The energy between Stone and I is hard to understand. There are moments of affection, but then he always pulls back. He’ll reach for my hand, then let it go when what I really want is for him to hold on tight.
He's a hard read and I know he was lonely before I came, but I think he's on edge. Scared to do or say anything that might upset me. He doesn't want me to run away. Probably because I threatened to twice in the first twelve hours I was here.
He doesn't want to lose me, but it makes me think he also doesn't want me like that, which is fine. I'm probably not his type, though for a caveman like him, what is his type?
But by the end of the third week, I'm tired of working. I groan as I get out of bed, my muscles sore. The work I've been doing is way harder than any cardio I've ever sweated out at a gym. This is backbreaking work. No wonder the cavemen didn't live long. They were fighting tooth and nail for every breath they took. Nothing was easy.
I push away my fears that the rest of my life is going to be hard and try to smile.
"Let's have some coffee," I say as Stone adds some kindling to the fire. "I know we said we should only use it every once in a while but I think today we should take the day off. I want to look in the caves and see if there is something we can do to get out of here.”
Stone lifts his chin. “This is where you live now, Skylar. This is your home whether you like it or not."
My eyes narrow. "Don't say that. I'm going to figure out a way to get out of here. I'm going to go back to those caves, and I'm going to see if I can do something to trigger the time travel. There's got to be something."
“It’s impossible. I spent months doing the same damn thing. Went down to the caves for years, every day trying to get the hell out of this place, but couldn’t find any magic doorway to help me escape. There's nothing I could do to start the charge that made the cave spin and made me wind up here," he tells me.”
"But you gave up," I say. "I don't want to give up."
He clenches his jaw, angry. "I didn't give up," he says. "I'm not a quitter. I'm a goddamn fighter. How do you think I ended up here? I was in the special forces on a mission, trying to make the world a better place. I know what it means to go all in for a cause you care about. You think I wanted to be here alone?" He shakes his head, snarling. His words tight, tense, taut.
“I don’t want to make you mad, but Stone, I don’t want to live here forever.”
“Neither do I. If you want to go to the cave, come on, let me take you.”
“Really?”
Stone’s dark eyes meet mine. “I wish I could give you the fucking world, Skylar, but I can’t. If you want to try, let’s go. I’ll give you what I can.”
We clean up the cave, rolling the rock in front of the entrance, and then make the short trek to the cave where we time travelled.
Once we enter the dark cavern, Stone takes my hand. “I don’t want you to fall.”
“Thanks,” I say softly, anxious to see what we might find.
But after a few hours it’s clear there is no portal waiting for us to walk through, no exit sign. Nothing. Whatever happened to get us here isn’t happening now.
“The thing I came to realize,” Stone says, “even if you managed somehow to get the cave to spin again, and threw yourself back into a time-traveling warp, what if you ended up somewhere worse than this?”
I frown, not having thought of it like that. “I can imagine a whole lot of scenarios that would be more terrifying. Landing in the middle of a civil war, or a post-apocalyptic world that’s deadly, or being thrust into a future where robots and aliens have invaded the earth.”
“Exactly, and what if we were separated?” he says. “I would hate thinking you were alone out in some dangerous time and place.”
Before today, I'm not sure I would have believed it if someone told me one conversation had the potential to change the way I saw the world, saw myself in it. But this conversation with Stone has opened my eyes.
“I hate that you feel stuck,” Stone says. “I want you to be happy.”
I blink back tears and Stone cups my cheek with his hand. I think he might lean in closer to kiss me, but he just brushes my tears away with the back of his calloused thumb.