It was that same desperate feeling that propelled her forward now. She reached for the right words, but came up with nothing but air. She might have understood who he was as a person, but she hadn’t experienced the life that had made him that way.
There was something about this that he wasn’t telling her. Whatever his secret was, it was like a chasm between them, preventing her from reaching him. Anything she tried—her words, her glances, her touch—spilled into it before it could even get close to his heart.
He had worked his breath into short, hard measures when she threaded her arms beneath his, wrapping them around his center. For the length of a heartbeat, he let her. And in the next, he was pushing her away.
“Don’t”—he swallowed roughly—“do not act as though this is more than it is—”
Etta reached for him and pulled him down to her level. He struggled for the excuse he needed to do it again, even as his hands tightened around her shoulders and held her in place. When she kissed him, there was nothing gentle about it. No hesitation. Nicholas stood rigidly, his body hard against hers.
But just when she was sure she had badly fumbled this, he moved with a harsh sound, his hands going first to her loose hair, then to the small bow holding the neck of her blouse together. He swallowed her gasp, lips wild and hungry as they moved from the corner of her mouth to her jaw, her throat. Blood beat against her skin, relentless, and she was being walked backward before she realized it. Etta was dizzy with the feel of him under her hands, grateful she could lean against something just as her legs went soft.
She couldn’t hear what he was whispering into her skin, and she wondered if he felt as drunk as she did, sinking too fast to reach for the life preserver.
Etta shifted, angling toward the bed itself; she might as well have been drawing him into a lit fireplace. He pulled back so suddenly, she fell back onto the stuffed mattress. Nicholas spun on his heel, keeping his back to her as he strode to the other side of the room, rubbing his face, his hair, trying to catch his own breath.
“Don’t pretend like it isn’t real!” she managed to get out. “Don’t you dare be a coward about this!”
“Coward!” Nicholas barely managed to keep from howling as he crossed back toward her on unsteady legs. “Coward? You play at things you don’t understand—”
“I would understand,” she said, “if you’d trust me enough to explain them to me. I want to be with you—it’s as simple as that. And I think you want to be with me too, but there’s something you’re not telling me. It makes me feel foolish every time. Just tell me—if I have it all wrong, then tell me now.”
She must have caught him off guard, because he took a moment to collect his thoughts. “What is there to explain? You will go home. I will go home. And that will be the end of it. Think about this, Etta. You scarcely know me—”
“I know you,” she interrupted. “I know you, Nicholas Carter. And I know it doesn’t have to be that way.”
“And I know you’ve never planned to give Ironwood the astrolabe,” he said sharply. “That you’ve got it in your head you can escape him and his reach.”
She felt a peculiar, hopeless kind of relief to have it out in the open. “I can get it, and I can save my mother—”
“And myself? You expect me to simply let you go, knowing you’ll be in grave danger?” he demanded, stooping to look her directly in the eye. Finally, the wall was down. Nicholas looked the way she felt—exhausted, fraught. “You were simply going to leave me behind again, weren’t you, without so much as a word?”
“No!” she said. “No! I’ve been trying to figure out another option for us—I don’t want you to have to give up the life you have.”
“What is this ‘other option’? You return with me? Even if we could hide from the old man’s wrath…to what end? We’d still be in hiding. Even if you could stand the months I’m away at sea, there are laws—enforceable laws, Etta, with years of prison as a sentence—preventing any such union. Not just in America, but in the rest of the world. I could live with the shame of being a criminal, but I would never ask this of you. And I would not risk your life, knowing that others may enforce their own prejudices outside of the law.”
There was her answer.
She hadn’t realized until that moment that she could feel any more foolish or naïve than she already did.
She didn’t know anything. She really didn’t.
“Etta…” he began. “That came out harsher than I meant it to be. I can see it in your face that you truly didn’t know—but it’s all I’ve ever known. I’ve had to live by it my whole life. If there’s a way around it, I want to hear what you think it is. Can you not see it? Can you not feel how badly I want you? I’m a selfish bastard, I’m worse than you’ll ever know, but I’ll answer to God or anyone else who tries to stand in our way so long as I know you’re safe. Tell me how to keep this—tell me the path forward. I beg you.”
She felt the tears thick in her throat, warm on her face. “You could come with me. I won’t lie to you and say my time is perfect, or that the country doesn’t get worse before it gets better, but those laws are gone.”
He seemed to consider this, rubbing his jaw. “What would I do there? How would I support myself? The one thing that I know, that I’ve worked for, would be unrecognizable. And is there a way to prove or earn citizenship?”
God—how would he? No Social Security number, no birth certificate…no passport. How had Mom done it? She could help him establish an identity, couldn’t she?
“Or would you, your mother, and I all have to keep traveling, struggling to stay one step ahead of the old man?”
“I’m not dismissing those questions, because they’re real and I’m not totally sure how to get around them,” she said, “but I’m willing to try. My mom did it. Travelers have clearly figured out some system. I feel like all you’re willing to see are the problems, and none of the benefits—medicine, for one thing. Education. You could attend school, choose a job for yourself.” She took a breath. “I’m not trying to play down how terrifying it would be to start over in a new era—”
“I’m not frightened,” he interrupted, only to soften his voice as he continued. “How could I be, knowing I had you there? I know you think I’m being obstinate.…I keep asking myself, what sort of joke is this that we’ve found one another, but all the while there’s no true way forward? There’s something unnatural in what we can do as travelers, and maybe this is a punishment for it.”
“Don’t say that,” she begged. “It’s complicated, I know, but it’s not impossible.”
“But what if it doesn’t work? What if we can’t sort everything out in your time? Your era is one small sliver of time compared to all eternity—there is only one small place you and I can be safe together. But even so, how long would it be before missing home and our loved ones became unbearable to one of us? It all ends the same way, with us breaking apart. Isn’t it better to have it done with now?”
“No,” she said stubbornly. “We could find a place. We could make our own.”