Page 64 of Time for You
Henry hugged Michelle next, then Brittany, who once again sincerely thanked him for his complete ignorance of contemporary pop icons.
“Two minutes,” Ellie announced grimly. Henry hugged Ellie, and nodded slightly as he stepped back, responding to something she said. Daphne made a mental note to ask him about it, then realized—she wouldn’t have time.
Their time together was over. She fell into his arms for one last embrace, their kiss tasting of tears, but she wasn’t sure if they were hers or his. “I love you, Daphne Griffin,” he whispered into her ear. “Don’t you ever forget that.”
“I love you, too,” she replied, fighting to keep her voice steady. “Forever.”
“Promise me you’ll be happy,” he said, holding her hands and stepping back. “Promise me you’ll switch.”
“Switch?” Ellie said, and Michelle elbowed her with a shushing noise.
“Henry, I—”
“One minute,” Brittany said, glancing at Ellie’s timer.
“Promise me,” he said sternly, and she nodded.
Henry stepped forward to kiss her one last time, and then walked backward toward the spot where they’d first crashed into each other’s lives, his hand holding hers as he went. “Goodbye, everyone,” he said.
Behind him a sliver of twisting, shimmering light appeared, and Brittany gasped. Henry didn’t even look back, just kept his gaze on Daphne. “I love you,” Henry said, so quietly only she could hear him.
Then he dropped her hand and stepped backward into the portal.
And then he was gone.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Silence.
That was the first thing Henry noticed. Wherever he was, it was quiet. No humming motors, no buzz of electricity, no planes roaring overhead.
The second thing he noticed was the darkness. It wasn’t black—Edinburgh at night was never fully dark, but it wasn’t the bright, artificial white light of the twenty-first century. A gas lamp flickered half a block ahead, and as his eyes adjusted to the lack of light, his ears started to pick up the sounds. Wagon wheels on cobblestone, horseshoes clip-clopping, and harnesses rattling.
I wonder what Daphne would think.The thought flitted across his mind before he had a chance to quash it. Thinking of Daphne and her reaction had become second nature to him in just a few short months, but he needed to start moving past that now, somehow. It knifed through him, the ache sharp.
Henry looked around his surroundings, trying to get his bearings. Edinburgh Castle was limned in moonlight to his left, and the homes around him were spacious but not overly grand, which meant home was straight ahead, perhaps a mile.
Henry turned on his heel and walked in the opposite direction instead. He was worried what he would find at home. Daphne and the others may have shown him what women could be capable of, but that was in a century where their ambition and desires were at least somewhat nurtured; he dreaded returning home to discover that his mother and sistershad somehow already been thrown out of their house, destitute. It wasn’t likely, but it wasn’t impossible, either. The guilt of having stayed an extra few months in the future gnawed at him now that he was home. Perhaps it had been the wrong choice, as glorious as it had been. Perhaps he had abandoned the people he’d sworn he would always protect. Perhaps he’d been too selfish.
Henry turned right and then veered down a narrow street that felt cramped after the wide, spacious city he’d just left. If his calculations were correct, it would be close to ten at night, which meant George was likely still in his office.
Henry’s best friend was what his old—new—future?—friends would call a workaholic. George worked as a solicitor and took his job very seriously, often staying at his small office well into the evening. He had no family to return to in the evenings, as he was fond of pointing out to Henry, so there wasn’t any reason not to simply stay and work late. Henry had met him when they were at boarding school (what a barbaric thing, sending kids away like that,Daphne had said when he told her how he’d been schooled), both of them reeling from loss. Henry had just lost his father the year before, whereas George had lost his parents to cholera just six months earlier. An only child, he had been sent to live with a wealthy but chilly aunt, who promptly enrolled him in a school just about as far from her home as she could manage.
Neither George nor Henry had ever really felt like they belonged, and they had been fast friends since their first term. But where Henry returned home to run his father’s business, George had needed to strike out on his own. He was now a wealthy man in his own right, but aside from Henry and his sisters, George had no family to speak of. The aunt had died when he was twenty, but it wasn’t much of a loss, all things considered. She had been a patron, not a parent.
As Henry had suspected, the lamps were still lit in George’s office. He considered knocking, but never had done that before, and anyway, he didn’t want to risk George thinking he was an impostor or spirit and raising a hue and cry.
Henry shouldered the door open and couldn’t help but smile at the familiar sight of George hunched over his desk in the back room, so absorbed in his work he hadn’t even looked up. Henry walked to the open door and stood there, waiting.
“If you forgot your watch again, O’Malley, your wife will skin you alive and I’ll make sure no judge convicts her,” George called, turning a page on whatever he was reading.
“Good thing I’m not O’Malley, then. Nor married, for that matter,” Henry replied.
Recognition froze George’s muscles in place. He went deathly still and slowly lifted his head, staring at Henry with a cautious hope that hurt for him to see.It was selfish to have stayed so long.He’d known that all along, but somehow hoped—he wasn’t sure what, but perhaps that his loved ones hadn’t missed him all that much. It had been a foolish hope, but he’d hoped it nonetheless.
“Have I gone mad?” George rasped, slowly unfolding his long body from his chair. “Are you real?”
“Very,” Henry said, his grin deepening. Leaving Daphne hurt like hell, but he had missed his friend, too. “I’m back.”
