“Is being cruel fun for you?”
Shame swarmed around him. “I’m sorry.”
She slid her hand on to the table again. “Please, at least tell me why you were sleeping in the park. Fifteen years ago, you told me you had a job on Wall Street. Did you lose everything in some hedge fund mess?”
He hadn’t been to that job in forty-two years. What could he possibly tell her?
Transfixed by the long slender fingers of her hand, he wondered how skin-on-skin contact would feel. Her hand looked so soft and it’d been so long since he’d touched a woman, touched anyone. He craved the sensation, yet knew it would prove a mistake. “There is no way to explain my life.”
“How bad can it be?” Her hand reached an inch further towards him. “Are you on the lam? A spy? A terrorist? In a witness protection programme, or something?”
“All those options sound terrific.”
“I know.” She grinned. “You’re Osama Bin Laden.”
“Who?”
“OK, OK. I give up.” She raised her hands. “You’ll tell me when you’re ready.”
The sun had come around to stream through the window and her hair, her skin, shone. Lord, she was beautiful. And was still as kind-hearted and generous and funny as she’d been as a kid. If only he could stay here, in this time. But it wasn’t possible and seeing her today had made his life worse.
Even after this short time with Kara, he knew he’d forever grieve losing the opportunity to know her, grieve what might have been, grieve what could never be. Spending time with this woman was salt on his open wound of a life.
Darkness attacked from every direction, forced the sunlight from his eyes and filled every thought in his head, every cell in his body. He rested his elbows on the table and grabbed his head in his hands. “When will this end? I need to end it.”
She leaned across the table and her warm palms landed over his hands. The contact was better than he’d imagined, more fabulous, more painful, and a buzz rushed through her body into his, invading his soul to push back the dark.
With a finger under his chin, she coaxed his glance back to hers. “You don’t mean ending your life … You wouldn’t …”
“If only I could.”
Kara shifted around the booth to sit next to Jake, her heart nearly bleeding. “No. You don’t mean that.” She’d been the suicidal one when they’d first met — on a quick road to an OD or getting murdered. If he were serious about wanting to end his life, she’d do everything in her power to get him the help he needed. Finally, she could pay back the kindness he’d shown her.
He gave his head a sharp shake and turned towards her. “I didn’t mean it like that. I’m an idiot. No social graces.” He cocked one side of his mouth in a faux display of levity, but his hands gripped the table’s edge like he thought the entire booth might make a run for it.
After she peeled one of them off, their fingers entwined, but she couldn’t say which one of them had initiated the gesture. Her body flushed.
“Kara,” he said, his voice low and deep. “You’ve already helped me, saved my life more than you could possibly know. Your necklace — it’s the only thing I’ve ever held on to.”
Her belly squeezed and flipped. He’d kept her childish gift, proving that day had meant something to him, too. The heat from his leg next to hers was too much to resist and when she shifted to increase the contact, he drew a husky breath and their bodies, their faces, inched closer together.
The man who’d starred in her hormone-riddled teenaged dreams, whom she’d fantasized about meeting again, was inches away. Physically, he was exactly as he’d been back then — hadn’t aged a day — and even though fifteen years had hardened his outlook, she could sense the man she’d known hidden under the jerk he was cloaked in this morning.
It was crazy she hadn’t recognized him the instant he’d raised his head from that bench. This man was the reason none of her relationships had lasted. He was the man she’d wanted the others to be.
With each breath, his hard biceps pressed against her breast, and her shallow breaths hitched, as if the air around them had thickened. All she’d have to do was lean forwards and their lips would join. The kiss she’d wanted for fifteen years would turn from fantasy to reality.
He pulled back.
She stifled a gasp.
“This is wrong,” he said as if trying to convince himself. “We ’ll never see each other again. It’s not possible.”
Chest squeezing, she inched towards him. “Nothing’s impossible.”
“For me, most things are impossible.”
“Why? Please. Tell me what I can do to help you.”
Still leaning away from her, he chewed on his lip so hard she worried he might draw blood.
“George,” he finally said. “You can help me find my friend, George.”
Two hours later, Kara walked down the street, her mind in a fog. Although their bodies were a few feet apart, she felt Jake’s heat, his energy, at her side, proving he was real and here — not a dream.
Everything he’d told her was true.
Or at least based on what she’d seen and heard, she could think of no better explanation. Could find no way to refute the evidence Jake’s friend George, a retired judge no less, had set before her: photos of the two men together, in the late fifties and early sixties, and then in multiple years over the past four decades. In each progressive photo, George, now in his seventies, had aged, while Jake remained the same — exactly the same. It was all a little insane.
His hand brushed down her arm and she jumped.
“Are you OK?” The concern in his eyes was palpable and so much better than the anger and indifference that had filled them before.
She reached for his hand and he took it, anchoring her in reality. “It’s a lot to absorb, that’s all.” They stopped at a kerb to wait for a light and her mind continued to swim through murky waters, struggling to find the surface.
George claimed to have seen Jake on fourteen separate April 17ths between 1967 and now, but had experienced his visits in a different order than Jake. Made an odd sort of sense. But a tab of acid didn’t explain how this had started.
“What else happened in 1967?”
He ran a hand over his chin stubble. “That was forty-two years ago.”
“Was it?” She stopped. “Have forty-two years passed for you? And every day of them April 17ths?’’ The idea made her dizzy.
His hand moved to her waist and he pulled her from a bicycle courier’s path. He leaned against a store window. “I don’t think so, but I don’t experience time the same way any more. I’d guess I’ve lived through a few thousand days since this started. Many days I’m alone in the forest. Some days there are Indian villages. A few times everyone I’ve come across speaks Dutch. I mostly try to survive.”
“It must be horrible.” Her heart pinched, conscious of every twitch of the hand, still at her waist. She leaned forwards.
He shook his head, dropped his hand and pushed off the window away from her. She shivered.
“You must be busy.” His voice was colder than ice. “I don’t want to keep you.”
She reached for his arm. “Keep me from what? I already called in sick for tonight while you were talking to George.”
He looked down. “Kara, there’s no point to this.”
She reached up to touch his face but he pulled his head back and she winced. “You’re such an asshole. Why go to the trouble to make me believe what’s happening to you, if an hour later, it’s buh-bye?”
“You’re right.” He ran a hand through his hair. “I’m an asshole. I shouldn’t have taken you to see George. I shouldn’t have had breakfast with you. I shouldn’t have waited outside the police station. I am a total shit.”