Intersect: The Parallel Duet, Book 2

by O'Roark, Elizabeth

  My eyes open. It’s Sarah clutching my hand, pressing it to her chest.

  Images explode in my brain. Scenes in which this woman I thought I hated was the person I once loved most. I’m a child playing in the woods behind my house and Nick is there too.

  “I think I’ll marry you when I grow up,” he says. She’s the one who smiles at me in the darkness when I tell her this. She’s the one I’m hiding from in London, because I know she will stop me somehow if she discovers I’m pregnant with twins.

  My mother. The woman who kept changing the timeline, refusing to let me die. Who begged me to kill her in order to save my own life.

  “Mom?” I cry. The word is choked, horrified. I want to stop this, save her, but I still can’t seem to move. “Oh my God. What did you…”

  She squeezes my hand. “I couldn’t lose you. I did the only thing I could think of.” She sounds tired, winded. “The brain tumor—I’d altered too much of your life and your brain couldn’t…keep up. You wouldn’t kill me if you knew who I was. So my brother agreed to raise you.”

  She gave me away. And made me believe she was the enemy.

  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.

  “I’m so sorry,” I weep, clutching her hand. “I’m so sorry.”

  Her eyes flutter open. “It all worked out the way it was supposed to. Just keep the twins safe, because this will change everything.”

  The ice eases from my hips, and then outward. I try to sit up, but she clings to my hand. “Not yet,” she whispers.

  “I’ve got to get help,” I plead. “Tell me what to do.”

  Tears roll down her face and she smiles up at me. “You just did everything I needed you to.”

  “But—” My eyes squeeze shut. It’s too much. It’s happening too fast. “Why is it so hard for me to remember you? How could I not have known who you were? Just please…stay.” I feel so much inside me right now, all this love from another time, for her, and I have no place to pin it because the little I can remember of her is so dim.

  “You shouldn’t have remembered anything at all, sweet girl. You just loved Nick too much to let him go, the same way I did your father.” Her palm rests against my cheek. “I have to tell him it all worked out. We both love you so much.”

  And then her eyes flutter closed for the last time.

  * * *

  “Quinn,” says Nick. The word comes out as a low, pained gasp.

  He’s frozen, standing at the bottom of the stairs. I look down to see that I’m naked, covered in blood. “I’m okay,” I whisper but he’s already crossing the distance between us in two bounding steps. He drops to the ground, pulling me into his lap, and as he does, my mother starts to disappear. First feet, then limbs, then the rest of her. I lean my head against his chest and weep.

  “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.”

  * * *

  We are in a private room in the hospital waiting for MRI results. It’s sterile and brightly lit, silent aside from the clamor in the hallway. It couldn’t be further from the place we left a few hours ago.

  I remember very little about leaving the basement. Nick dressed me and carried me out. There was still no trace of my mother. I hope that means she got wherever she was trying to go.

  In spite of witnessing the way her body disappeared with his own eyes, Nick still doesn’t entirely believe my version of events—my mother has been the villain in his mind for so long he can’t bring himself to see her otherwise. “But she did try to kill you,” he insists. “Remember the hospital? And you say she shot me. So something’s not adding up.”

  I get it…my faith in her is absolute because I remember her—not everything, but enough to know she loved me more than anyone alive. He doesn’t have the benefit of those memories though. “We have no idea what she gave me in the hospital. And she shot you in the leg. If she really wanted to kill you, she could have.”

  He frowns but doesn’t argue. “And you really time traveled? You’re sure?”

  I nod. It was all so fast I’m not even sure what happened myself. If Nick hadn’t found me naked I’d still be wondering if I hadn’t imagined the whole thing.

  There’ve been enough revelations in one day to last a lifetime. Not just about the twins, or that I can time travel, but that my parents were not actually my parents, and the man I thought was my father was actually my uncle. That we were related is something I’m sure my mother didn’t know. I understand why my father kept it to himself—if he was helping Sarah with her plan, he couldn’t risk anyone telling me the truth— but my mom won’t. She’d be so hurt if she learned it now. When I call later, I’ll thank her for raising me, for caring for me so well that I never knew I wasn’t hers. But the thing about my dad is a secret I will take to the grave.

  “I still can’t believe Sarah was your mother,” Nick says. “It’s weird you didn’t remember her at all.”

  It hurts, the empty space where her memories should rest. There’s this ache inside me for her, even though the lives before this one are almost entirely a blank. “I shouldn’t even have been able to remember you,” I tell him. “She didn’t seem to know I could do it, until recently. But yes, if I’d remembered any more than I did it would have all been for nothing.”

  “How did she know it was happening at all?” he asks. “It’s not like we told a lot of people. Was she spying on us?”

  I know the answer to that question, but he definitely isn’t ready to hear it. “No, she wouldn’t do that.” I glance at the clock. “Why is this taking so long?” I ask. “I know I’m fine. Can’t we just leave and have them call us with results?”

  Stabbing my mother cured me, but like everything else, it’s harder for Nick to believe than it is for me. He pushes my hair back from my face, two frown lines between his brows. “Please don’t get your hopes up just yet.”

  My hopes aren’t just up. I’m certain this worked. I have never felt better in my entire life than I do at this moment. There’s an energy coursing through my blood, like some combination of sugar and heat and excitement. I feel powerful.

  And even if I’m not powerful, at the very least I am now brave enough to tell him the truth. 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. It might take a while, but he will. “We need to talk,” I say, swallowing, “about why I stopped jumping in the first place.”

  He raises a brow. “Stopped?”

  I nod. “The first time we were together, in high school? Something happened. It’s been coming together bit by bit over the past few weeks.”

  He squeezes my hand. There is such blind, absolute faith in his expression, and I really pray I don’t lose it once he knows everything. “I’m the reason your brother died.”

  He goes absolutely still. “My brother died in a car accident.”

  “We were all at a party,” I say. I can no longer meet his eye. “You went to get the car and I walked out of the bathroom into this dark room and he kissed me. I only realized he wasn’t you just as you walked into the room and caught us. I never would have gone along with it if I’d realized. But I was drunk and in the darkness…he was your height, he had your voice. I had no clue.”

  “How far—” he begins. He sounds gutted. “How far did it go?”

  I haven’t even gotten to the bad part and he’s already destroyed. “Not very. It was just kissing and when he tried to…when he tried to do more I knew it wasn’t you. You were never aggressive like that.”

  His jaw ticks at the corner. “And then what happened?”

  I tell him the rest. How the two of them got into a fistfight unlike anything
I’d ever seen before, both big enough to do damage and so evenly matched that neither would back down. I tell him how I panicked, watching it, until it occurred to me I could fix it.

  When I conclude, his body is rigid, his tone neutral only by force. “I don’t see how that makes you responsible for Ryan’s death.”

  “If we’d been there, he wouldn’t have gotten in Tyler’s truck. I wanted to tell you the truth, but I just couldn’t,” I admit. “I was too scared you’d hate me afterward.”

  I see emotion filter through his expression at long last. A flash of surprise. “You really thought I’d blame you?” he asks.

  “Who else could you possibly blame? I’m the reason we weren’t at that party to give Ryan a ride home.”

  “I blame Ryan,” he says angrily. I jolt a little at his tone and he tugs my hand into his. “I’m sorry. I’m pissed off right now but not with you. I’ve spent over a decade thinking I should have gone to that party, but it wouldn’t have made a difference, would it? He was still getting in Tyler’s truck no matter what I did.”

  “But—”

  “No. Ryan did a shitty thing. You can’t tell me he didn’t know he was tricking you, grabbing you in a dark room like that, and I’d kick his ass for it all over again if he was here now. What this tells me is he was going to ride with Tyler no matter what.”

  I look at him with wide eyes. Maybe I should just accept his forgiveness and move on, but I don’t think he really gets it. “If I hadn’t tried to change things, he might have come home with us.”

  He laughs, but the sound is harsh and unhappy. “Are you kidding me? Do you actually remember my brother, Quinn? He was stubborn, and he hated to lose. If we were fighting over you, I guarantee there’s no way he’d ride home with the two of us from that party. And maybe he’d still have gone with Tyler and maybe he wouldn’t have, but my guess is that nothing you did changed anything for Ryan.”

  I shake my head. “You’re taking this way better than I expected.”

  He pulls my hands into his lap, holding them between his. “I’ve been sick with guilt about his death for over a decade. And now you’ve just given me the original story, and it’s one in which I am not the villain, and you aren’t either. 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.”

  I realize, suddenly, that he can’t remember what I said to him in the basement. He’s said he loves me so many times now, and here he is still patiently waiting for me to come around. “I love you,” I whisper. “I should have said it a long time ago.”

  His palms slide to either side of my face, and his lips brush mine. Our foreheads rest against each other’s, noses touching. “I knew,” he says with a small grin. “But I’m glad you figured it out too. It would be awkward to propose to a girl who can’t even admit she likes you.”

  I pull back. “Propose?”

  He bites down on his lip to keep from laughing. “Have you forgotten we’re having twins already?”

  I guess I should have known this would come. He’s the kind of guy who steps up, always. But this isn’t like our other lives, when we’d been together a while before it happened, and he shouldn’t have to marry a semi-stranger until he’s actually ready for marriage. “You don’t have to do that,” I tell him. “It’s still really early and I’m just not that old-fashioned.”

  He laughs and pulls me into his lap. “Do you honestly think I’m asking out of obligation? I’ve been planning this since the night I drove to your mom’s house.”

  I smile, warmth spreading through my chest, and press my mouth to the corner of his jaw. “Okay, but you are not allowed to propose to me in a hospital room.”

  There’s a sharp tap on the door, and the attending walks in. His eyebrows raise for a moment at the sight of us, me in Nick’s lap, our mouths a hair’s breadth apart. But we’re in the city of love, after all. I figured they’d expect it here. I sheepishly rise and take my seat.

  “Bonjour,” he says. “You’re American, yes?”

  We nod, and Nick grabs my hand hard, channeling all his fear into it. “You’ve got the scans?” he asks.

  The doctor nods, shifting uncomfortably. He’s frowning, and my heart starts to tap in my chest, faster and faster. I really believed what my mother just did would save me, would save all of us. All the effort she made, the years she put in, what she gave up…it cannot be for nothing. But the look on his face alone is crushing my hope into a million pieces. Nick’s shoulders go rigid, bracing for the worst. “The staff, uh, they tell me you are a neurologist?” he says to Nick.

  Nick nods and glances at me. Fear is written all over his face. His hand presses tighter.

  “We do not have your images from before,” the doctor says, moving to the light board, “but I am confused.” He hangs the scans up, one and then the next. “You said she had a brain tumor, but we see nothing there.”

  I’m not a doctor, but even I can see that each image shows a perfect, tumor-free brain.

  Nick’s utter shock turns to something else. He swallows hard, stares at the floor as he tries to compose himself. “I guess,” he says in a choked voice, squeezing my hand, “that you were right about your mom after all.”

  34

  QUINN

  When I wake the next morning in the hotel, I’m alone. A note on the nightstand from Nick tells me he’s off finding “breakfast for the four of us.” I lie back, smiling at the ceiling. It was a long time coming, and a lot of sorrow on the way, but I think we’re finally getting our happy ending.

  I called my mother—the one who raised me in this life—last night. She was so relieved by my news about the tumor that she didn’t even ask about the emergency I’d mentioned earlier on the phone. She did ask if I’d consider going back to Jeff now that I’m healthy again and I laughed. I haven’t told her about the pregnancy yet—it’s best to give her surprises in small doses—but given that I’m carrying someone else’s kids, I seriously doubt Jeff would want me back even if I were willing.

  I hop into the shower, eager for this last day in Paris with Nick, and just as eager to get home and start our lives. He’s returning with two full bags of something fragrant and newly baked when I emerge.

  “When you said you were buying food for four,” I say, tying the sash of my robe, “I didn’t realize you meant it literally.”

  He grins, a little sheepish. “I got carried away. You’ll probably need to get used to it.” He hands me a Styrofoam cup. “Caffeine-free.”

  I accept the coffee and blow on the steam coming from the lid, while he opens a bag and pulls out a variety of pastries. “Why do I feel like you’re buttering me up?” I ask.

  He exhales. “I grabbed something from the desk at Sarah’s yesterday,” he says. He goes to his laptop bag and hands me a manila envelope with my name on the front. “Things were so heavy at the time that I thought I should wait. But since I’m not sure what’s in there, you probably need to take a look before we go home. I can give you some time alone to go through it if you want.”

  I take a seat on the bed, patting the spot beside me, and then I carefully unclasp the envelope. Inside, the stack of papers clipped together is nearly an inch thick. I remove the letter on the very top and hand the rest of the pile to him. In a way I don’t want to read it. This is the last thing I’ll ever receive from my mother, the last piece of her I’ll hold. But I hope, at the same time, that it will help me remember her.

  To my Beautiful Daughter —

  In this envelope you’ll find deeds to some of my properties, and my lawyer will pass on the rest soon. Needless to say, it is all yours now. I have taken care of things so there will be no questions about my disappearance. And there are some photos here to help both of you, but I’ve broken my own rules to acquire them. Once you begin time traveling, you should take pains not to be photographed.

  And now for the hard part. I’ve had a long time to think abo
ut what I would put in this letter, and yet now that it’s finally time to write it, I’m at a loss. There are no words for how much I wish I could be there during this next stage of your life, how much I wish I could be a grandmother to your girls, but I’m so grateful you’ve made it where you are that it’s hard to want for much at the moment.

  Never regret what happened. Your daughters needed you, not me. There will be times, I know, when you will question this, but you shouldn’t. Remember, I saw the outcome of them growing up without you and I know exactly how it would have turned out. They would have come far too soon, leaving one of them very ill and one of them bitter, with a father who never quite recovered from losing you. You will change all that. You will give all of them the life they are meant to have. There’s more, but it can wait. Come back to see me and let me know how it all turned out.

  All my love,

  Mom

  I can’t say it helped me remember her, but there’s still hope. Eventually I’ll go back and get reacquainted with the mother I don’t remember and, perhaps too, with the father I never met. I brush at my eyes and turn to him. My voice is raspy. “Anything there?”

  He starts shuffling through the papers. “You have property,” he says. “You have a lot of property. Greece, Paris, London, Brazil, California…Jesus, it goes on and on.”

  My breath releases in an audible huff. After an entire lifetime spent worrying about money, I’ll never have to worry about it again. I wonder why she never shared it with my father—uncle, I correct, though he will always seem like my dad—but realize she probably tried and he was just too proud to take it. “I suspect that’s the tip of the iceberg,” I say quietly.

  He presses his mouth close to my ear. “So you’re telling me I fell in love with an unemployed student and it turns out she may be an heiress?”