“Watch out,” says Caroline. “Remember Daniel? He was—”
“Oh, here we go,” says Trevor. “Now she’s going to tell you a warning story about the time she was a mother of twins too.”
“Shut up, Trevor. Anyway, he was always saying he wanted to marry me and then it turned out he was already married.”
I laugh. Their stories appalled me before, but now that I’m with Nick, the stories seem too terrible to even be real. “I’m pretty sure I’d know if Nick was already married, given that we live together and haven’t spent a night apart in weeks.”
Trevor gets a text and his face lights up. “It’s showtime. The senator is down at the waterfront.” He and Caroline exchange a quick glance and then they both wave frantically for the bill.
“What are you not telling me about this guy?” I ask, looking between the two of them.
“Nothing,” they reply in unison, which makes it that much fishier.
“Neither of you can lie for shit. What’s the deal? Is the senator someone I know?” I ask, and then I gasp. “Oh my God. It’s Jeff, isn’t it?”
Trevor rolls his eyes. “As if. I don’t have a straight bone in my body, but if anyone could bore me out of homosexuality, it would be him.”
We head down Wisconsin Avenue toward the river. I remember the days when I’d look at all the bars we are passing longingly, a desire for the years of being a wild, single college student I missed out on. Now they do nothing for me. Going to any of them would feel like a punishment if I could be home with Nick instead.
We cross the street to the waterfront just as the sun begins its slow slide over the horizon.
“Hey, isn’t this where you went dancing with Nick?” Trevor asks.
I glance at the couples shuffling over the waterfront’s travertine tiles. “Yeah, right before—” my words falter at the sight of a tall, broad-shouldered hunk in a suit cutting through the dancing couples. Nick. My heart is doing pirouettes in my chest. “Hey!” I shout, moving as fast as I can in the four-inch heels Caroline forced me to wear. “I thought you said you didn’t want to—”
He drops to one knee. His face is every bit as sweet, as earnest, as it was when he was a teenager. He looks at me as if I hold his entire world in the palm of my hand, as if I’m his to crush or to keep. He reaches into his pocket and pulls out a black velvet box.
The couples around him have mostly stopped dancing. 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.
“You have our blessing,” says Trevor.
Caroline kisses me on the cheek. “I’d totally let him get me pregnant,” she says as Trevor pulls her away.
I’m so astonished all I can do is stare: at Nick, at the box, at the dancers and setting sun. It feels as if my brain is moving a little more slowly than normal.
“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.”
He pops the box open and I gasp. It’s my ring, the oval diamond I remember from London. I reach for it and he pulls the box back. “You have to actually agree before you get the ring, greedy girl.”
“But how…where did you find it?” I ask.
He grins. “My grandfather gave it to me when I went to see him. I’ll tell you about it later. After you answer.”
Goose bumps crawl over my arms, but they’re the good kind. The kind you get when you’re so thrilled and astonished at once that you have no idea where to begin. “Yes,” I whisper. “In this lifetime and all the other ones, I will only want you.”
* * *
It’s late. We both should be asleep, but I’m way too giddy for that. Every five seconds I’m holding my ring up so I can see it in the moonlight. “It’s even more perfect than I remember.”
He laughs. “You said that before.”
I said it during our celebratory drink with Trevor and Caroline. My explanation of how I could remember a ring I’d theoretically never seen before made little sense, but fortunately they’d had enough to drink they didn’t notice. “That was awkward. I’m going to have to be more careful in the future.”
He runs a hand over my hip. “Don’t you think you ought to just tell them the truth?” he asks. “As weird as they are, they do seem to have your back.”
I shake my head. “I couldn’t. You know the rule…you can’t tell anyone who isn’t related by blood.”
“That can’t be true. Grosbaum knew about his wife. He talked to us about it.”
“Anyone can have a theory about anything and discuss it. That’s all Grosbaum did with us. His wife was pregnant. That’s what made them related by blood. Your grandparents were the same… your grandmother never said a word until she was pregnant, right?”
“Then what about Rose?” he argues. “She told us everything and time traveled in front of us more than once.”
My mouth twitches. I’ve dropped so many hints since we got back and he hasn’t picked up on a single one. “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.
“She said she had a younger sister who can time travel, but her mom was dead,” he says. “That can’t be you.”
I smile gently. “Her sister is younger by about five minutes, I’m guessing. And her mother was dead because we hadn’t changed our future yet.”
He flinches. “You can’t possibly know that. You’re just guessing.”
“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.”
He groans. “I’m not saying it doesn’t make sense. I’m just saying I desperately want you to be wrong.”
I’m not. I figured out while we were still in Paris what Grosbaum began to tell me in that last meeting before he stopped himself: you can only run into someone during the process of time traveling if you share their spark. I’m not sure how I know this—little facts just seem to appear in my brain now, from another time—but I’m certain of it.
“The girl we met that night grew up under entirely different circumstances than our daughter will. So the girl you met is not who our daughter will become.” I also suspect if something is going to go wrong, my mother will find a way to let me know. Cecelia did tell me, after all, that she jumped to the future too.
He looks over at me balefully, intent on being unhappy about this. “Even good parents have kids who go off the rails. And that kid was born wanting to go off the rails.”
I push his hair back from his face. “We managed to overcome changing timelines and jealous exes and a brain tumor. I’m pretty confident we’ll be able to handle parenting.”
“I wouldn’t be so certain. She was doing shots, Quinn,” he says, tugging at his hair. “With guys in a band.” I’m getting a glimpse of a whole new side of my fiancé—Nick as a father. It’s going to be interesting.
I climb over him, planting my knees on either side of his hips, linking our hands together. There’s generally no better way than this to make him forget what he’s worried about. “Do you have faith in me?” I ask.
He shifts beneath me, trying to cling to his fear, while certain parts of his anatomy push to pursue a different type of conversation entirely. “Of course I do.�
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“Then you’ll just have to believe me when I say that I know it’s going to be alright.” I’ve spent my entire life riddled with uncertainty. But I feel certain about the twins in a way I’ve never been before. “Nick…this is supposed to happen. And we were meant to raise them. It’s all going to be perfect.”
Actually, I guess it already is.
THE END
* * *
Nick and Quinn’s wedding: surprise guests and surprising revelations. Get the bonus epilogue here.
Coming Soon! Another addition to the Parallel universe. Add The Moon We Share to your Goodreads TBR here.
WAKING OLIVIA
A track star with nothing to lose. A college coach who may lose everything to save her. Will Langstrom has too many responsibilities, and the last thing he needs is Olivia Finnegan, a beautiful but troubled new transfer student. Olivia is her own worst enemy, with a smart mouth and a past she can’t seem to escape, and the last person she wants help from is a cocky track coach she can never seem to please. Refusing to be pushed away, Will is determined to save her...and determined to resist an attraction that could destroy them both. Winner, 2017 Independent Publisher Book Award (Romance). Grab it here!
Acknowledgments
When you publish two books only a few weeks apart, the acknowledgments come out looking pretty much the same, so I’ll use the space here for the few who weren’t at the end of Parallel:
—Dani Sanchez at Wildfire PR and Marketing, for her tireless hand-holding through the launch of this duet.
—My author buds, who are some of the nicest people I’ve ever met.
—Maïwenn from Maïwenn Blogs, for her very cheerful translation assistance.
—All the amazing people who came out in support of Parallel’s release. You know you are. When we meet, the margaritas are on me.
About the Author
Elizabeth O'Roark spent many years as a medical writer before publishing her first novel in 2013. She holds bachelor’s degrees in journalism and arts from the University of Texas, and a master’s degree in counseling psychology from the University of Notre Dame. She lives in Washington, D.C. with her three children and one badly behaved dog. Intersect is her sixth book.
Intersect: The Parallel Duet, Book 2 Page 24
