Parallel (Parallel, #1)

by Elizabeth O'Roark

with you.” “That’s because we’re meant to be together,” he says softly. In our case, it’s not a cliché. Ever since we met, we’ve had a knowledge of the other that was almost intuitive, muscle memory. And I’ve been having these weird dreams about his childhood even though I wasn’t a part of it. Dreams in which I’m his best friend, the little girl next door he shares everything with. I would assume it was wishful thinking if it weren’t for the fact that I wake knowing things I shouldn’t. I referenced his twin, their treehouse, his parents’ place by the lake—all before he ever told me about them. I have no idea how I knew. My voice is hushed as I meet his eye. “I think…no matter what universe we land in, we land there together.”

“Hi, stranger,” I say, leaning my head in the window. “You wouldn’t happen to feel like driving me to New Jersey, would you?” He smiles at me just the way I remember from some other time, sheepish and cocky at once. “Sure, pretty girl in a dress. Climb in, and I’ll drive you anywhere you want.”

“Please,” I plead. “You don’t have to do anything. We just need someone to explain this.” Nick comes up behind me, pulling me to his chest and wrapping his hand around my hip. Proprietary, the way I remember from so many of those dreams. The gesture would have shocked me a few days ago, but now it just feels right. All the more reason to figure this out as soon as humanly possible. “Please,” he says. “We’re desperate.” Her face softens when she looks up at him, in a way it did not for me. She sighs heavily. “I’ll tell you what I can.”

It’s never going to be fair to anyone I date, to any woman I end up with. Because I will always be wishing I was with Quinn instead.

But whether she’s admitting it or not, it’s also one last chance for her to figure out she would rather be with me.

I tip her chin up, feeling a little desperate. She can’t start losing hope now. I need her to keep fighting until we find a solution. “Do I think it’s unlikely this can fix the tumor? Yeah. But your tumor is also unlike anything I’ve ever seen. And how could I say it was impossible anyway? Every day, you and I are witnessing the impossible. We’re having the same dreams, for God’s sake. You know things you couldn’t possibly know, and from the moment I met you, it felt like you were…” “It felt like I was what?” “Mine,” I reply. The awkwardness of that word washes over us both. I’ve never called anyone mine in my life, and she is with someone else. But I also know what I said was right. She is meant to be mine, and somehow today I need to convince her of that.

There’s something so innocent about her at times. I love that innocence and want to preserve it, but at the same time, I want to destroy it into a million pieces. The jury’s still out on which way I’ll go.

I reach for the door handle, and he tugs me back toward him, his hands grasping my jaw as he presses his mouth to mine for one long moment. I breathe, memorizing all of it—the smell of his skin, the softness of his lips, the pressure of his calloused hands. “Please come back to me, Quinn.”

“What’s worse than the bad wind is the emptiness of letting nothing in at all,” he said.

“If you don’t come find me, there will never be a time when I won’t come find you.”

“I can’t believe you thought for a fucking second I could want anyone but you,” I reply. My lips press to her brow, to her eyelids, her temples, the blade of her cheek, the soft spot just below her ear, until I finally find her mouth. She tastes like mint and sugar, and I could spend a hundred years just doing this—memorizing the contour of her lips, relishing the small, solid warmth of her.

My eyes flicker to her mouth, uncertain. I push her hair back from her face, palms on her cheeks. “Does this mean you’re mine now?” She smiles up at me. “I think maybe I always was.”

“I somehow found you once in London, and then I found you here, when I didn’t know who you were,” she says. “And nothing can keep me away from you now that I do.”