Intersect: The Parallel Duet, Book 2

by O'Roark, Elizabeth

My lips tug upward. “I hope you’ll be able to live with it.”

  “I’ll manage,” he says with a grin, which fades when he shuffles through the last of the papers and comes to the photos.

  Photos of us, together. In a previous life.

  “What the hell?” Nick whispers.

  In the first, we are in the treehouse—I’m sitting between him and Ryan, and all three of us are grinning wide, missing teeth. The second is the two of us at the lake as teenagers. The shot is taken from behind, but our faces can be seen in profile. The third is of us dressed up for a dance of some kind, maybe in college. Me with regrettable hair and him all arms and legs in a tux that doesn’t fit quite right.

  “Are they photoshopped?” he asks.

  I smile, marveling at my mother once again. “No. There are elements here you can’t fake. So even if someone wanted to argue that we’d Photoshopped it, any expert would testify on our behalf that it couldn’t be done.”

  “But how? If you can’t even time travel with clothes, how the hell can you time travel with photos?”

  I shake my head. I have no idea. While some of my memory has returned, time traveling and its rules remain, for the most part, a complete blank. “I don’t know. Now do you believe my mother wasn’t evil?”

  His smile fades. “I’m getting there, but there’s something we need to discuss. What she said, about going back to see her—” He sighs. “I know you’re going to want to go, and I know I can’t stop you. I shouldn’t even ask. But…I can’t get Grosbaum’s wife and my grandmother out of my head.”

  “Grosbaum’s wife was probably doing things I wouldn’t,” I argue. “Your grandmother too. I’m not looking to go to China in the 1600s or something.”

  “You have no idea what they did,” he counters, “but you do know they had more experience at it than you. Quinn, I…” He stops, jaw grinding as he runs a hand through his hair. “I couldn’t fucking stand it if you were stuck somewhere. Not knowing if you were safe. I couldn’t. I feel like I just got you back.”

  I swallow. I’d feel the same way if our situations were reversed. “I know,” I reply. “And I swear I won’t go crazy with it. But I do need to go see my mom, somehow. There are things I need to learn and not just out of curiosity.”

  He leans forward unhappily, elbows to thighs. “Like what?”

  “We are going to have twins who time travel, Nick. And they’re especially good at it, according to my mother. We can’t go into it blind.”

  His eyes close. I wish I could give him the simple life he’d have with someone else. A life where his girlfriend can’t be stuck in another time, where his children won’t be in danger. Except he didn’t want that life in the first place. I already know he’d choose this one with me, dangers notwithstanding, a thousand times over.

  “Then at least promise me you’ll wait,” he finally says. “It’s bad enough to worry about you, but the thought of you somewhere pregnant kills me. What if something happened? Even if you survived you’d have children you couldn’t bring back and I’d never even know if you were okay.”

  My stomach churns. I hadn’t thought about that. The twins could be stuck somewhere with me for well over a decade before they came into their powers. Nick would miss their entire childhoods. “But Darcy…”

  He shakes his head. “I already know what you’re going to say and believe me, I want to go back and change what happened to her as much as you do, but you can’t risk three lives to save one. Even if it’s hers.”

  My mouth opens to object and no words come out. He’s absolutely right. I just don’t want him to be.

  “Quinn,” he says, pushing my hair back from my face, “even if you managed to go back a few years, where would you even go? You might be able to find Sarah, but if you couldn’t…what then? I didn’t know you. There’s a small chance you’d fix things and a huge chance you’d make things worse.”

  I picture it, me meeting Nick a few years back—I’d be a stranger to him. A naked stranger, begging him to listen to my story about time travel…it could ruin everything. But saving Darcy was my one goal other than saving myself. And now I’m going to abandon her.

  “Maybe we’ll find Rose,” says Nick. “Maybe Sarah left names in her office of people we can talk to.”

  I nod. I know it’s the responsible decision. But it feels like the wrong one.

  35

  QUINN

  On the way to the airport, we take a quick detour…back to Cecelia, the palm reader who must have helped my mother with her plot. She opens the door, and when she sees me her eyes fill with tears.

  “Ça fait longtemps, Quinn,” she says, placing a hand on my face. It’s been a long time.

  “Je suis désolée,” I reply, glancing from her to Nick in alarm. “Je ne pense pas vous avoir déjà rencontrée.” I’m sorry. I don’t think we’ve met.

  Nick gawks at me. “Since when do you speak French?” It’s only his question that makes me realize I am speaking French. Fluently. The words tripped off my tongue without forethought. “I…have no idea.”

  “And unlike you,” says Cecelia to Nick, brushing away her tears, “her accent is flawless. Come in, come in. You have questions.”

  We follow her inside. We take seats at a small table while she puts her dogs out back. I look around the room—Nick was right. It does look like something out of the 1600s. “Wow,” I whisper to Nick, directing his glance upward. “Look at how they did the ceiling.”

  I hear a low laugh from the base of his chest. “Only you would visit a psychic palm reader to learn about your time traveling mother and be fascinated by the ceiling of her house instead.”

  Cecelia comes back into the room and takes a seat. “I suppose you have many questions.”

  I don’t even know where to begin, but Nick does, apparently. “Did you know the plan all along?” he asks. There’s a hint of accusation in his voice—I think it’s going to be a long time before he gets over what we went through—but it doesn’t seem to bother her in the least.

  She smiles. “Oh yes. That was my niece you chased out of the basement. Don’t worry. She loves helping.”

  Nick shakes his head. “Why all the insanity though? Why make us come to Paris?”

  Sadness flickers across her features for a moment. “Sarah wanted to be near Quinn’s father. She worried, in her weakened state, that she might not be able to master traveling through both time and place. That basement was where he died.”

  It saddens me that my father is dead, and I’ll never know him, but not as much as it might under other circumstances. The truth is I had a father, a good one. And I would never want to change that. “Did you…know him?” I ask.

  Her eyes go a little brighter. “Not well, but yes. He was a wonderful man.”

  “I don’t even know his name.”

  She twists a ring on her finger. “All good things in time, Quinn. You’ll learn everything when you’re ready for it.”

  The temptation to argue with her is strong. Why do I need to be ready just to learn my own father’s name?

  “Things could have gone wrong so easily,” Nick says. “If just one of those steps hadn’t worked or if it had gone on a week longer, Quinn might have died.”

  “Sarah would have just changed the timeline again,” Cecelia says. “In fact she had to change several things…Nick’s little scuffle at the bar went a lot worse the first time. She went back and had the cops appear before it could go too far. But you did cut it very close with that tumor, didn’t you?” she says, turning to me. “We bought you more time with the herbs in your IV, but the future seemed to change on a daily basis. Anyhow, it all worked out. Your mother will be pleased.”

  My head jerks. “Will be?”

  “I have no doubt she jumped to the future too. You’ll see her again there, as will I.”

  My pulse takes an excited leap. I thought we’d have to struggle to find someone to help Darcy. Perhaps we won’t. “Then can you also…?”

&
nbsp; She shakes her head. “No, no. It’s quite rare, you know. My grandmother and aunt could, but the ability to reproduce among your kind seems to be dying out rapidly. Fewer and fewer of you are born, and your survival…well, you know.”

  “I’m having two time travelers by accident,” I reply quietly, pressing my hand to my stomach. “It can’t be that hard to reproduce.”

  “Twins among your kind are unheard of,” she says softly. “They are special, your girls. Your mother and I, we both thought they must have a purpose.”

  “What kind of purpose?” Nick asks with an edge to his voice. His chair slides backward. Already he’s thinking he needs to find a way to protect them from whatever lies in their future. I’m pretty sure he can’t.

  She shakes her head. “I don’t know. That’s for them to discover.” She looks back at me and her eyes soften. “The last time I saw you, you were an infant. Before your mother gave you away. Oh, how she wept when you left. But I’ve followed your life through all the pictures her brother sent.”

  I swallow hard. It hurts a little, that he knew and kept it a secret. I know he did it for me, and that hurts in another way. I wish I could thank him. It had to have been so difficult to keep it all to himself. “Did he know? That I could jump?”

  She nods. “Oh yes. He believed you would learn to time travel when you became a teenager, that you’d save yourself.”

  “But I didn’t,” I reply, feeling that all-too familiar grief in my throat. All the stories he told me as a kid…they were allegories. He was trying to convince me not to fear it. Perhaps it’s why, at the end, he pushed me so hard to marry Jeff. He thought he could save me by keeping me from Nick instead. “He never lived to learn that it all worked out.”

  “You can go back and tell him,” she says.

  Nick tenses at that but I lean forward. Even if I can’t time travel right now, we’ve got to find someone who can. “We have a friend, a little girl. We need to find someone who can go back in time to warn her about something, but I can’t risk trying it while I’m pregnant. Do you know of anyone who can help us?”

  She shakes her head. “There is much secrecy, you know. You can only tell someone with whom you share blood.”

  “But…you’re discussing it with me now. And my mother discussed it with you.”

  Her smile is gentle. “A mystery for another time, mon cheri. You have a plane to catch, yes?”

  We nod and rise reluctantly, thanking her, though the visit was hardly enlightening. When we reach the door, she stops and grabs my hand, whispering to me in rapid-fire French. Saying words she already knows Nick will object to.

  He waits until we’re walking to the car before he asks what she said.

  “You won’t like it.” I can’t say I liked it much myself.

  “Tell me anyway.”

  I sigh, turning to face him while he opens the car door. “She said it’s not just the twins who are powerful, that my gift is meant to be shared.”

  His jaw flexes. “You’re right. I don’t like it.”

  She predicted his reaction too. “And she also said overcoming my fear was only half the battle. Overcoming yours is the other half.”

  His mouth is set in a grim line. “Quinn—”

  I open the door, shoulders sagging in resignation. “I know. I know what I promised.”

  I think of Darcy. I’m still not sure it’s a promise I should have made.

  36

  QUINN

  By the time we land at Dulles, Nick’s received an email from the hospital board, who examined our photos and deemed that the relationship was not a breach of ethics. Unfortunately, this means they expect him to report to work the next day.

  I lean my head against his shoulder as we ride home from the airport. “I was really looking forward to a few days with you, where no one has imminent death hanging over their heads.”

  He pulls me closer. “We can get away for a few days next month. Let me just get all my patients taken care of and put in for leave.”

  “Doctors get to put in for leave,” I pout. “Students do not.”

  I see a quick flash of his dimple. “I bet your professors would understand if you missed a day or two because you were on your honeymoon.”

  I laugh. He’s relentless—this is at least the fifth time he’s brought up marriage—but I sort of love it. “What would everyone say? I just called off my last engagement a month ago.”

  “I don’t give a fuck what they’d say,” Nick replies. “When we hit our 50th wedding anniversary, they’ll know they were wrong.”

  “You really pick the most romantic places to discuss this,” I reply as the driver turns onto our street. “Hospital, cab ride. I’m assuming you’ll propose while I’m peeing or vomiting next."

  “Those weren’t proposals.” He grins. “Believe me, when I propose, it’ll be memor—”

  His words are cut off by a low groan. My low groan.

  Jeff is sitting on our front steps.

  “What the fuck?” Nick snaps.

  “My mom.” I smack my head. “She must have told him when we were getting in.”

  “I think it’s time you have a conversation with your mom about who she’s providing information to,” he says. “Stay in the car. I’ll deal with this.”

  “If I’m capable of stabbing my own mother,” I reply, climbing out after him and ignoring the driver’s gaping mouth, “I’m capable of dealing with Jeff.”

  Nick turns toward the walkway and sets the bags down in front of him. “Get off my property,” he says. His voice is flat, calm, but somehow far more threatening that way. “I’ve already kicked your ass once and I’d be more than happy to do it again.”

  “I want to talk to Quinn,” Jeff says, moving toward us.

  I step forward and Nick gives me the side-eye. “You never listen,” he mutters.

  I glance up at him, trying not to smile, before I turn back to Jeff. “Say what you have to say.”

  Jeff’s eyes shift to Nick. “I don’t want him here.”

  Nick growls in response. “If you think I’m leaving you alone with her, you’re out of your mind.”

  Jeff visibly struggles to control his temper. I wait impatiently, already knowing exactly what he will say. I’ve heard it so many times now that a part of me doesn’t feel capable of listening to it again. “I just want to know why you—” he begins.

  I can’t do it. I can’t listen to him even one more time. “I’m pregnant.”

  He actually steps backward, as if he’s been struck. “Bullshit,” he whispers.

  I pull my T-shirt up just enough that he can see the swell of my stomach. A swell that’s never been there before. Even I can’t imagine why I’m showing so soon, but today it’s come in handy. Because I see, in his shock, that this is the one way to make Jeff give up.

  He stares so intently that Nick finally tugs my shirt back down. “Whose is it?” he asks mutinously.

  “I think you know the answer to that,” I reply. It’s been months since we slept together.

  The ugly words he wants to say are flashing across his face. But I know how he was raised—I’m going to be a mother, which creates a line he won’t cross.

  He swallows. Holds his ground. Then marches past us without a word.

  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.”

  37

  QUINN

  Nick is up bright and early the day after we get home, trying to get back on schedule.

  I watch him pack his gym bag, smiling to myself. These tiny moments with him aren’t something ephemeral, they’re something I mi
ght get to live again and again. It seems like too much good fortune for one person. “We could have sixty more years like this.”

  He looks over and grins. “I was just thinking the same thing. Although it was mostly to convince myself I’ll have plenty of opportunities to climb back in bed with you.”

  I stretch my arms overhead. “You should totally climb back in bed with me,” I reply throatily.

  His eyes move over me, linger on my curves under a single flat sheet, before he forces himself to look away. “You should be sleeping in while you can,” he says. “And you’re not eating enough either. Red Gatorade is not food.”

  The craving for Gatorade—and absolutely nothing else—is new. Maybe the twins are going to be athletes. “I feel like a million bucks. I’m pregnant, not dying.”

  His eyes close and he smiles. “You’re going to be a complete pain in the ass about this, aren’t you?”

  I laugh. I was just thinking the exact same thing about him. “Fine. Go to work. I can’t wait to hear what your colleagues have to say when they find out you’re dating an undergrad.”

  “I think the bigger news will be that I knocked up an undergrad,” he mutters, knotting his tie. He presses a kiss to my forehead. “I hope you plan to rest today. You’ve been through a lot the past few weeks.”

  Argh. I suspect he will not approve of my plans for the day. “I was thinking I’d go by my mom’s place in Georgetown to see if she left any files. There may be someone I can contact to help Darcy.”

  He frowns. “I just get through suggesting you rest, and you respond by telling me you plan to break and enter?”

  “It’s not breaking and entering if it’s my home.”

  He arches a brow. “The title wasn’t in the papers she left us. So do you have a single way to prove it’s yours?”

  “Yes,” I say, petulant as a child, “but I may need to break and enter to find it.”

  His mouth twitches but he flattens it out just in time to look stern again. “Just wait,” he says. “I’ll leave early today and we’ll go over there together. I don’t need my pregnant girlfriend walking into another deadly trap alone.”