Page 19 of Parallel

I’m beginning to wonder if I need an MRI too.

9

QUINN

Nick Reilly exists.

I sit here on the edge of the bed, my mind trying to grasp it all, but the reality of him is too large to be held in one place and made logical.

Nick, in my dreams, was beautiful. In real life, however, he’s so much more. He’s vital and male in a way I didn’t entirely grasp until now. The bump where his nose was broken, the tiny hint of a scar just to its left from a fist fight with his brother—they don’t mar the perfection of his face, they emphasize it. They roughen him up just the right amount, make him hot rather than lovely. Nick without that scar, without the small asymmetry, would be a face for photographers, for ad campaigns. Nick with those things becomes someone you want to have pin you to the nearest available surface.

Which I remember him doing so, so many times. But to him, I’m simply a new patient. Potentially one who’s been stalking him.

It’s me, some voice inside my head whispers to him. Remember? Remember our flat? Remember the way I’d wait for you to slide into bed and wrap yourself around me? Do you remember the first time you told me you loved me? The night you proposed?

That same part of me cries out for him, wants to hold him tighter than I’ve ever held anyone, wants to breathe in his smell of soap and chlorine and skin and just remain there.

Thank God the rational piece prevails. The part that knows this is not real life and remembers I’m in love with someone else. Just because you dreamed about him doesn’t mean it ever happened, the rational piece warns. It doesn’t make him yours.

He asks how I know the things I do, and I proceed to recite more of them, my stomach sinking at the wary look on his face. Perhaps he’d appear relaxed to a casual onlooker, but I know better somehow. He’s restraining himself. Beneath that oxford his arms are taut, braced…against me? I’m not sure. God, I want so badly to press my mouth to that line between his brows, let it fall to the curve of his upper lip. As if I really need to do one more thing to ensure he sends me for a psych consult.

Our bizarre conversation comes to an abrupt end when he suddenly remembers the MRI, the haze in his eyes clearing. We walk down a long hall, and then he uses his badge to open the doors to another area. I’m 5’7”, but next to him, I feel diminutive. His head bows just to speak to me. “So, you dreamed we met and what else?”

I realize he’s humoring me. Of course he is—it’s not as if he thinks any of it is true. Even I don’t think it’s true, so why would he? “It’s a lot of just…normal stuff. Hanging out…dating stuff.”

“That’s it?” he teases. “I must have been pretty boring, if that’s all you’ve got.” It’s a playful side of him, one I’ve seen in dreams but not in real life until now. He’s trying to take my mind off the MRI.

“We went to Paris for our honey—” I trail off. God. I cannot believe I just said that out loud.

He stops. “You’re telling me you dreamed about our honeymoon?”

I should be too upset by what this MRI might uncover to be capable of humiliation right now, but I’m not. I feel the heat in my face and there is no way to stop it. “No comment.”

He raises a brow, holding the elevator door open and following me in. “Oh, you’re not getting off that easily. If we had a honeymoon in Paris, I need to hear all about it. What did we do?”

I roll my eyes, trying hard not to smile. “It was December and cold as hell, and we were there on our honeymoon. What do you think we did?”

He laughs. “Wow. Any other glamorous trips where we never left the hotel?”

I glance up at him as we arrive at our floor. “Not really. Well, I guess we went to the lake, if that counts.”

The elevator door opens, but he doesn’t move. “What lake?”

I pause, puzzled by the sudden change in him. There is no longer anything playful about his tone. “I have no idea. It’s kind of like the lake where I’m getting married. There’s a dock and a big, white house with a deck, and I’m on this boat I can’t sail, while you watch me go.”

The elevator doors have shut again, and he sags against the wall. His skin looks slightly green under the fluorescent lights.

“Where are you getting married?” he asks.

I hear dread in his voice. For some reason it makes me dread answering him. “Lake Hester? It’s outside—”

“Annapolis,” he whispers. He leans his head against the wall and closes his eyes. “My parents have a place there. Their weekend house. I think you’re describing it.”

He can’t even look at me. I try to put myself in his shoes—some random patient reciting facts from his life, describing the interior of his flat and his parents’ vacation home. I’d have picked up the emergency phone long before now if I were him.

“I’m not stalking you,” I say quietly. “I understand why you’d be freaked out, but I swear to God I’ve never even looked up your name.”

“I don’t think you’re stalking me.”