Page 89 of One Impossible Moment
"Did you find anything interesting?"she asked lightly, turning back to the counter.
There was a pause.A long one.
"I found newspaper articles from Seattle, Washington, about the crime that sent me to prison," he said.
The spoon slipped from her fingers and clattered against the counter, splattering ice cream across her wrist.She kept her back to him, trying to breathe.
Slowly, she turned toward him.
He was standing now, moving toward the kitchen.His gaze intensified with a heaviness she hadn't seen since Everstill.
"Honey..."she whispered.
At least they knew he was from the real world and not another dimension.
He stopped in front of her, close enough that she could feel his warmth and see the tension in his shoulders.
"Going by the dates and the sixteen years I served in prison," he said in a low voice, "I was in Everstill for thirty years."
Her mouth fell open."Thirty—shit."
He nodded once.
She stared at him, stunned."But you didn't age in there."
Finn's gaze held hers."No, I didn't."
The kitchen felt cramped.The hum of the refrigerator filled the silence between them, a mundane sound that felt painfully out of place against the weight of what he'd told her.
Thirty years.
He had been trapped in that place for thirty years.It was beyond understanding.
He looked exactly the same as the day she'd first met him, except for the sprinkling of gray hair he'd grown since escaping Everstill.How was that even possible?
Kallie's heart pounded.She tried to do the math, but her mind went blank.
"How old were you when you went to prison?"she whispered.
He cleared his throat."Twenty-eight."
She reached for him instinctively.Twenty-eight when he entered prison, a sixteen-year sentence, and thirty years in Everstill.That made him seventy-four.
"Finn," she whispered again, her voice trembling."How is that even possible?"
The man standing in front of her wasn't that old.If she had to guess, Finn would be in his early forties.He hadn't aged at all since she first met him when she was ten, and yes, that was weird, but as a child she didn't gauge someone's age.He was always Finn to her.He was older.
But seventy-four?
"I don't know."He pulled her to his chest.
His heart pounded against her cheek.He didn't have to tell her anything else.Deep down, she already knew.
Everstill had taken his freedom.Suspended him in time for thirty years.
And yet, somehow, he had regained the time he'd lost.
