. Any other questions?”
“Probably, but I can’t think of them right now. My mind is still back on the whole close-but-not-quite comment.”
“Well, your mind needs to catch up, because I need to tell it a few things.”
And I do need to tell him a few things, because he’s right about total honesty and open communication. I have to tell him about Kiernan. I would probably have done it anyway, but after Eve’s snide comment, I don’t want to leave any doubts in his mind.
“Okay, this is kind of hard for me,” I begin. “I still have a difficult time wrapping my own head around it. But just as there was another you in that other timeline that you can’t remember, there was also another me in an entirely different timeline. At some point when there was one of these shifts that Kate wasn’t under the protection of a medallion. When the Cyrists changed that reality, she just—poof. She was gone.”
“So how do you know about her? I mean, I can’t remember this other Trey, and you said that the only reason you can remember him is that you were wearing the medallion, right?”
“Right. I don’t remember that Kate. But . . . someone else remembers that timeline. He’s not supposed to. The Cyrists or, more specifically, my aunt Prudence thought she’d taken care of that by swiping his CHRONOS key. But he had another one, a key that I gave him when he was a kid back at the Expo. He kept that one hidden from her.”
“Why would she want to wipe this kid’s memory?”
“That’s where it gets confusing. Kiernan wasn’t a kid anymore when she did that. He was twenty, and he’d been a member of the Cyrist inner circle before he . . . fell in love with that other Kate.”
I spend the next half hour trying to unravel my rather complicated, multilevel past with Kiernan. And, as I expected, Trey’s eyes grow more and more wary.
“That’s what Eve was talking about, then?”
I nod. “Prudence told me to stay away from Kiernan. But that’s hard to do, since he’s the only other person on our side who can use the medallions. And he has information on what we tried before in the other timeline, and—”
“Okay, he was in love with that other Kate. Is he in love with you?”
I’m not sure how to answer that. Is he in love with me? Or with a ghost who looks like me?
“I don’t know, Trey. He’s definitely still in love with her. He wishes I was his Kate, that she was still here. And I’m pretty sure he thinks if things were different, I could become that other Kate, but . . .”
“Could you?”
I shake my head. “I’ll admit I care about Kiernan. It’s hard not to. He saved my life. I guess I saved his as well, although he’d never have been caught in Holmes’s hotel as a kid if he hadn’t been helping me. I can definitely see how that other Kate fell in love with him in different circumstances. But in order for me to be that Kate, I’d have to give up everything. I don’t want to live in 1905. I don’t want to give up my family.”
“I can understand that.”
“But aside from all of those issues,” I say, looking deep into his eyes, “there’s one other major impediment, Trey. I’m already in love with you.”
He doesn’t say anything for a really long time, and when he finally speaks, his face is troubled. “I don’t like it. I don’t like that this guy is going to be hanging around. And I really don’t like that he can help you when I can’t.” He squeezes my hand. “But, that said, if I could help you, it would blow my compromise with Dad and
. . . while I suspect you can generally take care of yourself, the fact that there’s someone watching your back, someone who would risk his life to save yours? It makes me breathe a little easier. Does that make sense? Jealous as hell but also a little grateful?”
“Yes. If this were reversed, I’d feel the same way. But you said before that you want to know what I’m doing, and I’m wondering—would it be easier if I didn’t mention things involving Kiernan? I don’t want to make you feel jealous. I wouldn’t like thinking about you with some girl who . . . feels about you the way that Kiernan does about me.”
He shakes his head. “Open and honest, even when it hurts. That’s the only way this can work, Kate.”
I pull in a deep breath and then let it out slowly. “Then I guess I need to tell you that I’ll be seeing him tomorrow. We have to go to Depression-era Georgia.”
“Well,” Trey says, “at least he makes it easy for me to take you places that are more fun.”
“I think I’d prefer 1938 Georgia to another barbecue at Eve’s house.” He laughs, and I add, “And this isn’t a date. It’s work.”
“Okay,” he says. “When?”
“Two o’clock.”
“Here’s the deal, then. You do what you have to do, but after you get back from this . . . assignment . . . or any other time you’re going to be working with this guy, you call me, so I can come right over. Or better yet, call me before you go.”
It will take some creativity. Katherine would have a fit if Trey came by during a jump, and I don’t want to upset her. But it’s definitely doable. “Okay,” I tell him. “But . . . why?”
“Because I don’t want him on your mind for too long. That seems a little dangerous to me. I know you said you’re not his Kate, but I want equal time to make sure you remember you’re my Kate.”
∞11∞
The alarm went off fifteen minutes ago, but I’m still in bed, trying to organize my brain. Thoughts of the party and the clash with Eve compete with much more tempting memories of the final part of the evening with Trey. He delivered me to the doorstep a few minutes before twelve, as promised, and gave me the final, chaste kiss he seemed to feel was appropriate, just in case anyone was peeking out the windows. The act might have fooled a casual observer, but we were both still breathing a bit heavy from a long interlude in a secluded parking area overlooking Cabin John Creek.