“It must be the Rule of Threes. She doesn’t want you to have a child because that child would be the fourth in the line.”
Her shoulders sag. “It can’t be that. I’m not pregnant, obviously. She knows how unlikely it is that I ever will be. It must be the spark thing. She wants mine.”
“I’ll stop her before that happens,” I reply. Though God knows I’ve got no fucking idea how. “I’ve got her address. I’ll get you home and go check it out.”
She springs to her feet. “I’ll come with you.”
“Not a fucking chance are you getting anywhere near her,” I say, grinding my teeth. “She’s already tried to kill you once that we know of, Quinn. I’m a big guy, but even I can’t be sure you’re safe around someone who can vanish in midair and reappear anywhere she wants.”
“Well, you’re sure as hell not going alone,” she snaps.
I blow out a heavy, aggravated breath. Does she not realize how much danger she’s in? Does she not realize having her there would only make things worse, and that I just want to know she’s safe?
She rubs a finger over her lower lip and looks out the window, where the sun is shining and life isn’t painful, ending, for the people who walk by. “Let’s get out of here. Please. I don’t want to think about this now.”
“We will,” I tell her. “Soon. Let me just take care of a few things first.” After she agrees, I walk out of the hospital and head straight to my car.
Honesty, I’ve decided, is highly overrated.
* * *
Outside, the air is crisp, less humid than normal, the first hint that summer might be on the way out. It’s start-of-the-school-year weather. When I was a kid, it always felt like a time for new beginnings, for optimism, but when I arrive at Sarah’s pristine Georgetown home, all optimism fades. I’d expected, for some reason, to find the kind of place you’d see in a horror film—a creepy old Victorian, shutters hanging ajar, a broken window or two. But it couldn’t be further from that. Like every other place on the street, it’s worth millions. Confirming what I should have known all along: there is nothing this woman needs and therefore nothing I can bargain with.
I start up her walkway anyhow, but pause when I see the three newspapers in her yard. It means she probably hasn’t come home since her little adventure in the hospital.
Fuck.
I’m not going back to the hospital empty-handed, and I’m sure as shit not setting this up so Quinn can return with me. Something needs to happen now. I glance around. The street is mostly empty, and even if someone’s looking out their window, it’s Sunday morning—I doubt anyone’s going to pay much attention. I head down the small alley leading to the rear of her home and climb the stairs to her back deck, laughing at the futility of what I’m about to attempt. It is wildly unlikely a woman with this much money has left a door unlocked. It’s also wildly unlikely she doesn’t have a security system. I’m going to wind up in jail today, and then what? Who tracks this woman down while I’m behind bars? Jeff would be more likely to imprison Quinn in his home than help us out.
The door is locked—no surprises there—so I look for something I can wrap around my hand to punch in the glass. I’m about to remove my shirt when I glance at the doormat.
She wouldn’t leave a key, would she? It would be idiocy, and she doesn’t strike me as a stupid woman. Yet when I use the tip of my shoe to lift the mat, brass gleams. It’s as if the key was waiting here just for me.
I slide it into the lock, pausing for a moment to strategize. I’ll only have a minute before the alarm goes off, and maybe another minute or two before cops arrive. So three minutes max, and I don’t even know what I’m looking for.
I take a deep breath and push the door open. I’m as surprised by the lack of a warning chime when I enter as I am by what I find inside: Sarah lives very well. Not that I’ve ever given a lot of thought to what a time traveler’s home would look like, but I guess I’d have expected antiques, lace doilies, needlepoint pillows, and creepy dolls. Instead I stand in a kitchen with thick marble countertops, gleaming fixtures. A glass table without a single fingerprint on it. Quinn’s aunt is either OCD or has a whole lot of cleaning help.
I carefully place one foot after another, making my way through the kitchen, not sure what I’m looking for. I guess she wouldn’t have left anything quite so obvious as a list of her diabolical plans. Just beyond the kitchen I find a small room that appears to be Sarah’s office. Books and files are stacked to the ceiling, but I may not have to investigate any of it because there, atop the glass desk, is Sarah’s planner. I slide it toward me, scanning the August calendar. A small sticky note rests on yesterday’s date: IAD to CDG, 6:30 p.m.
Dulles Airport to Charles De Gaulle. The next three weeks are blocked out.
She is in fucking Paris for the next three weeks.
I slam my hands down on the desk. I don’t know if Quinn even has three weeks to wait. I’ve tried to be optimistic, but my gut feeling is that if the tumor makes another leap like the last one, she will not leave the hospital the next time she goes in.
I flip through the planner, looking for any other sign of where she may have gone, and come up with only this—scribbled on the back of an envelope, an address: 37 Rue des Trois Freres.
I could go there. It’s such a fucking longshot, but it’s all we have. I can’t imagine leaving Quinn right now, when anything could happen—these might be our last weeks together—but I can’t not try. I can’t.
I head out the back door, replacing the key under the mat. Shocked that I’ve gotten away with it. But next comes the really hard part: telling Quinn I’m leaving.
22
QUINN
Nick’s “last-minute things” take forever.
Some of my impatience has to do with Sarah, but mostly it’s the way the clock is ticking faster. Nick and I no longer have a year. We might not have a month, or a week. At the start of each new hour, I acknowledge the possibility that it could be my last. And I don’t want to spend it here, especially away from him.
By the time he finally returns, I’m going nuts. I know he has other obligations, but how does he not see the urgency here?
“You ready?” he asks. His face is deadly serious, and there’s a rigidity to his shoulders that wasn’t there when he left.
I was irritated a second ago. Now I’m just scared. “Is everything okay?”
“Yeah,” he says, but his glance flickers away.
He’s quiet during the drive home, his fingers twined so tightly through mine it almost hurts. What happened after he left my room? There are so many things it could be—my prognosis or his job seem the most likely contenders—but I’m praying it’s something simple. Maybe he’s just eager to get back to work.
We get into the house and I turn to him. “Don’t feel like you have to stay home with me today. I know you’ve got a lot going on.” Every bone in my body wants to beg him not to go, but what I want even more than that is to fix this, whatever it is.
His tongue pokes inside his cheek. “About that,” he says. “It’s nothing to worry about, but I got placed on administrative leave.”
I gasp. “What?”
“It’s fine. Jeff complained to the board. I knew it would happen even before I hit him, and I just didn’t care. I still don’t.”
I feel sick. It really happened, just like Jeff said it would. “God. I’m so sorry,” I whisper, pressing my face to his chest. “Tell me what to do. I’ll give a sworn statement that we were childhood friends. I’ll swear we’re not together.”
He gives me a half-smile. “It’s going to be fine. If they fire me, they fire me. I’ll find another job.”
“It’s not fine. You really think I can’t tell when you’re upset?”
“It’s not about the job,” he says, sighing into my hair. He places his hands on my shoulders, holding me in place. “I went to your aunt’s house. When I told you I had some stuff to do at the hospital.”
My jaw
drops along with my stomach. “How could you do that? Oh my God. Do you realize how badly it could have gone?”
His mouth curves into an almost-smile. “I’m 6’5” and she’s not any bigger than you. What exactly do you think she could have done to me? Anyway, she wasn’t there. I found a key under the mat at the back of her house and—”
“Oh my God,” I groan, staring at the ceiling. “Please tell me you didn’t break in.”
“I didn’t have to break in. There was a key, remember? But my point is that I found her planner…and she’s gone. She flew to Paris last night.”
“Oh.” I’m not sure what I thought it would accomplish, going after her. But that it’s all amounted to nothing knocks the air from my lungs. “Wait. Why the hell would a time traveler need to fly? Couldn’t she just, like, wish herself there?”
“I have no idea. Maybe there are rules. Maybe she just sucks at it. We know nothing. Which is why I’m going to Paris.”
I stiffen. “No.”
“It’s our only chance,” he says, placing his palm against my cheek. “I have no idea how your tumor is going to progress, but we may not have time to wait for her to get back.”
“Then I’ll come with you.”
“You can’t,” he says softly. “God forbid, but what if you had a medical emergency halfway over the Atlantic? You might need oxygen. You might need…Jesus, there’s so much you might need if it happens again that I can’t stand to think about it. And they can’t do an emergency landing in the middle of the ocean. It’s just for a day or two.”
I stare at him, feeling completely helpless. I know I can’t dissuade him, but I still have to try. “She’s insane, Nick, and she can time travel. What are you going to do when she vanishes and appears behind you with a loaded gun? Use your medal-winning butterfly stroke to disarm her?”
He pushes the hair back behind my ear. “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.”
I meet his gaze. His desperate, determined gaze. There is not a thing I can say to stop him. I press my forehead to his chest, trying to stave off tears. “When?”
“I’ve got a ticket on the six o’clock direct flight out of Dulles tomorrow. Tonight’s was already full.”
A sob swells in my throat and I can’t contain it. “These could be our last hours together,” I whisper.
“Don’t,” he says. His palms hold my face. “Don’t even think it.”
“But—”
His mouth closes on mine, stopping my words but not my thoughts or my desperation. The kiss is hard, punishing, as if it can somehow make the truth other than what it is, and my fervor matches his, fueled by the knowledge it might never happen again.
I’m still crying, even as need coils tight in my stomach. My hands tug at the hem of his shirt and pull it over his head. My fingers are greedy. It’s not enough for them to trail over his shoulders, his biceps, his chest. They want to absorb him, consume him whole.
He grabs my ass and yanks me against him, hard, groaning as his mouth descends to my neck. My shirt is removed, my bra is released with a quick flick of his fingers. That old voice, the one that warns about the consequences of going too far, is silent. I no longer care what it means to give him everything. How could it possibly matter at this point, when it might be our last chance?
My shorts slide to the floor, and his follow, his hands clenched with need as they pull my hips toward him again. “Quinn,” he growls. “I need more. I’m not going to stop this time.”
“I don’t want you to.”
He lifts me onto the couch and is above me in seconds, fingers slick between my legs, confirming what I already know: I’m so ready for this. Beyond ready.
He grabs himself, sliding against me once and then twice before his cock sits right at my entrance. The tip presses, stretches me and I need more, everything. “Do it,” I beg. He slides inside me slowly, with excruciating care. I know he’s worried, trying to let me adjust, except I don’t want him to go slowly. I’m so stretched and so full I can barely think, but I want more. When he finally bottoms out, he freezes there for a moment, a small, ragged noise at the base of his throat.
“Are you okay?” he grunts, eyes squeezed tightly shut, holding himself still.
God yes. I’d say this aloud but all that comes out is a moan. I arch against him, demanding more, and he gives it to me, slowly pulling out, coming back. We are sweating and slick, gliding against each other, mouths pressed to skin. My nails bite into his back and I clench him like a fist, holding him there on this high wire, pleasure so intense it’s almost painful. “Don’t,” he begs. “You’re so tight and I’m too close. I don’t want it to end yet.”
I don’t either, but when he starts to move again, more forcefully now, I feel that sharp pluck in my belly and arch up. Swelling and tightening around him. He pulls my legs up, over his shoulders, hitting an angle that has me gasping and helpless. “Faster,” I demand and he complies, his mouth on mine, the muscles of his back tightening beneath my calves. I dig my heels in and he thrusts harder, triggering an orgasm so violent I can’t even hear my own noises. I’m deaf and blind as I give over to it, soaring through a constellation of stars, only vaguely aware that any world exists beyond the two of us. He slams into me and then his pace jerks, stutters. He comes with a sound that is pained and relieved at the same time.
His forehead lands against my chest. He’s dead weight, pressing me into the couch. I welcome it. The last wave of pleasure recedes and when it does I finally find it—the deep contentment I’ve been chasing since the day I laid eyes on him. The satisfaction that’s eluded me no matter what else we did, no matter how many times I’ve come.
“Holy shit,” he gasps, still winded.
I barely feel capable of speech. “Yes.” I exhale. “We’re probably going to need a new couch now.”
He falls to the side, his body loose with exhaustion, and pulls a throw blanket over us both. “Totally worth it. Christ, I needed that. I had no idea how badly until now.”
God, me too. Everything we’ve done before, no matter how perfect, pales by contrast. I smile against his chest. “It was amazing. So amazing we probably ought to try it again.”
“I don’t see us doing much of anything else until I leave,” he replies. “I’ve spent fifty percent of my waking hours thinking about this for months now.”
I smile up at him. “Only fifty percent?”
He grins sheepishly. “I do have to think about doctor shit occasionally. And I thought it would sound creepy if I said ninety.”
Is sex supposed to be like this? I’m not sure. It’s not like I had complaints when I was with Jeff. It was fine. But it was never this. And I have no other basis for comparison. “Is it always…” I trail off, embarrassed by the question. “Was this normal?”
He laughs, leaning up on his forearm to press a kiss to the top of my head. “I can’t speak for you, but no…for me, this was really different. Why?”
I sigh. I don’t want to be the person who sees something supernatural about every single thing in my life that’s different from the norm, because everyone has moments that are different—when you make a wish and thirty seconds later there’s a shooting star, or when you’re thinking about a song you really want to hear and it’s the one that plays next. And yet… “I know that I want to be with you, that this is exactly where I’m supposed to be. I just sometimes wonder if the universe is trying to, I don’t know, incentivize us. Everything is so heightened. We talked about there being some purpose to all this. I think this is a part of it.”
His hands rake through my hair. “Yeah, it occurred to me. Or maybe it’s just that this was meant to be.”
I like his explanation better. And even if there’s more going on here, it doesn’t mean he’s wrong.
* * *
Many hours later, after we made it to the bed and exhau
sted ourselves into sleep, we wind up in the kitchen, naked still—the benefit of having a private backyard.
“I had no idea I was so hungry,” I groan, pushing the remains of a second sandwich away from me.
Something flickers in his eyes and his smile fades. “You just got out of the hospital,” he says. “And you barely ate yesterday. I shouldn’t have—”
“Stop,” I reply, climbing into his lap. “I know where you’re going with that and just stop, right now. It was…” our last chance. “It was just something that had to happen.”
“When you’re in my lap naked, you make it very hard to have a real conversation,” he says with a sharp inhale, hardening beneath 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.”
I press my mouth to his forehead. It’s as close to a promise as I can get.
23
NICK
I arrive at Charles de Gaulle on Tuesday morning, exhausted and determined, and in no fucking mood for the line at Customs, which stretches as far as the eye can see. I should be home in bed with Quinn right now. For the briefest moment I allow myself to imagine the feel of her wrapped around me, all lush curves and smooth skin. Her face at rest, the graceful perfection of it—soft mouth, long lashes. My heart twists in my chest. I’ve been missing her since the moment I boarded the plane last night, staring at the cellophane-wrapped blanket in the seat next to mine and wishing it were hers. I’d have been content just to have her head resting on my shoulder, although an overnight flight under the cover of two blankets would have made for an interesting trip as well.
Intersect: The Parallel Duet, Book 2 Page 14
