Intersect: The Parallel Duet, Book 2
Page 2
A sob wells in my chest. He’s joking but it’s true. We’ve got no space for a baby. He’s just started his residency and I’ve just started grad school and—my God—we’ve barely been married a month. “Is this going to be okay?” I ask, as my tears start to soak through his shirt.
“It’s going to be better than okay,” he whispers, tucking me closer, pressing his mouth to the top of my head. “I’m so happy right now I can’t even put it into words.”
I continue to cry, though. There’s so much he doesn’t know.
He tips my chin up with his index finger. “Honey, I know the timing isn’t perfect but we’ll figure it out. My parents will lend us money for a bigger place. We’ll get someone to help with the baby so you don’t miss class. It’s going to be fine.”
His joy hurts, twists something inside me, because I want this. I want it for him, I want it for myself. I can’t bear the idea of telling him we’re having a baby and tearing it all away from him, but I’m worried that’s exactly what I’m going to do.
“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?”
* * *
I wake with a start on Caroline’s deck, my chest as tight as it was in my dream. I sit up, putting it all together, and the pain gives way to shock. Nick and I got pregnant the first time we were together, and it possibly happened in two different lives. Not just as young, stupid teenagers, but as adults who would have been extremely careful about contraception. With anyone else I’d attribute it to chance, or to carelessness, but this feels…unnatural. Rose said there were other qualities that accompanied the mutation—could some kind of super fertility be among them?
I spend the day able to focus on little but that dream. I’m not sure why, but it feels like a warning somehow, just like my father’s dying pleas did. Our lives end before we have a child, and we seem to follow the exact same steps every time.
The real problem is that I think we’re following them now too.
Now that I’ve seen it unfold, I want that future we had ahead of us as badly as I did in London. I want to be the one who makes Nick’s face light up when he gets the news. I want it to be our child he holds for the first time. But it won’t be. All those firsts will go to someone who comes after me.
I force the thoughts out of my head as I start to get ready to see Nick. I could very easily be newly married to Jeff right now, stuck at Washington Insider for the rest of my short, miserable life. But instead I’m with someone who is more than I could ever have imagined, and I’m going back to school. I need to appreciate what I have.
Caroline comes home just before I leave. Having no respect for personal boundaries, she pulls at the neckline of my dress to see which bra I’m wearing without asking, and then demands I go change it. “No dude wants to see that thing when he’s undressing you for the first time. Put on something lacy or freeball it.”
I laugh. As much as I wish the bra I’m wearing would be an issue, I don’t see how it could be, given that there’s no place we can be alone. “No one is getting undressed,” I tell her primly. “This is only our second date.”
“I’ve had sex on a second date,” she argues.
I grin. “That would probably carry more weight if you didn’t also have sex when there’s been no date at all. I’m sleeping on your couch and he’s got his ex-girlfriend dropping by all the time, so it can’t happen.”
She frowns. “That is a huge red flag, by the way. Why does she still have a key?”
“She’s taking over his lease,” I reply, rubbing lip balm on. “It’s really not a big deal.”
She ignores me. “Remember Russell? The guy who always had an excuse for why he needed to stay here instead of his own place? He was homeless. I didn’t find out until a few months later.”
I laugh again. Caroline has had some good experiences with men and a wealth of abysmal ones. I’m sure she has a horror story for every possible situation. “Nick is a neurologist. Russell wasn’t employed. I feel like their situations are somewhat different.”
“I’m just saying that no matter how hot the guy is, you’ve got to watch out for red flags. Go change your bra.”
I push her away from me as she reaches for my zipper. “He’s not going to see my bra! Where would that even happen?”
“Public restroom, back of his car, parking garage, mail room, alleyway, that couch because I’m happy to clear out on your behalf…” she says, ticking them off on her fingers. “Shall I continue or are you going to change your bra?”
I stick my tongue out at her. “Fine, but the joke’s on you when nothing happens.”
Her face grows grave. “Oh Quinn, that won’t be a joke at all. That will be a tragedy, because you need a good shag more than anyone I’ve ever known.”
I don’t argue. Given how I respond when Nick merely kisses me, I have no doubt she’s correct.
* * *
Because I’m a little unnerved by what might come out of Caroline’s mouth when she meets Nick, I tell him to meet me in the lobby rather than the apartment. He’s already there when I walk off the elevator, his eyes lighting up as I approach.
He rises, towering over me even in my heels, and places his hands on my hips, pulling me toward him for a brief kiss. Closed lips, held there just long enough for me to breathe him in, relish the way his hands tighten. I may not be the only one in need of a good shag.
“You’re tan,” he says, pulling back just enough to meet my eye. It’s clear from the way he’s looking at me that this is a good thing.
“I spent most of the day lying out on the deck.”
He raises a brow. “Red bikini?”
I feel my cheeks heating a little. “Yeah. Well, half of it. No one can see onto her deck and I wanted to see what it was like to have no tan lines for once.”
He grows still. “You’re saying you laid out topless.” He closes his eyes. “Jesus.”
You’d think I just told him I ran down the street naked. “You’re way more puritanical than I thought you were. Than you used to be.”
His eyes open and there is something feral in them that wasn’t there just a moment before. “I’m not puritanical at all,” he growls. “Believe me. I’m just trying not to picture it because it’s having an effect on me I’d like to avoid in a public place.” He pulls me closer until I can feel exactly what he’s referring to, and desire snaps in my belly, so sharp it’s almost painful. If Caroline weren’t upstairs I think I’d be tempted to skip dinner. Except until I’ve told him about the dream, no one is skipping anything.
* * *
The restaurant is fancier than any place I’ve ever been, the kind where all the food looks like art. Even my margarita comes with leaf-shaped foam floating on its surface. Yet it’s a struggle to pay attention to all the careful details with Nick sitting a foot away, creating this painful need in my stomach, making my heart skitter in my throat. I think about the way he pushed me to my back in his Jeep last weekend—his fervor, his lack of restraint—and I want him so badly I feel like I can barely function. Not once, in all the years I’ve known Jeff, did I ever feel this way.
I stare at the open collar of his shirt, imagine popping the second button, the third, as my mouth moves over his neck. “What are you thinking about?” he asks.
I’m blushing again. This has to stop. “I don’t think you want to know.”
He winces. “Quinn,” he says, exhaling, “you’re killing me. Talk about something please. Something normal. Or I’m going to drag you out of this restaurant and take you to the nearest hotel.”
Instead I ask about the woman who was in his office. It seems like a sad state of affairs when the woman who wants you dead is the easiest thing to discuss.
“I talked to the police today,” he says. “Security gave them the photo and they’re searching the database.”
I can’t say this inspires much hope. “A woman who can vanish at will doesn’t seem likely to have ever gotten caught in the past.”
He leans back in his chair, blowing out a breath. “I know.”
I run my finger over the glass’s rim, pondering the situation again. “What I don’t understand is why she’s going to the trouble. I’m already dying. What more can she want?”
“You’re not dying,” he says sharply. “And if nothing else, the fact that she can time travel and she’s still bothering to break into my office and look at your file should reassure you. If you weren’t a threat for whatever reason, she’d know, right?”
I glance at him, wondering if he could be right. I’m not sure what she thinks I’m going to do to her in the future, but she must still be seeing it happen somehow. “I suppose. But if she can do what Rose does…why hasn’t she killed me already? She got into your locked office. She could find me anywhere I was alone and kill me with ease. So why doesn’t she?”
“We don’t know all the rules,” he says, his mouth slipping up at the corner. “Maybe she needs to wait for the full moon.”
A low laugh slips from my throat. “You’re confusing your supernatural beings.”
“At the rate we’re going,” he says, “I’m going to end up fighting a werewolf over you.”
“Would you fight a werewolf over me?” I ask, reaching across the table to swipe a grain of salt off his lower lip. The change in his expression holds me there for a moment. His eyes are dark, drugged, focused on my mouth. Finally he blows out a slow breath. “In a heartbeat.”
I laugh, the sound slightly too high, thrown off kilter by a sudden surge of desire. I would follow him to any of those public places Caroline suggested without a second thought. Pull it together. You still haven’t told him. “I won’t make you do that. We’ve got enough problems with the exes we already have.”
He frowns. “Which reminds me—Meg knows about you. She got wind of stuff from the nursing staff and I figured it was best to get ahead of the story.”
I freeze. We just began officially seeing each other two freaking days ago and people he works with already know. That can’t be a good thing. “What did you tell her?”
“That you were a friend from college,” he says. “She wasn’t happy but she seemed to believe it.”
A friend he’s gotten pregnant. Twice. I wanted to put it off but I have to tell him.
I take a deep breath and stare at my plate. “Speaking of our time together in the past—I had another dream last night.” I glance at him warily.
“Yeah?” His mouth edges up. A dirty smile that makes me want to change the topic entirely.
“I dreamt that we got pregnant.”
His smile fades. “That’s not where I hoped you were going with that,” he finally says. “Which time was it?”
“I was dreaming about London,” I reply. “But when we were in London I knew it had happened before, when we were teenagers. And here’s the thing: both times it was an accident, and in London, at least, it happened fast, probably the very first time we slept together, even though we were careful.”
His wariness turns to open-jawed shock faster than I ever could have imagined. “A teenager’s version of ‘careful’ is probably very different from yours or mine,” he says after a moment. “Believe me, if we dated when I was a teenager I wouldn’t have been capable of ‘careful’ with you.” His gaze flickers to my mouth. “I’m not even sure I’m capable of it now.”
I shake my head. “We were adults in London—you were doing your residency and I was in grad school. And I was on the pill there. It just didn’t work. It’s like we can’t avoid getting pregnant no matter what we do.”
“We must have done something wrong,” he says. There is desperation in his voice.
I want to let him believe it, but I can’t. I lived through London. I remember it in detail. We did nothing wrong. “So you’re willing to believe in time travel but not that some kind of super fertility accompanies it? Dr. Grosbaum said I was a different species, remember?”
He scrubs a hand over his face. “I’m able to believe it but…I just don’t know what the hell this is with us. It’s not like anything I’ve ever experienced before.”
The way he phrases it makes it sound like a bad thing, but at least he’s not calling for the check. “In what way?”
“There’s something going on here I don’t understand,” he says, leaning toward me. Beneath the table his hand squeezes mine. “I had this connection to you from the moment we met. That’s easy enough to explain away… If we really had these other lives together, it makes sense to me that the connection would remain. But it’s more than that. It’s not about our past lives or our present one. It’s like we’re both being led toward something.”
Another piece of the puzzle clicks into place. I hadn’t thought about it consciously, but I know exactly what he means. “There’s some purpose to all of this.”
“Yes,” he says. “And it really bothers me that we don’t know what it is.”
It bothers me too. And thanks to this brain tumor, I’m not sure we’ll get a chance to figure it out.
* * *
When dinner ends he drives me back to Caroline’s, which I guess means my roommate’s long list of places where I could potentially show him my bra won’t be coming into play, not that I expected they would.
We walk into the building slowly. He stops when we reach her door and hesitates. Is he even scared to kiss me now? He leans down, his mouth brushing mine, but there’s a tension in him I haven’t felt before. It’s not until my mouth opens under his, that he finally gives in to it, his kiss harder, needier. The hands that kept their distance land heavily on my hips and my back is pressed to the door as we strain for more friction, more closeness. His mouth moves to my neck, tugging at the skin in a way that makes me gasp. The bulge, currently pressed to my abdomen, seems to pulse with need, and his hand slides under my dress, slips beneath the elastic of my thong. I’m already soaked, gasping at the briefest touch, and he groans above me.
“God I want…” he begins, and suddenly he pushes away with something close to panic on his face. “Sorry,” he says, running a hand through his hair. “Fuck.”
I stare at him, dizzied by the change of direction, longing for him to come back and resume what he was doing seconds before. “What’s wrong?”
His tongue pokes out between his lips and then he shakes his head. “Nothing. I’ll see you tomorrow?”
I nod, bewildered, as he presses a kiss to my forehead and waits for me to unlock the door. What the hell just happened? And what did I do wrong?
* * *
“You look dazed,” Caroline says with a grin as I stumble into the apartment. “He must have done something right.”
I lean against the door. “He didn’t do anything at all.”
“What are you talking about?”
It just ended so abruptly. After all the build-up between us over these long weeks, how could he just walk away like that? “I’m saying he walked me to your door, kissed me, then apologized and left.”
She is outraged. “Why the fuck did he apologize?”
I huff in frustration, slumping into the chair across from her. “Exactly. I don’t get it.”
“And you’re sure he’s single?” she asks. “Because t
his exact thing happened to me with that douche Eric. Remember him? He told me he was single and then he was all weird about it during sex and it turned out he was fucking engaged.”
I close my eyes. “Yes, I’m sure he’s single.”
“Maybe he’s visiting here from the Victorian age, where you only kiss a woman you’re engaged to?”
I laugh, the sound stilted and uncertain. It’s a little unnerving to hear time-travel jokes under the circumstances. “I am going to go out on a limb and say I don’t think that’s it.”
“Then what was it?”
I’d assume it was just what I told him about my possible super-fertility, but it’s not like we were going to get pregnant kissing. And why apologize? I was embarrassingly wet, which he seemed to like well enough for a second but, God, who even knows? I’ve only ever been with Jeff. I know nothing about what men like. “You know how inexperienced I am. Maybe I’m just…bad at it?”
“If this is your way to get me into Cruel Intentions-style girl-on-girl action, you need to say so outright.”
I laugh, and this time it’s a real one. “Fuck off. You know what I mean.”
She throws a pillow at me. “I know what you mean and you’re being an idiot. You kissed plenty of guys while we were in school and there were never any complaints. Maybe he’s just old-fashioned.”
He didn’t used to be, I think to myself. I have a very distinct memory of waking up beside him after our first date. And maybe that’s the issue—those other times he didn’t know where sex with me would lead, and there was nothing at stake. This time, he’s risking his career to enter a relationship that may never get past third base. If he changes his mind, I’m not sure I could even fault him for it.
3
NICK
I feel like there’s a target on my back.
I can tell by the lingering looks as I pass the nurses’ station, the conversations that stop when I walk up, that Meg has been talking, and I’m guessing she didn’t leave out the fact that I’m now dating a patient. This is definitely going to get back to the administration and when it does, things will get complicated.