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I won’t argue.
I don’t want to leave her. Not ever, but especially not now when our connection is so fresh.
“Your nightgown.” I glance around for her discarded clothing because I’m certainly not letting her go out nude either.
Grabbing the bloody bedsheet, she wraps it around herself.
Good enough.
The suction is getting stronger now, and I hold onto the short wooden post at the end of the bedframe to keep myself in place. Hannah comes over to grip my arm as if she can hold me back, but her efforts are futile. Soon, we’ll be flung into the abyss, and the first place—or time—I think of is where we’ll end up.
“Where will we go?” she asks.
I get an idea.
Probably a dumb one.
This burst of power might be the only opportunity I’ll ever have to give Hannah what she’s asked for over and over again—the one thing she won’t ever be a hundred percent herself without.
Closure. A final goodbye with her parents. One last look at her home.
“If I could take you to see your parents, would you be willing to risk that we might not be able to get back?” I ask the question so fast, all the words run together.
Hannah’s eyes widen with hope. “Wait. What? You’re taking me home? You can do that?”
Glancing behind me, I look at the depth and speed of the vortex. This one’s got some kick to it, and I have no doubts that it will allow me to travel through time.
At least once.
“I’m positive I can get us there, but there’s a chance I won’t be able to bring us back. I just don’t know. It would be a huge gamble, but you must decide fast.”
Squealing with joy, she flings her arms around my torso and beams up at me like I put the suns in the sky. “I trust you. Let’s do it.”
I let go of the bedframe.
Within a second, we’re falling. Tumbling. Twirling.
I think of the farm in the weeks before I abducted her, when she was oblivious to my existence and her future. I picture the sunshine, the meadow, and the cheerful sound of birds chirping in the morning.
After several long moments of being tossed this way and that, the vortex spits us out and I turn my body so I’m the one getting the impact. The wind is temporarily knocked from me when my back lands on the grass. Hannah’s weight presses down on me, but she’s unharmed, and that’s all that matters.
It takes a second for her to clear her head of the disorientation, but once she does, she gasps and looks around at the place she knows so well.
“Ellister.” She laughs, ecstatic. “You did it. You really did it. What’s the exact date?”
“Not sure. It’s June, about a month before I took you.”
She sits up, still straddling me, and she smooths her hair. “So there’s another me running around. I’ll need to be careful. If I run into myself, we’ll be in big trouble.”
She’s right. More than one type of risk is involved with this trip. Aside from the fact that we might have trouble returning to the past, Hannah must not come into contact with the other version of herself. I can’t even begin to speculate what consequences that interaction would have.
“How do you know so much about time travel?” I ask.
“Um,Back to the Future.” Throwing her hand out, she says it like it’s common knowledge.
“Yes, I suppose we are… back… to the future.”
She giggles. “It’s a movie, Ellister.”
