Chapter 23
Logan
The crash of pins echoes through the bowling alley like thunder, and I can’t shake the feeling that each strike is counting down to something we can’t stop.
I sit at the picnic table long after Skyla takes off, watching families and teenagers bowl like the world isn’t falling apart. They have no idea that the person sitting at this very table just discovered they’re a prisoner in their own past.
I wish I could get in touch with Candace, but that’s not how she operates.
Candace contacts you, not the other way around.
She’s somewhere in the heavenlies doing whatever a Caelestis does when they’re not meddling in their daughter’s life.
Probably chewing out Demetri for the hell of it, completely unaware that her little anchor experiment has turned into a full-scale disaster.
“Everything okay, boss?”
I look up to find Brielle hovering nearby with an easy grin, a dish towel slung over her shoulder and nacho cheese somehow splattered on her shirt. She’s probably wondering why I’m sitting here alone, looking like I just watched my future get canceled. The irony isn’t lost on me.
“Yeah, just thinking through some stuff,” I lie. Standard teenage problems—homework, girls, accidentally breaking the space-time continuum. “How are we doing with those birthday parties?”
“Pretty good. Got all three set up and ready to go, and I finished restocking the nacho station.” Brielle glances toward the arcade where Drake’s motorcycle gang is still holding court.
“Speaking of which, I was thinking maybe I could take my break when Razor leaves so I can accidentally on purpose bump into him in the parking lot.”
“Bree, that’s called stalking.”
“That’s called romance,” she protests. “Besides, what’s the worst that could happen?”
“You could end up on a missing persons poster.”
“Or I could end up on the back of his motorcycle, riding into the sunset toward my destiny.” She sighs dreamily. “Sometimes you have to take risks for love, Logan. When is the last time you did something spontaneous for someone you cared about?”
Oh, I don’t know, I just recently agreed to an anchor ceremony that turned into a prison sentence. Romance at its finest.
I shake my head at her. “Keep an eye on the front desk, will you? And maybe hold off on the parking lot ambush until we close.”
“Fine,” she huffs. “Your loss. But when Razor and I have matching leather jackets and coordinating felonies, you’ll wish you’d been more supportive.” She grins. “I’m kidding about the felonies. Mostly.”
The felonies Bree is yet to commit are rather familiar to me, unlike that razor blade waiting to saw into her existence.
She bounces back toward the kitchen, and I’m alone again with the sounds of pins crashing and teenagers celebrating their mediocre bowling skills.
I wish I could reach Candace. I need to. She got us into this mess—she should be the one to get us out. But celestial beings only show up when they want something, never when you’re drowning in the disaster they created.
The thing that’s eating at me isn’t just being stuck here. It’s what Gage said about expanding his horizons, about dating Chloe. In our original timeline, that never happened. Gage pined, he brooded, he waited—but he never went nuclear and chose Chloe Bishop as his psychotic rebound.
Which means we’re not just changing little things.
We’re changing fundamental pieces of who people are.
We’re not time travelers anymore—we’re personality assassins.
Every conversation we have murders who someone was supposed to be.
But sure, let’s keep trusting the process.
The process that’s currently turning everyone we love into their own evil twins.
Drake’s leather-daddy transformation, Brielle’s sudden fetish for felons, Gage’s kamikaze dive into dating Chloe—it’s all us.
We’re like some kind of temporal infection, spreading our damage with every word we say.
And if we can’t get home soon, these ripples are going to turn into a tsunami that drowns the future we’re supposedly protecting.
I shake my head. I know the tenets of light driving say otherwise.
But I don’t see any of this righting itself anytime soon.
My phone buzzes with a text from Skyla.
Skyla: Any luck reaching my mother?
Me: Straight to proverbial voicemail. You?
Skyla: Same. Logan, what if we can’t get back? What if we’re stuck here and we just have to watch everything fall apart forever?
I stare at the message, trying to come up with something reassuring to say.
But what am I supposed to type? Don’t worry, honey, I’m sure the future as we know it will only partially cease to exist?
Good news, we might still remember our children’s names even after we’ve accidentally erased them?
There’s no emoji for we’re destroying everything we love and I can’t stop it.
Me: We’ll figure it out. We always do.
Skyla: Promise?
The word sits on my screen like a challenge. How can I promise something when I have no idea if it’s even possible? But Skyla needs to hear it, and maybe I need to say it.
Me: Promise.
I pocket the phone and head toward the kitchen to check on things, mostly to avoid screaming into the void.
Managing the bowling alley should feel normal—hell, I plan on doing this for the next few decades—but right now it feels like rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic.
Sure, let me check the nacho cheese levels while reality collapses around us.
“Logan!” Brielle calls out as I enter the kitchen, and she grabs hold of me. “Perfect timing. I just thought of something and need your expert opinion on something very important.”
“Let me guess. This involves that maniac, Razor Blade, again?”
“You’re like a freaking mind reader,” she says, oblivious to the fact that if we are touching I’m able to do just that. “Do you think it would be too much if I asked him to teach me how to ride a motorcycle?”
“Considering you don’t know him and he’s probably armed? Yeah, a little.”
“But that’s what makes it so great! The danger, the mystery, the possibility that he could be a serial killer…”
“Brielle, that last part is not a selling point.”
She rolls her eyes like the teenager she is. “Geez, you’re worse than Skyla. What happened to taking risks? Or is dating Skyla Messenger the only dangerous thing you’re allowed to do?”
“Dating Skyla is plenty dangerous, thanks.” She accidentally attracts catastrophe like it’s her job, but I don’t dare say that out loud. Especially not to someone who might repeat it.
“Exactly my point. You get your danger from supernatural disasters. I want mine from a guy with a criminal record. We all have our preferences.”
“Your preference is going to end up on the evening news.”
“At least I’ll make headlines. When’s the last time you did anything newsworthy that didn’t involve Skyla’s drama?”
Never, actually. Everything noteworthy in my life revolves around our special brand of chaos.
Bree bounces around the kitchen, humming love songs about dangerous men, and I can’t help thinking that in some twisted way, she has a point. My entire life is about managing Skyla-related disasters. Maybe that’s my version of dating a criminal.
But right now, sitting in this bowling alley in the wrong decade, I know exactly what I need to fight for. Getting us home. Fixing whatever we broke. Making sure our kids actually exist.
Even if it kills me.
Which, knowing our track record, it probably will.