Page 23 of A Touch for All Time (For All Time #3)

A ria stood by the counter in the apartment she grew up in. The coffee she waited for began to perk. She looked at the people sitting at the kitchen table laughing together and thought she could die right now and be happy. Her parents were restored and delightfully ordinary. Her marquess sat among them, transformed into a friendly, easy-going, cheerful man. Her brother had his legs back! She wanted to throw her head back and laugh and cry.

Gray’s charm worked on everyone in the family, that is, after he refused to get into the building elevator until he’d climbed eight flights of stairs and realized he couldn’t make the other nine. Water—hot or cold—from the faucet kept him perplexed for a quarter of an hour. The refrigerator, lights, and everything else they didn’t have in the eighteenth century captured his attention. By the time they sat down for dinner, he gave all his attention to her parents and laughter resounded throughout the night.

Now, he looked up and caught Aria’s eye. The amused smile he was aiming at her mother changed into something that misted his eyes and then crinkled his nose until one eye closed, as if he was winking.

Aria’s heart melted over her ribs.

“What puts such a smile on your beautiful face?” he asked, leaving the table to go to her.

Gray’s deep, husky voice resonated through her and made her sigh dreamily when she looked at him.

“You,” she answered. “You seem to be a hit with my parents,” she told him while he took her hand in his.

“A hit?” he asked with a furrow in his brow.

“They like you,” she explained, loving him for worrying over it.

“Oh.” His smile returned as he lifted her hand to his lips. “I like them too. Do you think they might like to go back with us?”

Her heart pounded like a drum, making her sick and queasy. He wanted to go back.

“Do you want to go back?” she asked in a whisper-soft voice.

His smile remained intact, but Aria had admired it too many times to know when it wasn’t genuine.

She spotted her mother approaching and smiled along with him.

“Let me get the coffee, dear,” her mother offered. “Go sit with Gray.”

“No, Mom, you go sit,” Aria insisted. “Gray will help me.”

She waited until her mother returned to the table. Rather than try to question Gray about going back and risk one of them brooding for the rest of the night, she’d just have to make certain he didn’t want to go back. She would do that by showing him how much the world had to offer in the twenty-first century. She’d start tomorrow, though. Even though it had been just two weeks since she’d seen her family, it felt as though a lifetime had passed. She didn’t want to be away from them again so soon.

“What would you say is your favorite thing about our country, so far?” asked Aria’s father.

Aria smiled at him for the millionth time since her poor eyes had found him walking toward her earlier. Her father wasn’t a slowly dying paraplegic. He looked healthy, twenty years younger. She felt her eyes begin to burn and looked at her hands so she wouldn’t start crying and they all thought she was crazy.

Then she heard Gray’s reply, and she quickly swiped her cheek.

“The intimacy of your meals,” Gray said, without thinking about it long—as if he’d already contemplated his reply. “Here, in this small homey room, at this small table, surrounded by people you love and eating food your wife cooked with her own hands, is my favorite thing. It’s what I’ve always wanted.”

“Were you raised away from your parents?” Aria’s mother asked him in a soft voice.

“Yes,” he told her. “I lost my mother as a young boy. My father soon remarried a woman who saw me as nothing but an obstacle for her own son.”

“Well,” Aria’s mother declared, “As long as you are a part of Aria’s life, we’ll always do our best to make you feel like a treasured part of our family.”

Surely, Aria thought smiling at her mother and then at Gray, he would choose this life over his previous one.

She didn’t have a chance to speak to him in private again after that. Her mother assigned him to sleep on the sofa, then ushered Aria into her bedroom.

After counting sheep…and foxes and ravens, she tossed and turned for another hour.

Finally, and as quietly as she could, she slipped out of bed and tiptoed to her door. She really had no idea why she left her room, except that she couldn’t sleep thinking about Gray with nothing to separate them but a thin door.

She wouldn’t climb onto the couch with him. She wouldn’t do anything disrespectful in her parents’ house. She just wanted to see him, maybe talk to him. She liked talking with him. His voice calmed her, his words encouraged her, his heart revealed itself to her.

When she entered the living room, he sat up on her mother’s sofa and whispered her name in the dim light.

“I couldn’t sleep,” she said, going to him.

“I couldn’t sleep either,” he told her, then pulled her closer when she sat next to him.

“Why couldn’t you sleep?” she asked first.

He was quiet for a moment, and she thought she heard his slow heartbeat in the silence. Then the horn of a car blared from outside and his arm came around her tighter.

“Thoughts of you kept me awake,” he admitted. “I finally found you. I don’t want to spend the rest of my days without you.”

She closed her eyes, wanting to tell him that she didn’t want to be apart from him either.

“I haven’t felt like Dartmouth was home since I can remember.”

She believed him, but still, she heard a wistful longing in his voice. Was the longing for the time before his mother left? Or for something he wished he’d received from his father?

“Does that mean you’ll stay here in the twenty-first century?” she asked him.

Instead of answering her right away, he leaned his temple on her head and breathed, in and out. Once, twice, three times…

“I know that after living amongst such fantastic wonders like little devices that play the most beautiful music upon request—” he laughed softly, then muttered almost too low for her to hear, despite her closeness—“I think I would miss that the most.”

Her heart stopped. She stopped hearing what else he was saying and let his previous statement reign supreme. I think I would miss that the most. He would miss her Echo the most because he wouldn’t be here.

She felt sick. She might faint. He hadn’t answered her when she asked him if he would stay here. He was going to return. He was going to ask her to go with him. Words echoed between her ears, resounding like drums.

I’ll never forget this. Her words at first, speaking of her father when she saw him walking. He was given a death sentence and now he’s alive and well.

And his tender reply. It sounds a bit how life left me until I met you.

And then her thoughts ended as she finally fell asleep sitting up in his arms.

*

“What did you say this behemoth was called?” Gray asked her with wonder giving music to his voice.

“A train.”

“And what powers it?’

“Electricity, I think,” Aria told him, smiling at his face as he stared, astounded, out the window.

The train came to the next stop at Ocean Parkway and Aria grasped Gray’s wrist and they hurried off.

They walked toward Coney Island though Aria thought they might never get there with the number of times Gray stopped to “talk” to leashed dogs on the way. Thankfully, they all told Gray they were happy and loved their humans. A few, like a terrier here and a setter there would rather be hunting rats or staring down birds…namely pigeons.

Aria thought, for the first time since knowing Gray, that it might be a terrible burden to be able to communicate with animals. Going to animal shelters would be so difficult to leave without adopting everything in them. What would zoos be like? Pet shops? She shivered thinking of it.

Today, they would forget the past and have fun. And what was more fun than an amusement park?

The Cyclone roller coaster in the Coney Island Amusement Park to be exact?

After a quick stop at an ATM, Aria paid for the tickets for the Cyclone and hurried to get them seats in the lead car. The ride started with all its rickety crackling, metal scraping against metal as the cars rolled across the track. One second into the first incline, a woman began to scream and hardly stopped after that. Not Gray. His hands were lifted high above his head and his laughter gave music to the air.

Aria knew he would enjoy the daring rides. She hoped he was getting a taste of how fast this life was. That night she took him to see a movie. He seemed happy enough, especially when her father gave them his blessing the next night at dinner.

By the time the weekend was over, they had been on the Circle Line around the Hudson and on a helicopter ride at the pier, and every night, no matter how tired they were, they visited the school and danced together. But Aria still couldn’t jump. Though she’d done it leaving Dartmouth and Gray had caught her, she wasn’t ready yet. Gray didn’t push.

On those nights when they danced at the school, Mrs. B. didn’t show up. But on the third night, Harper did.

“Grandmother was right,” she said to Gray when she opened the door and stepped into the studio from the hallway. “How did you do it? How did you travel on your own?”

He shrugged a shoulder. “Ask Thoren Ashmore.”

“But you did it on your first try,” Harper continued. “And you didn’t lose Miss Darling.”

Aria coiled her arm through his in an almost instinctive gesture. She never wanted to let him go. “He also brought us to twenty-twenty-two, before—”

“We know. That’s why it took our grandmother a little longer to find you,” she told them, then turned back to Gray. “She’s the only one who can locate others, and she can only find certain people. You’re one of them.”

Because Aria was holding onto him, she felt him go as taut of an overwound guitar string.

“Why are you doing her bidding, Harper?” he asked with a note of sadness tainting his voice. “Why did she send you, without bothering to come herself?”

“I wanted to come,” the woman who’d raised him confessed. “I begged her to let me see you again, and to let me be the one who tells you.”

“Tell me what? Tell me what, Harper?” he demanded.

She slipped her gaze to Aria. “He’s fine. Grandmother is watching over him.”

“Who?” Gray asked her.

“Connall Darling,” Harper told him. “He’s safe! I swear it!” she insisted when Aria swooned like one about to faint.

“You both didn’t know he saw his sister and ran through the rift?”

“He…ran,” Aria echoed, closing her teary eyes. “Yes, that’s exactly what he would do.”

“Remember, Aria,” Harper said. “It’s two years before the accident.”

Aria nodded, her heart threatening to burst with joy for Conn and fear for his life. “We have to bring him back to 2022, Gray!”

“No, Gray you can’t go back,” Harper advised. “Grandmother will send Mr. Darling back. With all the time jumping, the Blagdens are being watched. We will all be separated by time if Grandmother is caught. Please, trust her to protect Mr. Darling until it’s safe to send him back.”

“How is she going to protect my brother?” Aria demanded, interrupting the topic.

“Aria,” Harper said earnestly. “Grandmother loves your brother. She’s known him since he was a little boy. I’d even venture to say there are things she knows about him that you aren’t aware of.”

“Impossible, I know—”

“In 2024, he never registered for his classes for next semester.”

Aria blinked and her eyes filled with tears. “What?”

“He had no intention of letting you sweat and slave to pay for his courses. He’d gotten a minimum paying online job and was paying for his night courses.”

Aria swiped her cheeks and shook her head. “That doesn’t mean he can handle it back there.”

“He is what he once was, Aria. He will handle it, just as you did.” Harper said, smiling with Aria and wiping her tears. Then she turned to Gray. “You can’t go back. Don’t go back. Even if Timothy is given your title and plans to rule over the people. Don’t go back, no matter what happens.”

“What about Will?” Aria asked. “I think he was shot by Mr. Cavendish—” She stopped speaking when Harper looked down.

“As far as I know, the young Mr. Gable didn’t make it.” Harper still didn’t look up at either of them. “He was shot by Mr. Cavendish, who stumbled into the ballroom and saw William trying to help you. Harry Gable also perished when his brother collapsed to the floor before his eyes. Distraught, he leaped for Mr. Cavendish and reached him an instant before his sister did. He was struck down by your father’s men. Sarah was almost killed as well. Mr. Darling saved her.”

“My brother?” Aria cried and tugged on Gray’s sleeve. “I’m thankful he saved Sarah, but they’ll be after Conn now!”

“Grandmother won’t let anyone harm him,” Harper did her best to reassure her again.

She turned her attention back to Gray. “Listen to me, Grayson. Your father saw the manner in which you left. When you disappeared into thin air, the Cavendishes jumped on the opportunity to call you a warlock. They begged your father not to allow you to return and to imprison you if you do. They would no doubt request the high council to burn you at the stake.” At this, Harper paused to wipe her eyes.

Aria didn’t really know what she expected Gray to say. Maybe, ‘That’s okay, Harper. I’m not going back.’ Something of that nature. But he remained silent, breaking Aria’s heart with each second that passed.

Harper looked at her. The older woman’s teary eyes made Aria want to cry with her. But she didn’t. Why would she when she wouldn’t let him go back? His enemies wanted to set him on fire and watch him burn! The more she thought about it, the more sickened she became. How could men be so heartless? She didn’t blame Gray’s mother for dragging the men who tried to burn her into the chaotic future.

“I plan on forgetting the past,” Gray finally said.

Aria slipped her hands down his forearm and entwined her fingers with his.

He looked down at her and smiled. She tried to remember a time when he didn’t smile upon seeing her. A fire came to life in her belly, warming her insides.

“I’m glad to hear that, Grayson. Of course, you’re already wealthy here. Grandmother made sure to secure your inheritance and invest it.” She pulled a thick envelope out of her oversized purse and handed it to Gray. “You own a safe deposit box at the bank. I noted the name of the bank on the documents inside the envelope. The key is inside with the rest of what you need, I.D. and all that. Miss Darling will help you go through all of it. You have different types of accounts with savings. There’s a debit card in the envelope, as well as three credit cards. Money is at your disposal. You don’t need to go back.

“Aria,” Harper finally gave Aria her full attention. “Thank you for whatever you’ve done to his heart. I always feared he would walk straight into the flames. Before I knew about my sister, I knew that if his enemies found out that he could communicate with animals, they’d try to accuse him of practicing magic. I was glad he’d forgotten for so long.”

She looked at him with shame in her loving gaze. But Aria didn’t think Gray saw. His gaze was fixed on somewhere she couldn’t see.

“Grayson?” Harper’s voice broke through and pulled him back from wherever he was. “I’m so sorry I didn’t do better.”

His lips slanted upward. “You did better than my own mother. Better than Grandmother. You stayed by my side when everyone else left. You sheltered me in the forest and played your violin for me while I disobeyed my father and danced. There’s no way to repay you for that.”

She smiled and nodded, wiping her cheeks. Watching, Aria wiped hers, as well. Harper deserved all the love and respect that any good mother deserved. “Repay me by never going back.”

He paused and then nodded.