Intersect (Parallel, #2)

by Elizabeth O'Roark

“I think this has happened before. When we were teenagers,” I whisper. “That dream I always have, where you’re in the convenience store and I realize I’m going to lose you? I think we were running somewhere because I was pregnant. And I feel like we got pregnant right away then too.” He’s silent, and when I look up at him, his smile has disappeared. “Why does that worry you?” I swallow down the lump in my throat. “Because if it happened before, how come I don’t remember a baby?”

“You really did remember everything.” His voice is empty with shock. “You told them my name and that I was a doctor. You told them our address in London. You told them I swim. My name is all over this, and not in some vague way. I can tell it’s me.” I still. Waiting for the look, the one I saw all through childhood. When these things happened, my mother would grow purposefully quiet, trying to hide her fear, and her eyes wouldn’t meet mine for weeks afterward. But when he finally turns to glance up at me, his eyes are gentle, awed. “It’s fucking amazing,” he says. The relief is so sweet and sharp, I have to look away from him, worried I might cry.

I can’t believe I didn’t see it sooner. “It’s not about us,” I gasp, sitting up. “It’s about the baby. In that dream I always have of us in the hospital? We’re there because I’m delivering, and that’s when she stops us. She doesn’t want us to have the baby.”

There is nothing conditional in his acceptance of me.

He presses his mouth to my forehead. “I hate that you seem so surprised by that. You deserved to spend your entire life surrounded by people who treated what you could do like a gift instead of a curse.”

I want you to move in with me.” I blink, wondering if I’ve misheard him or if I’m somehow misunderstanding him. “What?” “Move in with me,” he says, pulling away just enough that he can see my eyes. “I want your face to be the last thing I see every night and the first thing I see every morning. I haven’t even been trying to find a new place and I just realized it’s because I want it to be your choice too.”

He watches me through eyes that are heavy-lidded, drugged. “Holy shit,” he says, pushing both hands through his hair. “Get on the desk.” Watching him come just now left me so worked up I can barely stand it, but I force myself to be responsible. “We need to meet the realtor.” “Get on the fucking desk,” he growls. He backs me into it and lifts me himself before I can even think of arguing, shoving my sundress around my thighs and dropping to his knees.

It reminds me of my flat in London. Quinn stands at the French doors with this look of wonder on her face, taking it all in. And that’s the look I’ve been waiting for from her. “This is it, eh?” I ask, smiling. She forces her mouth into a straight line. “How do you know that?” she asks. “I haven’t said a word.” I twine my fingers through hers. “How do I know anything?” “Yes,” she replies with a small laugh. “This is it.”

“Well, my mother’s still alive and they never found your father’s mother after she disappeared, so I assume that means they didn’t find a ring either.”

“I hope you know what you’re doing. It’s a hard life.” “Time traveling?” He shakes his head, staring at the rope in his weathered hands. “No,” he says. “Being the one who has to stay behind.”

My relief when she answers fades the moment I hear the choked sob in her voice. “What’s wrong?” I push the bedroom door closed behind me. “What happened?” She takes a deep inhale, trying to pull herself together. “I went to go get my stuff from Jeff’s. He showed up as I was leaving and…” I’m going to break every bone in his goddamn body if he laid a finger on her.

It’s a very large oval diamond, surrounded by tiny ones. The exact ring Quinn described. Which means my grandfather and I have had this conversation before.

I don’t care about the years after you’re gone. I’m not even sure I want those years. I just want the time you have left, every fucking minute of it.”

But until something changes, until we know you could actually survive a pregnancy, we cannot take that risk. Because as badly as I want it, I want you more. I want you to survive and be here with me for the next seventy years.”

“I hate that,” he says quietly. “I hate that there were other guys. It feels like whoever’s changing your life has stolen something from me. I should have taken you to Prom. I should have been your first kiss, your first everything, and I fucking hate that I wasn’t.”

“I am not fucking leaving you.” “But—” “Ask me a thousand times and the answer will still be no.”

Am I being naïve, hoping we can track down the woman and stop this? Probably. But I am drowning, and this is what drowning people do: they grasp at any goddamn thing they can hold onto, even the things that don’t float.

“I’m so in love with you I can’t even breathe when I imagine you not here, and I’ll never be able to live with myself if I don’t at least try to find her. So don’t ask it of me.”

He holds my face in his hands and kisses me before he pulls away. He is no longer smiling. I see grief in his eyes though he’d never admit the cause. “I love you, Quinn Stewart. And even if you can’t say it back, I know you love me too.” My eyes well. “I—” He holds a finger to my lips. “You don’t need to explain anything. Just promise you’ll wait for me. Promise you’ll be here when I get home.”

“Souhaitez-vous que je vous lise les lignes de la main?”

“A girl you’ve loved through many, many lifetimes.” This feels like slightly less of a lucky guess. Her eyes brighten. “She is carrying your child. No, wait. I see two children.” Shock has me attempting to withdraw my hand, but she holds it in her tight, clawlike grip. “That’s not possible,” I say quietly.

“All you have to do is jump again!” she cries. “If you just get stronger, everything will be fine.” “So you die instead? I can’t. You know I can’t.” “If you refuse to jump,” she says, “I will make the choice for you.” My stomach is bottoming out. I already know exactly what she’s going to do. “No.” “I’m sorry,” she says. “But if you’d never met Nick, none of this would have happened.” I reach desperately for the only threat in my power. “If you do this, I’ll never forgive you.”

What stops me are the hundreds of photos hanging on the walls, every last one of Quinn. As a pink-cheeked toddler cradling a duckling. Her first day of kindergarten, with a wide, toothless grin. With rain boots on, ankle-deep in mud outside a barn. Her high school graduation, her prom. Every important event lovingly documented. It’s as if Sarah has been stalking her since birth. Or as if Sarah loves her.

“Tell him what you did, Quinn,” Sarah says. “Tell him what you did, or I shoot him again and end this.” I turn toward him. He looks at me with absolute faith in his eyes, and he never will again. “I went back,” I weep. “I went back and convinced you not to go to the party because I wanted it not to have happened. I didn’t want it to come between us, and I was scared you and Ryan would kill each other. And Ryan went alone and got in that truck, and he died.” Nick’s face gets even paler, and he stares at me in shock. He’s just...blank. As if everything he felt toward me a moment before has seeped out along with the blood pouring down his leg.

Love for him rushes in, brilliant and painful at once. But something deadly is there too—and after way too many years, I’m finally able to welcome it. “I love you,” I whisper. “And I’m not going to let you die.”

My vision is gone, but I hear her speaking to me. “Good girl,” she whispers. “You finally did it.”

Nick, I think, just before the blackness obliterates thought. I found you before. I will find you again.

That bad thing I knew I was capable of, the thing I’ve dreaded my entire life—it wasn’t time travel, and it wasn’t causing Ryan’s death. It was what I’ve just done—I’ve killed my mother to save Nick and myself.

“Are you hurt?” he asks. He sounds desperate, panicked. I shake my head, crying so hard it’s difficult to speak. “She saved me,” I finally whisper. “All she ever wanted was to save me.”

Another gift from my mother. She forced me to tell Nick what I did to Ryan so I’d finally understand that he will forgive me.

But Quinn, even if you had been at fault, there’s nothing you could do that would make me stop loving you. I just wish you’d known that when it happened.”

Nick stares him down until he’s in his car and driving away. “I think that’s the end of it,” I say, turning toward him. “Which is a good thing. You’ve got to be sick of getting in fights on my behalf.” He wraps an arm around my waist and pulls me close. “I will very happily fight for you and our family until my dying breath,” he replies, his mouth near my ear. “And if our daughters are anything like you, I’m guessing I’d better plan on it.”

For a moment I’m too scared to open my eyes, but when I hear Nick shouting my name and the thunderous clamor of his feet flying up the stairs, I finally look around me. Home. Relief surges through my blood like a drug. It’s nighttime here, but I’m home with him and nothing else matters. He reaches the hallway, wild-eyed, and drops to the ground, pulling me to his lap and rocking me like I’m a child. “Thank fucking God,” he says. His voice is rough. “Thank God.” “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry,” I tell him, weeping hard enough that I’m barely coherent. “I didn’t mean to. It just happened and I couldn’t get home…” His arms tighten around me. “I know.” He buries his face in my hair.

He opens one eye. “I told you that would happen.” I grin. “Are you saying you regret it?” He pulls me against him, dragging a blanket over us and tucking my head into the crook of his shoulder. “As long as we’re in the same place, I’m never going to regret anything again.”

Caroline, standing on one side, and Trevor, standing on the other, push me forward until we are in front of him. “Since I couldn’t ask your father, I asked them instead,” Nick says with a shy smile. The dimple blinks into existence.

“Marry me,” Nick says. People around us are listening, so his voice drops to add, “in this lifetime and any others we find ourselves in.”

“In this lifetime and all the other ones, I will only want you.”

“For a smart man, you’re occasionally very slow about some things.” “What are you talking about?” he asks, but his body tenses beside mine. “Rose is a blood relative. Our relative.” He freezes. “But for that to happen she’d need to be—” he groans. “No. No. That was not our kid.” My hand slips through his while he grapples with the fact that the juvenile delinquent we met drinking with erstwhile rock stars, is one of the tiny blinking shapes he just saw on an ultrasound a few weeks ago.

“Don’t you remember how she laughed when we asked if her parents knew she was there and said ‘kind of’? The way she completely softened when she saw you because you were the parent she knew? Nick, think about it. She had your smile. She looked at you like she knew you.”

The breeze whips around us, and I picture it, marrying him here. I’d want it to be exactly like this—just us and the sunlight and the ocean behind us.

I’m not sure I believe in God, necessarily, but there is something holy in this place, something bigger than the two of us, and yet exclusive to us in the same moment.

Nick cradles my face in his hands. “I’m going to make you the happiest woman alive, Quinn. I swear it.” “You already have,” I whisper.

“In this marriage, you will be blessed beyond measure, and you will produce daughters who will be a blessing to the world. Protect them. Protect each other. Go forth,” he says, “and begin the life you were meant for.” The life we were meant for.