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Scott recognized instantly where he was now. The suite Warren had rented in the Walford-Astoria. The whole thing was burnt into his memory. The first time Jean had come back to him. It was almost disturbing how much he remembered. He let himself be led to the room, let himself go into it, and there she was. As sweet and innocent as she’d been before the Phoenix, like that was just a mistake, a mirage. She went to him, she kissed him, and he let himself be kissed.

It wasn’t hard to play along now. Jean expected him to be numb; he had been the first time around. And she couldn’t sense his thoughts…. Some psychosomatic result of her time as the Phoenix, pretending that hadn’t been her. She blamed it on the pod she’d supposedly been in. They all blamed so many things on…

This was the moment, the tempting moment when he’d thought it could all be got back, or no, that all the mistakes could be washed away. His failure as team leader, his crumbling marriage, none of it seemed to matter when he had Jean. God, they really were in a vicious cycle. He remembered the sickening recurrence of that feeling when Hank had brought the teenage Jean forward in time. Like tasting an old meal as you vomited.

He tried to see if he could go along with it this time. Be the team leader again, be Jean’s man again. It’d been so tempting to take it, that first time. And he had. He was only human.

But he’d been trained to be more.

“Jean,” he said, feeling the train track of the past being ripped up, the old lies derailing. “There’s something I have to tell you.”