Timepiece (Hourglass 2)

“I don’t know.”

“I’m sick of not knowing. What he’s doing, what the future holds.” He paused, on the verge of telling me something he was afraid to share.

I waited him out.

“She was with you.”

“What?”

“When I didn’t make it back. When I died saving your dad. I traveled to the future to make sure she’d be okay. On that time line, before she broke the rules to come back and get me, Em was with you.” The honesty cost him. “With you with you.”

“She loves you.” I sat down. “That would never happen.”

“Even if I’m dead?” Michael’s laugh didn’t match the morbidity of the statement. “There’s no way to know. Travel used to have rules, and now everything is completely out of control.”

I listened. Which was exactly what he needed.

He started to pace. “The fact is that, even if time is rewound, you’ll still exist, and Em will still exist. Maybe in a different state of being. She could be … sick. She could be the broken Em that was the sole survivor of a terrible bus accident. She could be medicated out of her mind.”

“I wouldn’t know her if that was the case,” I argued. I didn’t want to think of Em like that.

“She’s in your father’s files. Maybe you’ll go find her.” He lifted his hands. “Or maybe you’ll take over for Liam, and you’ll see someone like your mom, and you’ll want to help her.”

“What exactly did you see?”

He stopped and turned toward the window. He could hide his face, but not his emotions. Not from me.

“Michael?”

“You were holding her. On your lap, in your arms. You were on the front porch of your house, sitting in one of your mother’s rocking chairs, and you were holding her.” He sounded so resigned, like he was willing to surrender without a fight. “You keep showing up, loving her when she needs it most.”

erceptiveness was unnerving. Almost as unnerving as the fact that she thought about me while falling asleep. In her bed.

“Mutual. Yes. I mean … it … it’s complicated.”

Intrigue. “So how would you feel right now … if … we touched?”

“I guess it would depend on how you felt about me. There are a lot of triggers with touching. Intensity, circumstances.” I lost track of what I was saying when she smoothed her hand across my chest and halfway down my stomach. Her touch made my toes want to curl all the way through the soles of my shoes, and not for purely physical reasons. “I don’t … I’m not sure.”

Smiling, she pulled her hand away and started walking again. No one had ever caught on to this part of my ability before. Except my mom. And that was a whole different thing. We shared happiness when we made cookies together.

Lily was not referencing cookies.

I realized she was ten feet away and I caught up.

“It would depend on how I felt,” she said. “If I felt good, you would, too?”

“Yup.”

“If I felt good physically, or emotionally?”

“Yup. Either. Both.”

“Am I making you uncomfortable?”

“Yup.” I didn’t know why, exactly. It’s not like I was shy. Or innocent.

“Knowing that things rebound back to you has to be addictive.” When we reached Murphy’s Law, she stopped at the stairs leading up to her apartment. “I’d be spending a lot of time making people feel good.”