“Yes. I’m—” Suddenly it feels like I have eight limbs, and they are all tangled around his. I carefully move out of his arms.
“Right.” He looks thoughtful as he watches me take a step back, toward a wooden table that sits against the wall. “I was hoping . . .”
When I don’t speak, he spins around, walking toward the kitchen that’s on the other side of the house. “When was the last time you ate?”
I stare at his back. I know he wants everything to be easy between us, but I’m not sure what I want. “The Bentleys gave me some cookies,” I say quietly.
He looks at me over his shoulder, his lips curved into a smile. “Let me feed you.”
I sink down into one of the wooden chairs at the table as he moves around the tiny kitchen. It’s just a long counter that’s built into the wall with a small gas camping stove. There’s no running water, I realize. No electricity, no plumbing.
I glance around the rest of the space. The walls, ceiling, and floor are all made of the same untreated, gray wood. There’s a bed in the corner with a woolen blanket thrown over it, and the only other pieces of furniture are the small table and two chairs. “Is this your house?”
He nods and rummages around the counter until he finds a butter knife. There’s a parcel in brown paper tucked up under his arm.
“How do you have a house? How long have you been here?”
“Six months.” He walks back over to the table and drops the items he’s carrying.
“Six months,” I repeat, my voice flat. “You’ve been waiting here for six months.”
“Yes.”
“For me?”
“Yes.”
Wes opens the brown paper and pulls out a loaf of dark bread. “Harriet made the bread and the jam. She keeps sending food over, worried my wife isn’t here to take care of me.”
I think of that moment in Mary’s bedroom, when I told her I was eloping with Wes. “Your wife.”
He sits down in the chair next to me, avoiding my eyes. “I told them we got married and you followed me overseas for a few months, and then went to Boston to study journalism.”
“And now you have a house.”
“It’s not much, but it works.”
I lean forward, resting my elbows on the table. The wood scratches at my skin. “What happened in the woods, Wes? How did you get here?”
He cuts off a chunk of bread and spreads pink jam on it, then holds it out to me. He doesn’t answer until I bite into it. “I watched you get into that truck and the FBI swarmed. They thought I would be an easy capture, and they only had a couple of men on me. They didn’t even use handcuffs, just those plastic ties. I still had the knife that . . .” He trails off.
“That Twenty-two used on me,” I say slowly.
He nods without looking at me, and I know we’re both thinking of being by the stream and him taking her side.
“I kept picturing your face, Lydia.”
His words pull me back and our eyes meet. “I could still see you lit up by the gunfire, so scared and pale. I don’t know where the strength came from, but one minute I was standing there in handcuffs, waiting for an ambulance, and the next all the soldiers were on the ground bleeding.”
It was me, not Twenty-two, who made him feel like that. Even though he lied about her, I know he is telling me the truth now.
“I stole a car, and used the grid to get to New York,” he says. “I made it to the park just in time to see you leave with Tag. I followed you, saw the car disappear, and realized they had some kind of hideout. It took me a few hours to break into it, but I did.”
“You were the one who shouted my name.” The bread is dry in my mouth, and I force myself to swallow. Wes watches me carefully.
“It was a shock, seeing Tag and LJ again. They told me where they sent you, though they wouldn’t say why. I demanded access to the TM. LJ didn’t want to let me use it, but Tag made him, in the end. They said they’d send me to the exact time they sent you. But the TM must have screwed up. I was early and you weren’t here yet.”
I drop the bread back onto the table. “What do you mean you were early? I was late.”
Wes narrows his eyes. “What date did they send you to?”
“May fourth, nineteen forty-three. I’m two years late.”
His jaw becomes more pronounced as he clenches his teeth together. “They told me they sent you to May fourth, nineteen forty-six.”
“Why would they lie?”
He shrugs. It’s not a gesture I’ve seen Wes make very often.
“Maybe he didn’t want you to interfere with our plan,” I say.
“What plan?”
I hesitate, pushing crumbs off the table with one finger. Wes reaches over and touches my hand. “I know there’s a lot of mistrust between us,” he says. “And I know that’s my fault. But you can trust me. Believe that.”
“I want to.”
“Just try.” He lets go of me and sits back in his chair. “I was able to fight back like that against the FBI because I love you. I followed you here because I love you. You’re the only reason I’m still alive.”
“Wes . . .”
“Trust me, Lydia.”
I take a deep breath, and then I tell him what happened in New York. Meeting the future me, Colonel Walker, and the choice I made.
“She told me I was supposed to become Director Bentley. I would run the Project one day, change it. That was my destiny all along.” The words are hard to say, and I stop, looking down at the table. I can’t bear to tell him the rest—like what his fate would have been in the other time line.
“Lydia.” He shakes his head. “I just . . . how is this possible?”
“I don’t know. General Walker kept talking about
