Author's Note: I had trouble deciding from whose perspective I wanted this scene to be, so I switch back and forth a couple times, which is not my usual style.

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Chapter 7

Wednesday night was Carter's night to stay late at the Sheriff's Office. It had been this way since his first week in Eureka. And since it was an established fact that he would not be home until after midnight on a Wednesday, Allison and the kids had no reason to stop by. This meant that Jo had the entire house to herself for one evening every week. As someone who was used to living alone, she really needed that.

Technically, she was not completely alone. ANDY was in his closet, doing whatever it was that he and S.A.R.A.H. did in there. Jo did not know what went on in that closet, and she did not want to. But the situation meant that S.A.R.A.H. was distracted, which in some ways made it even better than being alone in the house.

Upon arriving home that evening, Jo changed into her most comfortable sweatpants and vegged out in front of the television. She was contemplating ordering a pizza when the doorbell rang. She turned her head to look at the door, but nothing happened. Ten seconds later, the doorbell rang again, and Jo turned off the TV and stood, wondering if she was supposed to get it herself. She was not sure how she could be expected to do that considering there was no doorknob on this side. As she approached it, S.A.R.A.H. finally announced, "It's Mr. Donovan. Should I let him in?"

Jo glanced down at what she was wearing, and she honestly wanted to say no. She was a complete mess, and she was not sure if this Zane had ever seen her like that before. Then the doorbell rang for a third time. "Yeah, let him in," she answered, running her hands over her hair to smooth it out.

The door swung open on a concerned Zane. He stepped across the threshold. "Is S.A.R.A.H. mad at me or something?"

"No, she's just . . . busy." Jo gestured back to ANDY's closet. She did not know if he would understand the implications, but that was as much as she was willing to say about it.

While she was talking, he noticed her outfit, and a smile broke out on his face. "I like this look on you."

Unsure whether he was teasing her or being sincere, Jo decided to put him on the defensive. "What did you say to Callahan?"

"Oh." Zane's cocky expression became slightly sheepish. "That's a funny story. He thinks I said you were going to sleep with him."

That was the last thing she expected. "Wha—Why would you—"

Zane waved it away. "Relax. That's not what I said." Zane's swagger was back in full force as he walked over to the couch and assumed a comfortable position, acting like he owned the place. "He just heard what he wanted to."

There were not a lot of things Zane could say that would be misinterpreted that way. "Then what did you say?" Jo asked through clenched teeth.

"Let me ask you something. What do you think would have happened if Major Danny showed up in your old timeline?"

Jo did not like the way he avoided the question to ask an inane hypothetical. "No, tell me what you said."

"I will. After you answer my question."

She knew it would be childish to point out that she asked him first, and heaven knew one of them needed to act like an adult. So, fine, she thought, same situation in a different timeline, as if that had any relevance here. "Well, I wouldn't have needed to lie about having a boyfriend because I'd be engaged." Then she remembered the look on her Zane's face when she did not give him an answer. "Probably."

Zane tried to keep his expression easy-going, but she had to be kidding him with that. His voice had more on an edge to it than he wanted when he asked, "Are you saying there's a possibility you might have broken off the engagement for him?"

"No!" It seemed that for a second she was too offended by the thought to even figure out where it came from. Which, from Zane's perspective, was good.

"No," she repeated more calmly. "It's just that when you . . . When . . ." She was having trouble figuring out how to refer to him. "When my boyfriend proposed to me back then, it took me by surprise, and I needed to think about it. And by the time I was ready to give him an answer, he was gone. He, uh, he didn't exist anymore." During this, her gaze had wandered to the wall, but now she made eye contact with him again. "So all I meant was, probably it all would have worked out fine, but it's hard to tell, because he had such a fragile ego."

Jo did not talk about the other Zane very often, which was fine with this Zane because he never knew what to do with the information when he got it. He did not know what the point was in asking about that timeline anyway. In some ways, she was just talking about another ex-boyfriend. Yet, even though she made a point to distinguish her almost fiancé from him, that part about the fragile ego sounded very pointed. Because in other ways, she was kind of talking about him.

Since she had answered his question and more, he needed to hold up his end of the bargain. "What I really said to Major Danny was that even if you did sleep with him while I was gone—" Jo huffed at this. "—it wouldn't matter, because as soon as I came back, you'd still chose me. I think I said you were crazy about me or something like that."

"Okay." He could almost see the wheels turning in her head as she tried to decide whether that was really okay or not. She spoke slowly. "I guess that's not so bad. But why—"

He cut off her question. He knew why and it had nothing to do with their fake relationship. It had to do with their real one. "I kinda need you to say it."

She crossed her arms, still trying to figure out how any of this would help with Callahan. "You want me to tell Callahan that I'm crazy about you?"

"No, I want you to tell me." It kind of scared him to just put it on the line like this, but if they were going to go forward, somebody needed to start. "I don't know exactly what this is or what kind of strain six months apart is going to put on it, but I want it to still be here when I get back. So I want you to tell me that it will."

It was such a simple thing, and yet, he knew what he was asking was huge. Jo opened and closed her mouth a few times, but she did not seem to be getting any closer to finding the words. Zane decided to back off a little. "Can you at least just promise that you aren't going to fall back in love with him while I'm gone?"

She gave a slight nod, but it still took a while before she spoke. "I'm not going to—I was never in love with him, okay? I mean I've been in love, and what I had with Danny was nowhere close to that."

The way she avoided eye contact at that moment, Zane knew she was talking about him. Or someone who shared his name, face, and aspects of his personality. For the moment it helped to know that, at the very least, there was one alternate universe where he came out well ahead of Major Danny. It wasn't even close there.

She continued, "Obviously, I'm still a tiny bit affected by him, but that's just . . . history. He's not—He cheated at West Point, he cheated in Georgia, and I don't know what broke up his marriage, but I'm willing to bet it was more cheating. I made a mistake when I took him back last time, and I'm not going to do that again. I don't want to be with Danny."

Zane wished he could just take that at face value; it would make things a lot easier. But it just sounded like a lot of rationalizing to him. "Here's my problem with that, you didn't want to be with me either."

He could tell from the way she sputtered that the comparison had never occurred to her before. That didn't really make it better. She finally brought her syllables together into words. "That was different."

He hoped that was true, but he needed more. "How?" She actually shrugged in response to that, so he laid it out for her. "You didn't want to be with me. And every time you swore it was the last time, but then you just kept doing it."

Her lips curled up into a bemused smile. "Are you really complaining about that?"

She was distractingly adorable in her sweatpants and baggy t-shirt, but he was not going to let her get him off topic. "Honestly, your lack of self-control when it comes to ex-boyfriends never bothered me before, but now it's kind of an issue. So, how is it different, Jo?"

It was not until he said it that Jo knew exactly how it was different. She was not sure if he was going to like her answer though. "You're not my ex-boyfriend, Zane. I didn't—don't want Danny because everything he's said and done just confirms that he is exactly like the other Danny. I didn't want you because you weren't the other Zane."

She saw him visibly deflate. That fixed the Danny problem, but it was going to cause a whole new host of problems. "Well, that's an honest answer."

She had to make him understand. "It's not a bad thing. I mean it was at first. When I first got to this timeline, you were rude and arrogant and just not someone worth taking a chance on. Because I already fell for one version of you, and I lost him, and I couldn't go through that again. And you weren't even interested in me anyway. Do you realize the only reason you want me is because you found out that some other you did once upon a time?"

"That's not the only reason," he said, giving her a look that made her pulse quicken.

Jo had to ignore that, because otherwise they would go off on a wildly inappropriate tangent. "But then I got to know you, and you might . . ."

He sat up more fully, interested in where this was going. "Might what?"

Jo was not sure if she should say it; she wasn't even sure if she should be thinking it. She sighed. "You might even be better than the other Zane. I mean, don't get me wrong, he was great; I loved him. But the way we talk and the way you treat me . . . You might be better. But it's still scary because the one thing that was definitely better about the other Zane was that he loved me too."

She had not been thinking when she said the last part. She was so busy worrying about the this Zane being better part, that it took her a second to realize her last sentence might have sounded like a challenge. Zane had a pensive look on his face, and she tried to backpedal. "Not that—I wasn't trying to—"

It turned out that was not the part he was thinking about. "How did he treat you?" he asked, cutting her off.

"What?" She remembered the context. "Oh. No, he treated me fine." She finally sat down on opposite end of the couch, curling her legs under her. "It's just that you . . ."

"I treat you better," he finished for her.

That was not exactly what she meant. "It was mostly the Astraeus thing. Going through the candidacy together, it felt like we were . . . I'm not sure how to put it because I know that I'll never be your intellectual equal, but—" He rolled his eyes at that, like he did not see that much of a difference between them. That was exactly the kind of thing she was talking about. "But it feels more like we're equals. Other Zane never said anything, but I always kind of felt like I was just some townie he was dating."

Zane thought about this. "Even after he proposed?"

Jo tried to remember what she was feeling when that happened. "There wasn't a lot of after to that timeline." She needed to change the subject, and she remembered that this whole bearing of her own soul was on the heels of some declarations of his own. "So what was it you wanted me to promise? That I'll still be here when you get back?"

"Yeah, that you'll choose me over Major Danny no matter what." He sounded less nervous about it this time.

She pushed herself up and took a couple kneeling steps toward him. "But I thought you didn't care anymore."

Her chest was now inches from his face, and he chose to look there. "It's Wednesday, right?" He pushed up the bottom of her shirt and put his hand on her bare hip. "Carter won't be home for hours."

"No." She batted away his hand. "Tell me how you don't care."

"Fine, I care," Zane said reluctantly. "I don't want you to sleep with Major Danny." He gave her arm a light tug, causing her to fall back onto the chaise lounge part of the couch. Then he crawled over her and whispered, "I want you to sleep with me."

Before she could even respond to that, his lips were on hers and he was sliding his hand under her shirt again. She had only gone one day without this, and she already missed it. The idea of going six months without his hands and his mouth and all his other parts sounded like torture. At that moment, she knew that this, whatever this was, was definitely going to be here when he got back. But her own mouth was too occupied for her to tell him that.

When he moved down to her neck, something occurred to Jo. "Wait, no, stop."

He pulled back, narrowing his eyes at her. "Why?"

She slid out from under him and pulled him to his feet. "ANDY's here. We have to go upstairs."

He looked around the downstairs as she dragged him to the staircase. "Where—Oh. So that's what you meant by S.A.R.A.H.'s 'busy.'" He smiled. "Good for them."

Jo still found the entire AI relationship weird, but there was something oddly endearing about Zane rooting for them. She looked back at him, stopping on the landing. He continued up the stairs so that he was now the one pulling her along. "Come on, you don't want your house to get further than you do tonight."

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When Jack Carter pulled his jeep up in front of his house, he noticed the motorcycle parked next to Jo's car, which could only mean one thing at this time of night. Considering that these days Jo spent more nights away from the house than she did there, he had a pretty good idea that her involvement with Zane was still going on. It was one thing to know that, it was another to know it was going on under his roof.

He entered the house with his gaze averted. When he did not hear any telltale signs of activity, he allowed himself to look in the direction of the couch where the throw pillows were suspiciously askew. "S.A.R.A.H.," he called out to his house. "When did Jo go upstairs?"

It took her a second to answer. "Jo and Zane retired to her bedroom at 8:43 p.m."

Jack glanced at his watch. It had been nearly four hours, so he felt safe heading up. Even so, he gave Jo's guest room a wide berth on his way to his own. Once he had his door safely shut and his room relatively soundproofed, he reflected broadly, very broadly, on what was happening or what had happened just down the hall. He was actually pretty happy that those two crazy kids were working things out.

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