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 have 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.