I slept for most of the flight, the full exhaustion of all I had been through finally claiming my body. Fitful dreams would wake me from time to time, and I would glance over Kieren's sleeping body to see the vast expanse of America passing below like a forgotten film. How had it only been three years since I'd crossed this land by train with Brady by my side?

I had been so naïve then, so wide-eyed at the endless plains of wheat, the horses in the distance, the long shadows of the Rocky Mountains swallowing the train and engulfing it in darkness.

And now those mountains were thousands of feet beneath me, and yet strong enough to make the plane rattle with turbulence. Kieren didn't stir, but I saw the top of Robbie's head in the seat in front of me as it turned violently to the other side. He didn't like to fly. Piper's dark blond hair came into view in the slit between the seats, resting her head on his shoulder.

She had paid for all our tickets, all except Mom's, with what she called "the magic credit card of death"—meaning the money her parents had left her. I felt guilty for having asked, but she had insisted. After all, everyone's future hung in the balance of preventing the upcoming war.

And Piper had big plans for her future with Robbie.

I allowed myself one quick glance to the seat across the aisle, but Mom had her head buried in an expensive-looking tablet by the opposite window. She didn't seem phased at all by the mission we were embarking on. It made me wonder, even now, if I could really trust her.

"Can we talk?" Kieren whispered by my side. I hadn't realized he was awake.

"Sure."

He cleared his throat, and I realized he must have had a prepared speech. I wasn't sure I was ready to hear it, but I owed him my attention for all he had done for me.

"I know we said last time we spoke we'd be friends," he began.

"We are friends."

"We're more than that," he corrected me, and he dipped his head to try to capture my eyes so I'd have to be honest with him. But I was always honest with Kieren. It was the other way around that had been the problem.

"Yes, we are," I agreed. "We'll always be more than that. But that doesn't mean—"

"I'm still in love with you."

I gasped as through he had thrown a cold drink in my face. "Wh—what?"

He blushed and looked down. "I'll say it again if you want, but it's going to be really awkward if you don't say it back."

I suddenly felt hot, and it took me a second to realize the heat came from anger more than any other emotion. "Why did you cheat on me then?"

His eyes squished shut for a moment, the words hitting him like a slap. "I was a kid. I fucked up. I—I wasn't ready."

"You were ready with Stephanie."

"Please don't say her name."

"Stephanie," I blurted out. "Stephanie. Stephanie."

Before I knew it, I had a hand plastered over my mouth. Kieren's face was inches from mine, briefly seized by anger. But then he willed the anger away and let his hand drop. "I'm sorry," he said. I didn't move, not even to blink, and this seemed to drive Kieren crazy. His large hands grabbed the sides of my head, pulling me closer, so his forehead could lean against mine.

"Say something," he whispered.

"What do you want me to say?" I asked. My voice faltered with the words, all the pain he had caused me finally catching up with me.

He looked deeply into my eyes and then kissed me. His lips were firm and forceful, giving me no chance to kiss him back. He wasn't asking. He was taking. "Say you love me too," he breathed between kisses, and then took my lips again.

"Stop, please," I whispered, pushing him gently away. He removed his lips from mine, but kept our faces close, his hands never leaving my head. I could feel his large thumb circling the ICD in my temple as though he could magically rub it away.

But he couldn't remove it that easily. I got the ICD because I had gone through a door, trying to find Adam. And though I had failed to do so, the reminder that Adam had been real, that he had loved me, and that I had wanted to spend my life with him—all these things were still true. As true as the appendage permanently affixed to my skull.

I had been changed. I wasn't the same girl who would have done anything Kieren asked me to do. I had left that girl back in a boiler room beneath a high school a million lifetimes ago.

"You heard what Mom said," I continued now, though I couldn't bring myself to look at Kieren as I gently took his hand and removed it from my temple. "There are realities where you and I run away together."

"Exactly," he said.

"And it changes nothing."

"We'll do it anyway. Besides, stopping that guy Alexei is what will prevent the war. It has nothing to do with us—"

"It does," I realized. "I have to finish what I started the last time I saw Alexei."

"We'll do it together," Kieren insisted.

I finally looked into his eyes, taking his hand in mine. "I do love you, Kieren. I always will. You know that."

My words washed over his face, but left his lips set in a firm resolve. He tilted his head back to examine me. "But not like you love Adam?"

"I feel like he's alive," I answered. "I have to believe that."

Kieren nodded. Then he ripped his hand out of mine and turned to face the window.

He didn't look at me again as the sun set outside, washing the plane in purple and pink, and finally in blackness.

He didn't look at me as we landed in Portland, or as he grabbed his bag from beneath the seat in front of us and practically climbed over me to get off the plane.

**

It was another two hours before we could get the rental car and drive the fifty miles between the airport and John's hotel—the hotel I still thought of as Sage's place, too, but that was quite literally another lifetime. Now it was the place where my mother and John had raised Robbie together, up on the top floor.

I pulled my suitcase from the back of the SUV as John emerged from the hotel to give Mom a kiss. He then slapped Robbie on the back like he was his football coach or something, and I suddenly saw their whole relationship in a nutshell. John wasn't warm, at least not when I knew him. And I couldn't imagine he had been much help when Robbie started having his manic episodes.

Robbie gave him a curt nod now, confirming my suspicion that they were cordial but not close, even if they were blood relatives. But there were more important things than blood: our dad would always be Robbie's true family.

"I ordered Chinese," John said by way of greeting the rest of us, then nodded his head towards the door for us to follow him.

I was struck upon entering the cavernous lobby by the strong stench of burned coffee—a smell which had been practically baked into the walls when I'd come here at sixteen with Brady. I had expected it to be absent after a decade of my mother's "enhancements" to the property. The place was freshly painted in welcoming shades of coral and plum, the signage fresh and modern-looking. A giant chandelier that looked like it cost a fortune shimmered delicately overhead.

And yet...there was the coffee smell, as though somewhere deep in the bones of this place, the ghost of what should have been Sage's life still haunted the air.

"It's this way," John said, heading for the hotel's newest enhancement: an elevator with shiny gold doors. The button lit up as he pressed it, and the elevator dinged upon opening, letting out an elderly couple with two suitcases. There were a few other people in the lobby as well: a tired-looking couple with their baby in a stroller by their side checking in at the front desk, and bald man on the couch doing a crossword puzzle.

I was glad to see that at least their business was doing well, though the part of me that was still loyal to Sage couldn't help but be angry that she wasn't able to accomplish the same when she had been here.

I wondered if she was still at the diner, if I'd even get a chance to see her.

I glanced at Kieren as the elevator dinged that we'd reached the top floor, but he still wasn't looking at me. And we were all distracted when the doors opened straight into that beautiful apartment that spanned the whole width of the building.

The view from the windows was as extraordinary as I remembered it. Over the treetops, I could see past the willowy curtains all the way to the lake, where a wisp of white smoke escaped from what must have been the chimney of George's lake house. I would have to go and pay him a visit while I was here too.

I noticed some changes made to the place, notably that a bedroom had been created in the corner with a door covered in a giant poster of Einstein sticking out his tongue. I laughed, knowing beyond a doubt that twelve-year-old Robbie had probably thought that was funniest thing.

Robbie didn't go to the room, however. Instead, he led Piper over to the enormous wood table and made sure she was sitting comfortably before diving into the food. He piled an extra-large helping of lo mein onto a plate, along with two eggrolls, and handed it to me with a set of wooden chopsticks. He still remembered all my favorites.

I held my plate in my hands as I stared out the window. Kieren sat alone on a hard chair in the corner, wolfing down a plateful of food like he was still in ROTC and didn't have much time before he had to report for duty.

I flashed on the photograph in Adam's childhood home—the one of him and Kieren in their army fatigues. Dog tags on their chests. Sun in their eyes. Very likely the last picture they ever took. And suddenly I knew that it must have been my death that drew them to each other. A friendship based on nothing but grief.

The letters Adam had written me...did he write them after I had died? Is that why he never sent them? Is that what he had meant when he said all he ever wanted was for me to be safe?

Mom and John were eating at the table, sharing a bottle of red wine, and seeming for all the world like they had no problems to speak of. I wondered when she would tell him about Alexei.

And I wondered, even after all we'd been through, if John was really and truly someone I could trust.

"Excuse me," I said, clearing my throat as I put down my plate. My stomach was balling up with nerves, and I knew I had to get some air. "I just...forgot something in the car."

"Want me to go with you?" Robbie asked.

"No, I'm good. Eat."

He nodded and turned back to Piper. No one else seemed perturbed in the slightest that I was leaving.

I didn't really know where I was going. But at the same time, I suppose some part of my brain knew exactly what I would do when I first got to town. I didn't take the elevator. Instead, I ran down the stairs.

And I kept running through the lobby and back out the front of the hotel. It had been so many years, and yet it was like my brain had replayed this journey every night. I made a right on the sidewalk, and walked with my eyes trained straight ahead.

Before I knew it, I was running.

The neon lights of the diner glowed in red and blue that haloed out into the unseasonably warm night air. I could see through the window that a couple patrons sat at the bar; a few more at the tables. But I didn't see Sage.

And that's when it really hit me: she wouldn't have any idea who I was.

This was a version of Sage whose life had been uprooted thirteen years before when my mother had shown up for a "visit" and ended up stealing her man instead.

Stealing her hotel.

Her beautiful apartment with the fire-engine red door to the bathroom that Sage herself had painted.

Stealing her life.

This Sage would have no memory of helping Adam and I, of meeting us at her mother's house when she was a teenager, or of giving me the ring that I now anxiously twirled on the finger of my right hand. And she wouldn't have the scars on her inner wrist that all her confidants had once been required to get.

And yet...I had nowhere else to turn.

I stepped into the diner, hearing the jangling of the bells above the door. And as I did so, Sage stepped out from the kitchen to the area behind the diner counter. She carried two plates laden with food to the customers in front of her, and in one fell swoop managed to grab both a black-handled and red-handled coffeepot, remembering without hesitation which cups to fill with them.

She smiled effortlessly at the people she was serving, replacing the coffeepots before turning to me with a wide open face. And while she may not have looked young, or fit, or particularly happy, she also didn't look as weighed down by life as I feared she would be.

It took her all of three seconds, watching me stand in the doorway of her diner, out of breath and trembling slightly, with my face which I knew looked almost identical to my mother's at nineteen, before the light in her eyes faded.

It was replaced at first with confusion, and then anger.

"Who—" she began. "Are you Rain's girl?"

"Yes," I answered, coming fully into the restaurant and standing before the counter.

Sage swallowed hard, a moment of adjustment clearly needed before she could progress. "What do you need?"

I took a deep breath, trying to find, behind her cold gray eyes, the woman who had been my savior at one point. Trying to find my friend.

And then I picked up my right hand and showed her my ring—her grandmother's ring, the ring that in this dimension had probably disappeared from her meager belongings under mysterious circumstances years before.

A wave of panic seized her face as she seemed to understand all at once what it must have meant—the missing ring on my shaking finger. She had never met me before. And yet she would only have given that ring to someone she trusted completely...or that some version of her had, anyway.

Her mouth fell open, and it took her great effort to close it again.

But I kept my eyes trained on hers, and tried to keep my voice steady as I spoke.

"I need you to help me find a friend."

****

Do you ever have déjà vu when you look at someone and think maybe you knew them in another life? I feel like that sometimes with my characters--like we were friends once, but we just can't remember when.