Chapter 18 #2
The edges were slightly uneven where Charlie had trimmed it, the ink stark against the pale surface. At the top was written an address. Beneath it, careful directions. Beneath that, a sketch of narrow closes and crooked streets. A small X marking a door.
But not just a door. A portal. One that would transport her back to the twenty-first century.
I’ll take you whenever you’re ready, Charlie’s voice echoed in Ruby’s head.
And then Evan’s. I love ye. I want to make a life here with ye.
Ruby traced the line of the drawn street with her fingertip. She could picture it so clearly. Modern stonework. Traffic noise. The smell of coffee, of rain on tarmac.
Her world. Or what had been her world.
She leaned back in the chair and closed her eyes.
She thought back to the day her life had begun to unravel.
She saw Daniel’s face. His shocked expression as she’d confronted him with the truth.
The excuses that had come tumbling from his lips.
The apologies, the promises that it would never happen again.
She hadn’t believed a word of it.
Afterwards, she’d gone walking in the rain. She remembered that vividly. Her coat soaking through. Her mascara smudging. The sharp, hollow feeling inside her chest as though something had been scooped out.
How hadn’t she seen it coming? She was a risk manager, for God’s sake.
She calculated worst-case scenarios for a living.
She mitigated disaster. But she hadn’t seen her own disaster bearing down on her.
The time after that had blurred into something gray and suffocating.
That’s when desperation had begun to outweigh logic, when the idea of escape had led her to a ridiculous ritual she’d found in a shabby old book.
She hadn’t imagined what she would find in this time. She certainly hadn’t imagined Evan.
Her grip tightened around the teacup. Evan. The first time she’d seen him, she thought he had looked like trouble and she’d been right. She had been furious at him half the time during their journey—and fascinated by him the other half.
She remembered the flight from the thugs in that coastal village. The overland trek with the merchant’s caravan. The river crossing. The arguments. The stolen moments when something unspoken flickered between them.
She smiled faintly. It had been dangerous and uncomfortable and nothing like the life she had come from. And yet...
Her gaze dropped back to the parchment. She tried to picture going back.
To her apartment. The clean lines of her kitchen.
The quiet hum of the refrigerator. Her wardrobe full of clothes she didn’t care about.
Her office badge clipped to her coat. Meetings.
Reports. Polite small talk about weekend plans.
She searched for the woman who had lived that life. The woman who had built spreadsheets and contingency plans and told herself she was content.
But she couldn’t find her. That version of herself felt distant, like the remnants of a dream she couldn’t quite catch. Here, she’d had to become someone else. Someone braver. Someone willing to take risks that would once have terrified her.
Her throat tightened. I’m beginning to realize another life is possible. One where I stay. One where this becomes ours.
He hadn’t demanded an answer. He had simply offered his heart and left the choice in her hands. That trust alone had almost undone her. And with it came a realization she’d been trying to avoid for weeks.
She loved him.
The revelation didn’t arrive with fireworks, with an explosion that rocked her to the core.
No, it had settled into her bones gradually, becoming as much a part of her as the air that she breathed.
She knew it in the way she reached for him at night without thinking.
She knew it in the way she felt safer when he was near.
She knew it in the way her future only seemed vivid when it included him.
If she went back, she would lose him.
She looked at the parchment again. She had never meant to stay here forever.
She’d planned on visiting Charlie, getting herself sorted out, and then returning to the world she knew.
Going back would mean certainty. Familiarity.
Central heating and running water and antibiotics and all the other things that she took for granted.
It would mean safety. Predictability. Control. All the things that had once been so important to her.
Once.
A log shifted in the hearth, sending up a small spiral of sparks. She stood up slowly. Picked up the parchment. Moved toward the hearth. The heat licked at her hand as she knelt, holding the parchment just above the embers.
Evan’s face rose in her mind again—not the cocky smuggler, not the wary brother, but the man who had risked his life for her, who had faced his own past in order to bring her here.
The woman who had fled the twenty-first century wasn’t gone—but she had changed. She wasn’t running now. She was choosing.
She uncurled her fingers and dropped the parchment into the fire.
The corner blackened, curled inward, flame racing along inked lines and sketched streets.
The X marking the portal blistered and vanished.
Ruby watched until the last scrap collapsed into glowing ash. In the end, her choice had been easy.
Because a future without Evan Campbell was no choice at all.