“Yes, Captain.” Marit grinned. “Well, I’m should get back. Meeting in ten.” She flexed her knees and was gone.
Jesse poured herself some coffee and got back to work, breaking regularly to stretch, walk, eat and drink. It was the routine she followed no matter where she was.
At sunset, she moved into the bushland that lay between the beach and the escarpment and dragged firewood to the edge of the pergola. She could have got the fire going by herself, but Marit had left a box of matches in the pack, which made the job easier.
She watched the flames dances and the seagulls soar over the water, hovering in the stiff evening sea breeze.
Aran groaned and stirred not long after the sun set. He rolled onto his back, gave another groan and shifted back onto his side and gripped the edge of the bed. His knuckles were white.
“Bucket is right in front of you,” Jesse said.
He swallowed. “‘kay,” he whispered. His jaw flexed and she suspected he was holding his teeth together, fighting the need to throw up. She didn’t feel sorry for him, even though she knew just how dizzy and nauseous he must be feeling.
Instead, she poured herself the last of the coffee. “Let me know if you want some water,” she added, knowing damn well he would be utterly parched, and far too ill to drink it. He would bring it right back up. He had to sober more before he could keep anything down.
Aran didn’t say anything.
Alannah arrived a short while later, carrying a tray. “He’s moved. He is alive then.”
“Yep,” Jesse said.
Alannah put the tray on Jesse’s knee. “It’s hot,” she said. “I just picked it up from République. Hope you like French.”
“Love it,” Jesse breathed.
Aran groaned. “Smells disgusting…” he muttered.
“Suffer, baby,” Alannah tossed over her shoulder. “I’ll bring coffee next.” She jumped away and returned barely sixty seconds later, carrying an entire plunger pot, the plunger still drawn to the top, a ceramic mug with a spoon and a tiny carton of cream tucked inside it. She put them on the tray beside the take-out carton and stepped back. “You’re staying the night, then?”
Jesse didn’t look at Aran. “I think I should.”
Alannah wrinkled her nose. “I’ll coordinate with Marit. She can bring you breakfast.”
“Two of them,” Jesse said.
“He doesn’t deserve one.” Alannah bent and jumped, leaving them alone with the sound of small waves and a whisper of a breeze. Even the seagulls were silent.
The scents rising from the carton were enticing. Jesse ate, suddenly starving. The coffee was excellent, too, which meant this was one of the best meals she’d had in weeks…here on an isolated beach on the southwest tip of Australia.
She was sipping the second cup of coffee when Aran said, his voice strained, “I remember being pulled out of the bar. Figured I’d find Marit in the chair. Or Alannah. Or even Mom…” He didn’t finish the thought. He didn’t need to.
“I didn’t expect to be here, either,” Jesse told him. “I’ve got a house to watch, and a book to finish. This wasn’t on my agenda.”
“Sorry.” He kept his eyes closed and remained very still on the bed.
“No, you’re not, but okay.”
After a long moment, he said, “Not sorry for me. For pulling you away, yeah, I am.”
It burst from her, unintentional. “What happened, Aran? What made you think hiding in the oughts and going on a binge that would halt Hannibal’s elephants a good idea?”
He gave a long, harsh sigh, but didn’t answer.
She was kinda glad he hadn’t. She wasn’t sure she really wanted to know. And in the back of her mind, she saw the same little flash of memory. Long fingers stroking Aran’s neck.
Jesse didn’t know if he went back to sleep. She didn’t look at him again. Instead, she picked up her laptop from where she had parked it on the top of the little Esky and got back to work. Now the sun had set, she would only get the length of the battery life out of the laptop—a few hours, only.
One of these days, she should buy a second battery. Or maybe two of them.
It was difficult to get back into the story, but she persevered, until the characters took over and were telling their own story while she took dictation.
There was nothing better than being in this dream place and living a story.
Aran said something. His voice was quiet, as though he was talking to himself.
“Hmm…?” Jesse murmured, trying to get the next sentence down before it evaporated from her brain.
She paused, pulling the last half of the sentence together, but it was gone. And her battery was down to twelve percent.
Jesse closed the laptop and put it aside. “What did you say?” Aran was a dark shape on the bed and only now she realized that the fire had died down to glowing coals.
She rose, stretched and moved out to where her pile of firewood sat. She built up the fire. When it was crackling loudly, she sat on the sand in front of it and watched the flames slide along the branches, their edges dancing blue and red and yellow.
The sand was soft enough that she would be more than comfortable sleeping on it. Soft, fine and completely dry. Warm, too.
She was sitting at the front of the pergola, which put the bed behind her, so when Aran spoke, she jumped.
“I said, before, that I thought I was heading back to Cael’s bar because of Kyle.”
Jesse didn’t turn to look at Aran. Her gut said that if she did, he’d stop talking. That he could only say what he wanted to say while her back was turned.
No judgement. That’s what her back meant.
She held still and forced her voice to casual indifference. “He dumped you?”
“Worse.”
What could be worse? But she didn’t say it aloud.
Aran didn’t speak again for long minutes. She thought he had given her all the answer she would get, but then he used the same this-is-just-me-processing-shit tone as before, the tone that had pulled her out of her writing.
“I thought getting fired should…I don’t know. Upset me more. Getting screwed over for political gain, that’s Washington. That’s the fuel that runs the joint, so after I socked him, I got over being pissed about that. I don’t like it, but it’s a fact of life, there, and I knew that going in, so it’s a waste of energy hanging on to resentment about that. But getting fired for it, that should hurt. And I thought all of it, the whole stinking mess, was why I went back to N’Orleans.”
Jesse held still, while her heart thudded. Fired? Punching people? What had happened to him? But she couldn’t demand clarification right now. It would halt the flow. Even clearing her throat might knock him off his track, so she went quiet and dark and waited.
His voice was even quieter when he spoke next. “I’ve seen the Battle of Trafalgar from the poop deck of Admiral Nelson’s HMS Victory. I’ve ridden in Genghis Khan’s army and watched him mow down the Volga Bulgarians. I’ve heard every single speech Cicero gave the Senate. All of them.” He let out a breath—too soft to be sigh, but not a simple exhalation, either.
The thought came to her abruptly. “You like time travelling…” she breathed.
No one in Veris’ extended family had ever spoken about time travelling as something they enjoyed. Not ever. It was not quite a curse to them, not once they had adapted to a universe where time travel was possible. But it was not a gift, either. It brought troubles and near-disasters, dangers and stress.
“I like time travelling,” Aran said, his voice bitter. “Only, I don’t get to jump forever. No one mentioned that when they were showing me how to do it.”
Jesse did turn to look at him then, driven to move by her surprise. “But you jumped by yourself back to Spain. Brody told me about it. You were the first in the family to figure out place-to-place jumping…”
Aran lay on his back, peering up at the rough thatch over their heads, but he rolled his head to look at her
. His eyes, in the firelight, were shadowed, with just a gleam of black showing under the lashes. “Only because I’d been listening to everyone in the family talk about it since before I could understand what they were saying. I grew up a jumper—no choice.”
“But you like it, so…?”
He sighed. A gusty one this time. “Male jumpers don’t get to keep their ability once they’re turned.”
Oh… Now she thought she understood. “Then you want to be turned, one day?”
“Right now, the idea of growing old and decrepit seems…wrong,” he said softly. “There’s so much out there I still want to see.”
The yearning in his voice!
Jesse wrapped her arms around her knees, as the heat of the fire bathed her back, instead. “You can grow old and not be able to jump, or be turned and still not be able to jump.”
Aran closed his eyes. “I’ve conversed with Plato, with Cicero, with Julius Caesar and Marcus Aurelius. Newton. Einstein. Kings, queens and heroes. I’ve watched the Titanic sink, the Battle of Britain, Martin Luther King’s last speech, the protests in Tiananmen Square. The Berlin wall being built and then being pulled down again. The pyramids being built. Games in the Colosseum. The Gettysburg Address.”
Jesse remembered to breathe. “When did you do all this?” she whispered.
“My time is limited,” he whispered. “I squeeze it in.” He turned his face away from her gaze. “Washington has always seemed like the minor leagues to me, but it’s my league, so I played my guts out. Only, now I’ve been booted out of the arena and I should be pissed. Or upset. Or both. And all I feel is…relief.”
Getting drunk sounded like a moderate response under those circumstances, Jesse thought.
Aran turned over, his back to her. She understood that, too. He’d just revealed his inner core. She would feel as exposed as he was, if it was her.
Jesse said lightly, “If you ever go back to the Battle of Trafalgar, take me with you. That is a battle I would like to see.” It had only turned the fortunes of Britain and made it the world power than controlled the oceans—which had given Britain access to the rest of the “colonial” world, well before the other European empires had got their shit together.
Aran didn’t answer. She hadn’t expected him too. She stretched out on the sand, wriggled until she was comfortable, pillowed her head on her arm and tried to sleep.
A long while later, she did sleep. When she woke, it was broad daylight and the fire was cold ash in front of her, smelling of gum resin and charcoal. The plaid blanket that had been on the bed was now over her and the bed was empty.
Jesse sat up and brushed sand from her skin. The early morning sunlight bounced off the sea with eye-watering intensity. No wonder Marit always wore sunglasses.
The little bay was about a mile from tip to tip, and the pergola was almost in the center of it. On the southern headland, half a mile from here, she spotted Aran as he strode out of the water, then hastily looked away because he was naked.
Not that she could see any detail from here, except for the long lines of his body and the surprising width of his shoulders. Aran had muscle the slim suits hid.
And she was watching him, after all, she realized.
He walked up the beach to where she could just spot the pile of dark grey suiting, shaking off water, then bent and plucked one of the items from the pile.
Jesse made herself turn and find something else to do. She pulled one of the water cannisters from Marit’s pack and drank several cupfuls. The other cannister she dropped onto the bed for Aran when he returned. He had to have a raging thirst by now. She buried the ashes from the fire by pouring more beach sand over it and tossed the remains of the firewood back into the bushes lining the back of the bay.
Marit popped into view, balancing a bowl on a potholder, with a spoon in it, and a bread plate with toast stacked on it in the other.
“Oh, he’s…there he is,” Marit said, looking over Jesse’s shoulder. “Doesn’t look any worse for wear, damn him. I’d look like a zombie, after something like that.” She shifted her gaze back to Jesse. “Oatmeal with brown sugar, cinnamon, almonds and dried apricots for you. Dry toast for him.” She put the plate on the bed and carefully transferred the bowl of oatmeal over to Jesse. “Mind your fingers. It’s hot. Coffee or tea? I left the kettle boiling.” She bent and gathered up the Esky and the considerably lighter backpack.
“I’ll wait to get home to make coffee,” Jesse told Marit. “That’ll save you a trip.”
“I’ll come back to take you home, then,” Marit said and hoisted the pack over her shoulder.
“I’ll take Jesse home,” Aran said from behind her. He’d covered the half mile damned quickly for a man who was supposed to be nursing a massive hangover.
Marit rolled her eyes. “Can you even see straight yet?”
“I’m fine. I’ll get her home.” Aran picked up the water cannister. He wore the shirt and trousers and carried everything else. He dropped the jacket and shoes onto the bed where the cannister had been, unscrewed the top and drank deeply.
“You’re welcome,” Marit said, her tone withering.
Aran shrugged. “I’d have come home by myself, sooner or later.” He drank again. His hair dripped seawater and clung to his head in persistent curls.
“Just thank her,” Jesse said, vexed at him. “Marit finding you on the timescape has stopped your Mom from hitting the button and shooting the entire family up to DefCon One.”
Aran lowered the cannister, and glanced at Jesse, startled.
“And Jesse covered your ass by playing it down with Mom, too,” Marit added. “Otherwise, it would have been Far and Athair hauling you out of New Orleans, and a year of lectures and growling every time they saw you.”
Jesse wanted to laugh, because Veris really did growl when he was irritated, or frustrated, or angry or scared for his kids and trying to hold it in. Which happened a lot, especially when time was involved. But she held her expression to neutral as Aran’s gaze shifted back to her once more.
“Then I guess I need to thank you,” Aran said. He put the lid back on the cannister with a grimace. “Both of you. I’ll catch up with Alannah, later.”
Marit’s mouth parted as she stared at her brother. Then she closed it firmly and nodded. “Right. Well, I have a kettle boiling…” She pushed the sleeves of her shirt up her arms, cleared her throat self-consciously, bent her knees and jumped.
Aran picked up one of the slices of toast and bit into it. “When you’ve finished eating, I’ll take you home,” he told Jesse. “Or we could go now, and you can eat the civilized way, on a chair at the table.”
“I’m not moving anywhere until you eat an entire slice of toast and don’t bring it up again.”
Aran’s eyes narrowed. Silently, he took another bite of the toast.
Jesse tried to ignore the way her middle had ruffled up and her chest had tightened. She got busy packing her gear away and tidying up the few things laying about on the cool sand under the pergola. In between, she took spoonfuls of the cooling oatmeal, which was delicious.
“You can’t keep still, can you?” Aran observed. He sat on the edge of the bed, now, pensively chewing through the other slice of toast.
“That’s just the problem,” Jesse said. “I can stay far too still for far too long, when I’m writing. Don’t you remember?” She had the courage to glance at him, to see if he did.
“So this fidgeting you’re doing right now isn’t natural.”
“This fidgeting you call it…it’s the sort of shit that gets a soldier picked off by a sniper, on the field. So no, it doesn’t come natural to me. I’m working against muscle memory, and more than a decade of military training to do it, but it keeps the metabolism ticking over.”
“You taught yourself to keep moving…” He said it softly. “Most people would find that an impossible change to make.”
“Lots of expats can’t make the change to civilian,” she admitted. “I
was braced for that, for the chaos and lack of routine. But I got caught in the jaw by it, anyway, because it came at me from the wrong direction.”
It was on the tip of her tongue to ask the next obvious question. Do you remember me dying? Do you remember saving me? But he couldn’t possibly remember, because he had deliberately changed time to make sure she lived, which meant his memories of that time were different from hers. Do you remember the moment just after, when you said you liked having me around?
Jesse cleared her throat and finished packing. By the time she had everything stowed and secured, Aran had put his shoes back on. He didn’t bother with the jacket, which was a rumpled mess. It felt like it was already seventy degrees, here.
“Washington is going to feel like the Arctic, now,” Jesse said, sliding her arms into her cardigan.
“Shall we stop for coffee in Paris, first?” he said.
Temptation tore at her. “I would kill for a cup of Bertrand’s coffee.” She hitched her backpack over her shoulder. “But I’m already twitchy about leaving the house for as long as I have.”
“I can take you back to the moment after you left,” Aran said, rolling the sleeves of his shirt back to his elbows. He had strong wrists and the muscle in his forearms matched what she had seen of him on the beach.
“I know that intellectually,” Jesse said, “but my gut just wants to see the house and make sure it didn’t burn down while my back was turned.”
“Arlington it is, then,” Aran said. He came toward her, his arms raising.
Jesse caught her breath and it had nothing to do with the imminent jump, even though jumping through time and space was for her still a thing of marvel, while Aran and his sisters treated it like…a tool.
He pulled her up against him and almost at the same moment, he jumped. Yet just for a heartbeat or two before the jump stole her senses, she felt his body against her. Hard. Long. Male.
Then she was blinking and trying to wake up. She’d heard Taylor talk about emerging from a jump being like waking, too. There was always a second or two of disorientation, while she sorted out where she was. Time and her place in it.
Kiss Across Chaos Page 7
