My Forever Love (Crossing the Line Book 2)

by M. D. Stewart

  Lisbeth nodded in agreement before looking at the clock. It was nearly time to get up anyway. “I’ll go by his office first thing.” She stood up to head to the bathroom. She decided to go ahead and shower but was stopped by Deb’s quick intake of breath.

  “Holy Mother of God.” Deb’s voice was shaking. “Oh, Lisbeth.”

  She’d never heard Deb’s voice sound so full of fear. Hands grasped her shoulders, turning her back more toward the lamp. “What? What is it, Deb?” She could hear her roommate panting a second before she pushed her into the master bath. The overhead light flipped on, and Deb turned her, so her back was facing the mirror.

  “Look. But don’t freak out.”

  Lisbeth turned her head slowly to peer over her shoulder. The thick strap of her pajama shirt was pushed aside, and Deb pulled her long dark hair away from her left shoulder. Lisbeth nearly fell to the floor. “Oh god!”

  *****

  Dave was reading a report as he strode down the hall. He nearly walked into the young woman standing in the hallway. When she looked up, he was stunned to see the change in her features. “Miss Mohr?”

  “Captain.” Her voice broke, but she took a deep breath and calmed herself. “I need help. P-Please.” He stared at her in shock but didn’t make a move or say a word. She had lost weight, her face had lines of stress around her mouth. Dark circles were under her puffy eyes that were filled with unshed tears. She had always been so professional that this was out of character for her.

  “Captain Amsted, I really need to talk to you, sir.” Dave studied the young woman’s pale face and red nose. “It’s really important, and my friend Deb said I should find you. I need to talk to you in private. Please.”

  Dave nodded as he stepped away from her and toward his office. He’d flown with her on board his chopper for several years but hadn’t spoken two words to her away from the mission. She had been on the flight over the time anomaly, but the crew been given time off after the incident. He hadn’t seen her since. “Okay. I can take you to my office. Come on.” He walked down the hallway to his private office and let her walk in and sit before shutting the door.

  “What seems to be the problem, Ms. Mohr?” She was a private contractor assigned to his chopper to record information for KenSpec Labs. While Ms. Mohr was unaware of the fact, the owner of KenSpec Labs, Dr. Marc Kensington, was his wife’s other husband. Something that had happened since they returned from the mission. She took a deep breath drawing his attention back to the present.

  “Captain.” She cleared her throat and looked down. Her dark hair was pulled into a tight bun at the nape of her neck. Even though she was civilian, she had to meet military dress codes while working on base. Her long hair would’ve normally hidden her face, but Dave could see her struggle with her emotions. She looked up, and Dave was shocked to see her blue eyes spilling fat tears and her chin quivering with emotion.

  “I know that we were told to go to Dr. Lackney if we had anything abnormal happen to us since our flight over the anomaly.” Dave sat up straighter at her words. “I didn’t go to her because I don’t know what’s happening to me and I don’t want to be put in a – a hospital or have the military invade my life.” She covered her face with her hands, but he heard her sob before her shoulders began to shake.

  “Ms. Mohr, Lisbeth, what’s going on?” He rounded the desk and sat beside her, waiting until she calmed and gathered her thoughts. “I promise I’ll do everything I can to help you, but you have to talk to me.”

  “Captain,” she hiccoughed before taking a deep breath and calming down. “I have been with you for the last three years. I was housed at KenSpec for just a few months for training before they assigned me to you and your mission for the government. In all that time, I always did my work to the best of my ability, and I loved my job. But after this last mission, I’ve been having these strange dreams. They’re more like memories, but I’ve never lived them.”

  Dave reached over to his desk with his right hand, grabbed the box of tissues and pushed them toward her. He knew she was going to tell him things no one else would believe. She grabbed a tissue, and he calmly waited as she wiped her eyes.

  She took a few deep breaths, opening her eyes, she jumped up from her chair. “Oh my god. Debbie was right.”

  He followed her line of sight to his wedding ring and the tattoo on the inside of his right wrist. He hadn’t seen her since they returned from the mission. He didn’t have those things before they flew over the time rip. “Lisbeth, what is going on?” He became seriously concerned as she slid to the floor her hand covering her mouth. He got up and knelt before her and took her hand. She looked to him with haunted eyes. Without a word she sat up straight and jerked her hand away from his. She began to tear at the front closure of her flight suit. He was just about to stop her when she turned and pulled the material off her left shoulder. A tattoo a little larger than a quarter was there. It looked to be a few years old, but still crisp and colorful — an outline of Germany with “SW ewig 2014” inside the shape.

  She reached in her flight suit pants pocket and pulled out a folded picture of her in a bathing suit. The photo was printed off on regular paper, presumably from someone’s phone. She was looking over her shoulder at the person holding the camera. “This picture is from this weekend. I’ve never gotten a tattoo in my life, Captain. But I remember getting this in Germany.” She was pointing to her shoulder. Dave looked at the photo she held, but no tattoo was on her body.

  “Captain,” she began to cry again, and he could feel his heart breaking for her, “I’ve never been to Germany. I was supposed to go in 2014, but things fell through. But I got this tattoo in Hamburg with the love of my life when I met him in Germany in the summer of 2014. He got one too, on his left hipbone. But I remember being in Germany. It was the best time of my life, and I miss him so much, but I have never met him. How can that be?” She was crying in earnest now; her pain was palpable. “God, I feel like part of me has died. I keep having other memories of what we did, places we visited, but I’ve never met him, never visited those places.” She dropped her head and didn’t even try to stop her tears.

  “Lisbeth, there are things that happened on our last mission that you need to know about. Come on, get up. I’ll take you to where you can get answers, but you need to keep it classified.”

  He stood and pulled out his cell, dialing Marc’s number. When he answered, Dave kept it short. “Meet me in your lab in ten. Something’s happened. I’m on my way.” Hanging up, he helped her stand and buttoned her flight suit like a child. Dave slid his phone in his jacket pocket and then grabbed his keys from the desk.

  “I need you to dry your tears and get ahold of yourself for just a few minutes. We need to walk out of here and get to my car. But right now, I don’t want anyone to see you’re upset and pass that information on to anyone else. Can you do that?” He waited as she struggled for a minute and then wiped the tears from her face. She took some deep breaths and looked up to him and nodded. “Good job. You can do this. Keep your head down to hide your swollen eyes. Hang on, Lisbeth. Everything’s going to be okay.” And for her sake, he hoped he was right.

  Dave helped settle Lisbeth in the car and drove as fast as he could to get to KenSpec Labs. Part of him understood the haunted pain and confusion that his passenger suffered from. When he returned from the mission and first started having memories of Sadie, he’d had a seizure. He’d never met her, but he knew she was his wife. He went crazy trying to find her. How Lisbeth could have survived the pain and confusion for the last few weeks, he’d never know. He’d found Sadie within days. Even though it was hard at first to convince her and her husband that he was also her husband, things eventually worked out for them all. Now he was concerned about how someone else would deal with the truth of two timelines.

  The lab building came into view, but Dave drove to the side of the building where he could enter with Lisbeth without anyone seeing them. When he shut off the car, he tou
ched her shoulder gently to get her attention. “Come on. Marc is waiting to talk to you.” At her nod, she opened her door and woodenly walked toward the building. Dave punched in a numbered code on the security panel then opened the thick door. He led her down the long hallway to a set of double metal doors. Again, he punched in numbers and at the beep, he pulled the door open to reveal a large windowless room with computers along one wall. Various equipment was scattered throughout, but Dave searched the area for Marc.

  A tall man with sandy brown hair walked into the room, his back to them until Dave cleared his throat. When he turned, Lisbeth gasped, letting Dave know she recognized Marc, her actual boss. He doubted she’d ever met him, even though she worked for his lab. He wanted to help her relax a bit. “Ah, there’s the mad scientist.” Marc grinned until he saw Lisbeth with her head bowed, and then genuine concern replaced his amusement.

  “Dave, what’s going on?” Marc walked toward them slowly, he stopped walking the minute Lisbeth looked up, and he saw her face.

  “Marc, this is Lisbeth Mohr. She is one of your employees assigned to my flight crew to gather data on the time distortions. She was with me on the last mission.” Marc’s eyes widened, and he took a deep breath. “She has something she needs to show you.”

  “There’s been another cross-over?” Marc’s question had Lisbeth looking up.

  “Cross-over?” She sniffed and looked at Dave’s tattoo. Her eyes followed the movements as Dave handed the picture she’d given him at his office. Marc’s eyes shot to Dave when she started to unfasten her flight suit again. “I didn’t have this when I went to bed last night.” She turned and exposed her shoulder. “And I’ve been having these dreams about, well about a man that I’ve never met but I love him.” Her voice broke. Dave pulled her flight suit back in place and turned her to face both men. She pulled the edges of the top together, holding it so tightly, her knuckles were white.

  Marc gently took one of her hands and pulled her deeper into the lab. “Come here, Miss Mohr. I want you to sit down. You look like you’re going to faint.” The three of them walked into a small room off the lab. Marc led her to a chair and walked to the water cooler in the corner of his office and returned with a cup of cool liquid.

  No one said a word until she had sipped the water and some of her color returned. “Dave, I contacted Dr. Lackney when I got your call. I had an idea it was something like this.”

  Lisbeth looked up, fear in her eyes. “No. I don’t want to be put away somewhere. I’m not crazy. I know this is strange but I—” Dave cut her off.

  “Lisbeth, Tel will understand, and she won’t put you away somewhere. You’ve put your trust in me the last several years. Just continue to trust me, okay?” He sighed as he pulled a chair over and sat in front of her. “What we’re going to tell you is classified. No one can know what I’m about to say, but I want you to know you can trust us.” Marc sighed and pulled his chair from behind the desk, sitting beside Dave.

  “Let’s start at the very beginning, okay?” He spoke to her in soothing tones, like she was a frightened child as he fastened her flight suit again. “This is Marc. I know you understand he owns KenSpec, since he is in fact, your boss. When we flew over the anomaly, I came back to be checked by the medical staff, same as you and the rest of the crew. During my examination, I mentioned someone named Sadie. I didn’t even remember doing that. But suddenly, I saw a woman as clearly as I see you. I ended up having a seizure in front of Dr. Lackney. It was mild, but still, it was concerning.

  “Suddenly I was having these memories of a woman named Sadie. I became almost obsessed to find her because I knew, without a doubt, that she was my wife. I just happened to run into her at a restaurant, but she was there with another man. That really pissed me off because I knew she was mine.”

  Lisbeth reached out to Dave, compassion in her eyes. “I’m so sorry.”

  Marc cleared his throat and smiled. “Actually, she was with me. Sadie is my wife. He’d never met her.” Dave was concerned when her already pale face went ashen. Her hand was still on his, so he grabbed her wrist with his other hand and got her attention.

  “Look at me, Lisbeth.” He showed her his ring and tattoo. “Yes, Sadie belongs to Marc. But, Lisbeth, she’s my wife too. Do you remember when no one knew aliens existed or that they lived on this planet with us? But our eyes were opened to the reality that other races do, in reality inhabit this vast universe. Be open-minded.” She blinked but didn’t get hysterical, so he continued. “It’s not too much of a stretch to realize there is more than one timeline.” She stayed quiet as she digested the information. Marc stood up and walked to a whiteboard and grabbed two colored pens.

  He drew two long rectangles, side by side but touching. One in blue, and one in red. “Think of it this way. We inhabit this world here.” He drew a squiggly line in the blue tube. “And this is another timeline that has humans, some of which are our counterparts: another me, another Dave, another you. Each timeline is fully contained so what happens in one doesn’t affect the other. But each decision that is made in its timeline changes the possible futures and outcomes in that timeline.” Lisbeth started to hear buzzing in her ears—this was making so much sense.

  “Now in Dave’s case, in the red world, his other self met and married Sadie. In this world,” Marc pointed to the blue tube, “where we live, Sadie met and married me instead. When he and your crew flew over the anomaly, that was a time rip between these worlds.” He took his finger and wiped away the lines that separated the rectangles. “Your counterparts were also flying but on the other side of this hole between the timelines. Somehow their memories crossed the time rip. So now the Dave you know here in this timeline started remembering the other Dave’s relationship with his wife. Are you with me so far?”

  Lisbeth nodded as stood up and started to pace. “So, your memories of your wife were actually the life of the Dave who was on the other side of the time rip. Do you think that happened to me? I was supposed to go to Germany in 2014, but at the last minute, I couldn’t go. But the me in the other timeline did go to Germany and met Stieg, and they fell in love.” Both men gave a nod. “Then why am I hurting so badly? I don’t know him, but I ache for him.”

  “The other you on Earth Two obviously was on the other side of the time rip. She had to have crossed memories with you. Her memories became your memories. Her love for that man became yours. In this world, our timeline, he’s not in your life, so you hurt for him.” Dave’s voice conveyed his sympathy.

  “But how did I get this tattoo on my body?” She looked between the men hoping they could answer her questions, help stop the dreams, stop the pain of loss. “I’m so confused. I understand how we could exchange memories, but the physical things like the tattoos and Captain Amsted’s ring? I don’t understand that.”

  Marc pulled Dave to stand beside him. He pointed to Dave’s wedding ring and tattoo. “Somehow, and it’s only my theory, when he met my wife Sadie, he somehow made the other Dave’s memories concrete in this timeline. Sadie started to remember her life with Dave from the other timeline. Their wedding rings and his tattoo began to form. This is all so new that we don’t know the reason why.”

  “How do you live with it, Captain? How do you live with knowing she’s married to someone else when you love her? Do you still love her? I mean you must—you’re still wearing your wedding ring. How can you be friends?” The men shared a look before Marc nodded.

  “We worked it out. Marc knows Sadie loves me as much as she loves him. And we both love her enough to want her to be happy. I’d never make her choose between us. We’d never make her choose between us. She’s the most important thing to us, do you understand? She has the same memories of us as I do. She also has her memories of Marc. We all live together, and we’re very happy as a family. No one can know, Lisbeth. Your knowledge of our situation could end my career in the military.”

  “Oh god.” Lisbeth sat down. The men looked concerned, but she looked up
and smiled. “If I can talk to him, he might remember me? He might have the tattoo the other Stieg got when I got mine. Or when the other me got hers. Shit. Whatever. For the first time in weeks, I feel hope.”

  Marc spoke just as an older woman walked into his office with a large black bag being pulled on a cart. “I can’t tell you with certainty that would be the case, but there is a chance. Dave didn’t get his tattoo and ring without Sadie’s ring showing up at the same time. So, the chances that this Stieg fellow now has an unexplained tattoo is statistically high. Which means he’s probably having memories about you too.”

  Tears filled her eyes. “If he is, that means he’s hurting and as confused as I am.”

  “That’s the pessimist’s way of looking at it. What it means, my dear is that if he has those memories, he also wants to find you as much as you want to find him.” Dr. Telly Anne Lackney’s voice sounded through the room. “If what I heard entering the room is correct, you have a physical marker of the other you from the other timeline without meeting or talking to this young man which is not what happened with Dave and Sadie. He found her within days. Perhaps as time passes the memories would become more concrete anyway, even without a physical meeting between the parties. This is most fascinating.”

  She continued to pull items from the bag and place them on the table. “But you, my dear, are extremely fortunate. You work for a company that has resources, and I want to study this phenomenon further. As such, KenSpec can use your description of him, cities you remember, and names you know to track him down for you.”

  Lisbeth licked her dry lips and took a deep breath. “Actually, it’s not that he’d be hard to find at all. It’s getting close to him that would be the problem. And if he doesn’t have the same dreams, or memories, I seem to have developed or a tattoo, he wouldn’t believe me anyway.” She downed the remaining water in the cup before blowing out a breath. “The man is Stieg Warner.”