Her heart leaped in her throat. She could hear their voices through the thick glass of the windows. If she squinted, she could read their signs:

The past is our right!

A flare of pride.

She had done that.

And then she wasn’t just scanning the crowd, she was searching it, looking for dirty-blond hair and wind-chapped skin and a familiar, beat-up leather jacket. Heat flickered through her as she realized what she was doing, who she was looking for. Was he there now? she wondered. She thought he might be. She imagined she could feel his presence radiating below her. She lifted a hand to her face, finger grazing her lips.

“You’re awfully quiet,” Roman said, and Dorothy tensed, wondering if he’d guessed that she’d been thinking of Ash. She’d often thought Roman capable of reading minds, but, when she glanced at him, she saw that his eyes were trained on the window and the crowd beyond it.

“Incredible, isn’t it?” he said, sounding awed.

“It is,” Dorothy said. “I didn’t realize there were this many people in the city.”

“New Seattleites can be difficult to impress,” Roman said. “We only show up for something truly spectacular.”

He looked at her, smiling fully now. He hadn’t mentioned what had happened the night before, and so she didn’t, either. But, this morning, she’d found a cup of coffee waiting for her outside of her hotel room door, and she’d suspected it had been his way of apologizing for his outburst.

She studied him for a moment longer, wondering if she should say more.

She’d never actually told Roman what had happened between her and Ash but, of course, he’d figured it out. In order for everything to work out as it had in her past, Roman had needed to go back in time to 1980, help Ash and his friends escape from Fort Hunter, and make sure that Dorothy ended up with the exotic matter before she fell off the Second Star. All of it had been planned, perfectly, to make sure she would land at Roman’s feet in 2076. Dorothy knew there wasn’t a chance of anything going wrong. She’d already lived through it, and it would’ve created a paradox if things hadn’t gone exactly as she remembered. So she wasn’t worried.

But Roman had been living through it all for the first time. And, when he’d come back from the past, he’d seemed . . .

Changed.

“You never told me you’d fallen in love with him,” he said to her, once, and Dorothy had been so shocked to hear him say it that she hadn’t thought to deny it.

“I-I’m not anymore,” she’d said, instead. Roman had held her gaze for a moment longer, and she’d half expected him to tell her to prove it, to choose.

But he’d done neither of those things, and Dorothy found herself remembering a conversation they’d had long ago. She’d asked Roman why he’d betrayed Ash and the Professor and everyone else, and he’d responded, “I’m afraid we haven’t been acquainted long enough for that story. . . . Maybe one day, I’ll let you in on all my secrets.”