Free Until Time Stands Still by Lona Scott Page A

with rapt attention, grinning like a fool. She looked back up at Mykel, who towered over her, waiting with his hand held out, as if he already knew she would take it.
     
    What did she have to lose really? A crappy marriage? A bookstore? Her friends? She hadn’t seen her parents in years anyway. Was any of it more important to her than the man who risked his life, his very existence, to save her? She wasn’t sure yet, if she loved him. Maybe what she felt was nothing more than hero worship because he rescued her. She definitely felt butterflies in her stomach when he looked at her. When he touched her, they fluttered alive and she burned for him in a way she never had for anyone. She never did like when people would feel butterflies in their stomachs and call it love. She didn’t think love was like that at all. Butterflies are so unpredictable, here one moment, gone the next, and that's not what she felt when she thought about him. What she felt would never just disappear. She knew without a doubt that she would always care for him, no matter what. He was special to her. She liked him, sure, in a way. But she didn’t think she was in love with him. Not like he wanted her to be, at least, not yet. She knew that the only way she could give that a chance is if she went with him. And yet…she just couldn’t do it. It was ludicrous, the idea of going into the future with a man she barely knew. “I can’t go with you.” She let out a shaky breath.
     
     
     

Chapter Six
     
                “What?” Mykel was stunned. He stared at her. She was slowly backing away from him. “No.” He reached for her. She held up her hand to stop him.
     
                “Mykel, this is crazy. I can’t just uproot my life and go with you to some strange place.” She was shaking her head at him, backing away. “It’s not like going across the country or moving to a new state. It’s the future…so far into the future that everyone I’ve ever known will be dead. In a place you don’t even want to go back to? I just can’t do that.”
     
                He felt like raging at the world, and at her. He thought for sure she would go with him. After the night they shared together, anyway. “I’m crazy about you.” Mykel said, desperately. “Please…come with me.”
     
                “I can’t do that.” She said. Her heart thudded in her chest. She could see the utter devastation and disappointment cross his face, before he settled a mask of coolness over his features. His face became completely blank and unreadable.
     
                “What do you have here that is better than what we shared?” He asked coolly. “You aren’t in love with your husband, and he clearly wants you dead. So…”
     
                “What makes you so sure I don’t love him?” She asked, shocked.
     
                “Because darlin’, you gave yourself to me last night. Very willingly, I might add. A woman in love with her husband doesn’t cheat on him. So what reason do you have to stay here?”
     
                She bristled at his words. “Insulting me isn’t going to get you want you want. I wouldn’t go with you if you were the last man on Earth!” She huffed. With that, she turned and stalked off into the woods.
     
                She didn’t get ten steps before shot rang out. The bark of the tree she had just been standing in front of exploded in a shower of wood splinters. She screamed and dove on the ground, covering her head.
     
                “No!” Mykel shouted, closing the distance between them in an instant. “Run…Go, Go, Go!” He pulled her to her feet and ran, gun drawn. The tree crashed to the ground right where she had been.
     
                “Where is he?” Graham hollered, his own rifle tracking the woods.
     
                “I don’t know!” Mykel yelled. “Let’s get to the