Chasing Time

by Mia Downing

  Skye

  March 14

  I stood in my painting room, staring at those damned canvasses like they’d speak to me. I’d still had no breakthrough. I was no closer to any decision than I was when I’d broken the bond with Marek, and I needed to make a decision.

  I felt hopeless.

  I’d spent my whole life painting these damned things, and they now told me nothing. I felt like I’d been a slave to these canvases, purging the dreams they lorded over me. They owed me something for the hell they represented.

  Maybe I needed to dig deeper in the pile. I sighed as I turned a canvas around to look at it. I had them labeled on the back with a date, and I kept them all facing the wall so I didn’t have to walk in and deal with any “triggered feelings” that might pop up unintentionally. Some I hadn’t looked at in years. It seemed simpler that way.

  If I wanted to confront who I was, I needed to face these paintings. I turned the canvas with the flowers first, and I discarded that quickly, not wanting the tears to start. Instead, I shifted through the stack to find the older ones, turning them around one by one.

  I no longer remembered the dream that went with some of them, which I guess was how this whole purge thing was supposed to work. But some—like Marek’s tattoo—that one dredged up a lot of emotions. And seeing that should have been enough to send me straight to his arms, but it wasn’t, not when I’d seen similar gear tattoos in a steampunk shop in Boston a few years ago.

  Other paintings made no sense. Like one with this weird circle and pairs of male-type shoes and boots standing on certain markers. The pair of black boots in the center looked familiar, like Marek’s. That one made me feel giddy and warm. Excited. I frowned and set that aside.

  The next made me stop short and draw in a deep breath. I’d painted the dials of Marek’s watch in exquisite detail, right down to the energy levels and the button he pushed to start the process of time travel. The background hadn’t made sense then, but now I recognized the rich, brown leather of the cuffs and straps and the brass from the buckles that would secure it to his wrist. And behind the leather, I’d painted his bond, that brilliant yellow with flecks of green along the edges.

  I sat back on my heels and stared at that painting, tracing the dials, the little marks that showed his full energy level. My yellow, happy Marek.

  I closed my eyes as the tears welled up. I couldn’t explain away the watch. I’d painted it three years ago. He hadn’t jumped forward then. There wasn’t a watch like his anywhere, not in that Boston shop, not on the internet. The only one that existed was in a certain time traveler’s desk in his library. I looked at the time—ten. Actually, it would be on his wrist now as he waited to leave.

  My shoulders heaved with regret and sadness. I didn’t want to be a fraction of her. I didn’t want my dreams to be her memories. But the painting of the watch proved my origins so loudly and clearly that I winced with the pain of it. God help me. I had spent my entire life searching for where I had come from, and he’d told me. Only I hadn’t liked it.

  Like or not, I had to believe him, and I had to know more. I couldn’t let him go without knowing for sure what my drawings and paintings meant. I had to solve that before I could accept him—us.

  Besides that, I missed him so much—his smile, his random history facts, his arms wrapped around me at night. I needed to see him.

  But was I too late? He’d said he would leave at one. It was just after ten.

  I texted and got no answer. That wasn’t like him. My heart pounded as I glanced at the clock again, the narrowing of the window of opportunity closing in on me like a vise. I called; it went to voice mail.

  “Fuck it.” I bolted from my painting room, found shoes, and took the stairs two at a time.

  I lowered the shield between us, and I couldn’t feel him. The shock of what breaking the bond meant settled in and chilled me to the bone. Every hair on my body stood at attention—on my head, the backs of my arms. I truly didn’t get what it meant until that moment. I couldn’t feel him. I’d never feel him again unless I did something.

  I panicked. My breath wouldn’t come, held captive by lungs that refused to do their job. My throat and eyes burned as I froze next to my car in the driveway.

  My saner inner voice said, He’d said he wouldn’t leave. He’d wait until one.

  I argued, Men lie. Everyone lies.

  Not Marek. Ever.

  As that sank in, my lungs unfroze. I took a ragged breath, then two. My hands fumbled with the keys and the lock, and I got in. I could do this. I could go to his house, see him again, and…what? What did I want?

  To know the truth. To feel him again.

  I started the car and drove like a maniac with every nerve in my body on fire, twitching, taking the corners way too fast, skidding into his pea-gravel driveway like a stunt driver. He had to be there. He’d promised not to leave until one. I was supposed to be with him. I had time.

  The front porch lights gleamed from their sconces, but the rest of the manor stood in darkness. I went first to the back door and found it locked. I then bound up the front steps, my breath coming in ragged rushes of air that seesawed up and down my throat.

  I banged that lion-footed knocker for all it was worth, peeking in the sidelight of the front door.

  Nothing. The bond didn’t respond as if he were close, either. I placed my ear at the door, listening, the silence deafening. I tried the handle to find it locked.

  “Marek!” I pounded on the door until my hands throbbed. “Where are you? Marek!”

  A key. There had to be a key. I jumped off the porch and rummaged under the shrubs. He had known where I’d hid my key. Where would he hide his? Why wouldn’t I know this? He never locked the doors. My mind raced faster than my heart, flitting through the memories I had. There was no key.

  “Hello?”

  Startled, I popped up from under the porch and smacked my head on the shrub.

  Marek stood on the porch in bare feet, dressed in his casual 1890s trousers and a dark, linen shirt with suspenders. He’d shaved, his shorter hair now neatly slicked back. He looked younger but just as sexy. “Oh. Hello. I thought you were the pizza guy.”

  He’s here… And he’d ordered pizza of all things. As if he hadn’t been worried about me showing up at all.

  My emotions laced with the energy of the bond and bubbled inside me, threatening to spew like a volcano. I breathed, tried to center, and for some reason, I focused on the pale skin of his toes. Five on each foot. He shifted his feet as if cold, and I looked up.

  He cocked his head as he hooked his thumbs under his suspenders. “You looking for the spare key? I keep it by the garage in that big urn with the topiary.”

  My mouth opened and shut a few times like a fish struggling to gulp water. I wanted to hug him, then strangle him.

  “Skye? You okay?”

  “You have to come.” The drawings. He had to see them. I had to end the craziness inside me.

  “Where?” Headlights flashed behind him on the side of the house, lighting the concern on his face. “Look, the pizza is here. Let me pay for that, and I’ll go with you. Okay?”

  I nodded, willing myself to take a step away from the boxwoods and out onto the lawn, but my feet were rooted in place. I couldn’t even turn. I’d never been so afraid before in my life, and I’d had some scary shit happen to me over the years. I didn’t want to know what he would say about the paintings and my memories, and yet I had to.

  The car tires crunched in the pea gravel, and Marek darted to the car in bare feet. It was too cold for that, but he did it anyway.

  They murmured to each other until Marek said loudly, “Yeah, she’s fine. Looking for our cat. Keep the change.”

  The car drove off, and Marek returned to me. “I’m going to put the pizza down, grab shoes, and we’ll go.”

  I nodded and rubbed my arms from the cold. I could do this. The worst thing would be he was right. I was a part of her. Or was that the b
est thing? My breathing still sounded loud in my ears, but at least it was even. Calmer. And I wasn’t hyperventilating. Good. Good stuff. I wiped my damp palms on my pants and took one step. Two. Three. I made it to the car as Marek popped into the passenger’s side with his pizza box in hand.

  He cast me a worried glance as he snapped the seatbelt in place. “You gonna tell me what’s wrong?”

  I had to focus on driving. The steering wheel offered comfort in my palms, the fake leather molding in a familiar way that held my attention. I could follow the road, staying to the right of the single yellow line that would lead me into town. “You ordered pizza.”

  “Well, yeah. They don’t have pizza like this in 1892.” He said it so casually and factual as he opened the box. “You want some?”

  “No.” Drive. Turn. Stop at the stop sign. Go. Drive.

  He took a bite, chewing with a moan of satisfaction. “You going to tell me what’s wrong?”

  “I was afraid you had left.”

  “Well, I was going to leave early, but I did promise. Waiting until the Ides wouldn’t kill me. And you said you’d come over and be with me. You promised, too. So at the least, I knew you’d show up.” He shrugged.

  “That’s optimistic.”

  He shrugged again as he took a bite of pizza, mumbling, “You know me.”

  I nodded, and as the fresh memory hit me full force, I slammed on the breaks.

  In the vision, Marek pressed his nose to the bookstore window, staring at me like when I’d seen him that first day. Only it wasn’t me. It was her, the other Skye. Or maybe, it was a part of me, shopping for the perfect birthday gift for a bookworm of a man that I loved. It felt so damned real as he held up the tiny box outside the window and opened it. Sunlight glinted off the sparkle of an emerald. The breath caught in my throat so hard I had to close my palm over it in real life.

  “Damn, Skye. What’s wrong?”

  “The Ides…” I managed as I blinked. I now stared straight ahead along my headlights into the darkness. “You wouldn’t tell me what it meant to you.”

  “No,” he admitted. “But Skye, it really doesn’t—”

  “It’s your birthday. And you proposed to her on your birthday. You held up a ring outside the bookstore.”

  The emotions overwhelmed me—his, hers, ours. The relief of saying yes, the joy of chasing time with my bookworm who loved me.

  I turned to him then, his face shocked in the dim light, the pizza slice drooping inches from his gaping mouth. It was so comical, yet utterly Marek.

  “Happy early birthday, Marek.”

  The slice dropped from his hand onto the top of the box. He swallowed, his Adam’s apple bobbing as he fought for words, his face ashen in the dim light.

  “Don’t.” I held up a hand to keep him from speaking or touching me. “I have to drive. If you talk, I won’t be able.”

  He nodded in shock, the bob of his head a little firmer as he tucked the pizza away in the box.

  Skye

  I pulled into my driveway, and Marek followed me up the drive and the stairs to my apartment in silence. We hadn’t said a word since the vision had come to me.

  I hadn’t closed the front door or my apartment door when I left. I expected him to chastise me for it, but he just quietly shut my apartment door.

  I turned down my little hallway to my second bedroom and closed my eyes. He’d seen my dirty secret. He knew it existed. But I feared he’d hate me after this reveal, all these paintings and drawings of my dreams. They were proof I had lied about having memories. Or maybe he’d be thrilled. Or maybe what I had painted would mean nothing to him, and they’d just be…dreams.

  I reached for the key in my pocket, unlocked the door, and hesitated as I let him into my world.

  I stepped inside, and he drew in a long breath as he took in the piles of canvasses, the drawing pads, the box of paints, my empty easel. Even though he’d seen it before, he knew what this meant to me.

  I gestured to them without looking at him directly. “I have to know what these are. What these mean to you. Because I don’t know.” I closed my eyes. Maybe when I opened them, he’d be gone, just like the first time when I’d seen him loitering outside the bakery.

  When I opened them, he waited in front of me with anxious blue eyes, his breathing just as shallow as mine, fear and hope dancing across the planes of his face. He nodded and gestured for me to continue.

  I turned to the canvasses. The drawings. “You know I have…dreams. Ones that feel real to me. What I never shared is these dreams won’t let up until I paint or draw them. Painting them purges them so they leave me alone.” I swallowed hard. Could I do this?

  He stood as still as a statue behind me, his breathing ragged.

  “I’ve never shown anyone…until now.” I picked up a drawing pad, one of the first ones that held some fast sketches. If these didn’t mean anything to him, then there’d be no need to go on.

  My hands shook as I turned the page and showed him a drawing that had always confused me—an intricate study of a vine pattern that had been carved into an ornate post. It was different than the vine pattern in the windows and woodwork at the manor, but similar. I’d drawn it over and over as my chosen doodle on all my notebooks in school.

  He sucked in his breath as he stared, and his hands trembled as he reached for the pad. “You don’t know what this is?”

  “No.”

  “It’s the pattern carved into our bed at home. In the future,” he said hoarsely. “You—she—had seen it and wanted it. I had it commissioned to celebrate our fifth anniversary.”

  I nodded. I didn’t bother to correct the “she” and “our.” I believed him now. I was a fraction, a part of another woman, stuck in a time where I didn’t belong. The years of anxiety and stress that went along with the pictures eased a tiny bit, just enough so I could breathe and turn the page for him.

  “Oh.” He glanced up at me over the page, his blue eyes dark with emotion. “My tattoo.”

  “Yes. I figured that one out. I didn’t believe you then, though. I’d seen tattoos sort of like it in a shop in Boston.”

  He nodded. This time, he turned the page, and the tension in his shoulders eased. The next was the view through the window in the library reading nook.

  I tapped the drawing. “I now know where this is, but I don’t know when that image is from.” Turning, I rummaged through a few of the stacks of canvasses until I found the right one. “I also painted that version because I couldn’t capture the details. The bay looks different, and there isn’t a church now.” I set the canvas on the easel.

  He stepped forward to the easel, handing me the drawing pad. “No, you’re right. They tore that down after it caught fire in 1902. The cemetery is still there, next to the cannery.” He indicated the spot. “This concept would be from around 1889. I think we put in the formal garden then.”

  I nodded, a strange calmness blanketing me as I grabbed another canvas. This one made my heart race in fear, and I didn’t know why. I plopped the blue-hued painting on the easel.

  He took a step back from the painting as if I had smacked him in the chest. On the canvas, two dark hands reached for each other, one large and one smaller. Mine. His jaw gaped as he took in the brilliant colors, the two separated hands, and the bright lines that crisscrossed before disappearing into inky darkness.

  “You know what this is.” It wasn’t a question anymore.

  “Yes. This is the space between time. The lines are the paths of energy. Ours is this one.” His fingertips trailed across the electric-green line. “Our last jump… As we neared the end, it felt like I had lost your hand, and I think that’s when the fracture happened. It was the only time I felt panic during a jump. I thought I had imagined the hands.” He drew in a deep breath. “Obviously, it happened.”

  “Does this place have a name?” I’d painted it several times, always without the hands until this one dream happened after I’d first seen him.

 
; “No. We just call it the ‘space between.’ Some call it the ‘beautiful divide.’ It’s the most magical place I’ve ever been.” His face relaxed, his breathing calm as he drank in what I had created.

  He looked so tired, a faint darkness staining under his eyes. I wanted to touch him. The bond wanted that as well, tugging harder for me to accept him. And why wouldn’t I now? There was nothing to stop me except his acceptance.

  “I’m so sorry.”

  His gaze turned to me, the sadness and defeat bleeding through his expression, in the way he rolled his shoulders. “I’m afraid to ask why—if this apology is for what you did or what you’re about to do.”

  Oh, Marek. I’d hurt him so much.

  “For not choosing you.” I held my trembling hand back. The last time I had touched him willingly, I destroyed everything. The bond begged to join with his, and I swallowed as I met his dark, unreadable gaze. “All I wanted was to know the truth about my past, and you gave me that. It’s not your fault it wasn’t what I wanted to hear.”

  He sighed. “It’s not easy to accept this life. My parents didn’t want this for me. They wanted me to run their family business.”

  That surprised me. He didn’t talk much about his family, and this tidbit wasn’t in the book. He acted like a guy from a family with old money and older values. “What’s the family business?”

  “Textiles. They own factories outside what would be Boston in this time.” His thumbs tugged at his suspender straps as he shifted. “So.”

  “So.” I bit my lower lip. “Grace told me you’d still—” I still couldn’t say it, that he’d still love me. I swallowed and tried again. “She said when I got smart and crawled back to you, you’d accept me.”

  His brows raised in surprise. “Did she?”

  “Yes.”

  That lopsided smile I loved so much quirked at the corners of his lips. “You don’t crawl well.”

  “She also said I’m stubborn and pig-headed, so no, I guess not.” God, I was ruining everything, even my apology. I bit my lip again. “I was wrong not to choose you.”