Page 6 of Intersect

I take a deep breath and stare at my plate. “Speaking of our time together in the past—I had another dream last night.” I glance at him warily.

“Yeah?” His mouth edges up. A dirty smile that makes me want to change the topic entirely.

“I dreamt that we got pregnant.”

His smile fades. “That’s not where I hoped you were going with that,” he finally says. “Which time was it?”

“I was dreaming about London,” I reply. “But when we were in London I knew it had happened before, when we were teenagers. And here’s the thing: both times it was an accident, and in London, at least, it happened fast, probably the very first time we slept together, even though we were careful.”

His wariness turns to open-jawed shock faster than I ever could have imagined. “A teenager’s version of ‘careful’ is probably very different from yours or mine,” he says after a moment. “Believe me, if we dated when I was a teenager I wouldn’t have been capable of ‘careful’ with you.” His gaze flickers to my mouth. “I’m not even sure I’m capable of it now.”

I shake my head. “We were adults in London—you were doing your residency and I was in grad school. And I was on the pill there. It just didn’t work. It’s like we can’t avoid getting pregnant no matter what we do.”

“We must have done something wrong,” he says. There is desperation in his voice.

I want to let him believe it, but I can’t. I lived through London. I remember it in detail. We did nothing wrong. “So you’re willing to believe in time travel but not that some kind of super fertility accompanies it? Dr. Grosbaum said I was a different species, remember?”

He scrubs a hand over his face. “I’m able to believe it but…I just don’t know what the hell this is with us. It’s not like anything I’ve ever experienced before.”

The way he phrases it makes it sound like a bad thing, but at least he’s not calling for the check. “In what way?”

“There’s something going on here I don’t understand,” he says, leaning toward me. Beneath the table his hand squeezes mine. “I had this connection to you from the moment we met. That’s easy enough to explain away… If we really had these other lives together, it makes sense to me that the connection would remain. But it’s more than that. It’s not about our past lives or our present one. It’s like we’re both being led toward something.”

Another piece of the puzzle clicks into place. I hadn’t thought about it consciously, but I know exactly what he means. “There’s some purpose to all of this.”

“Yes,” he says. “And it really bothers me that we don’t know what it is.”

It bothers me too. And thanks to this brain tumor, I’m not sure we’ll get a chance to figure it out.

* * *

When dinner ends he drives me back to Caroline’s, which I guess means my roommate’s long list of places where I could potentially show him my bra won’t be coming into play, not that I expected they would.

We walk into the building slowly. He stops when we reach her door and hesitates. Is he even scared to kiss me now? He leans down, his mouth brushing mine, but there’s a tension in him I haven’t felt before. It’s not until my mouth opens under his, that he finally gives in to it, his kiss harder, needier. The hands that kept their distance land heavily on my hips and my back is pressed to the door as we strain for more friction, more closeness. His mouth moves to my neck, tugging at the skin in a way that makes me gasp. The bulge, currently pressed to my abdomen, seems to pulse with need, and his hand slides under my dress, slips beneath the elastic of my thong. I’m already soaked, gasping at the briefest touch, and he groans above me.

“God I want…” he begins, and suddenly he pushes away with something close to panic on his face. “Sorry,” he says, running a hand through his hair. “Fuck.”

I stare at him, dizzied by the change of direction, longing for him to come back and resume what he was doing seconds before. “What’s wrong?”

His tongue pokes out between his lips and then he shakes his head. “Nothing. I’ll see you tomorrow?”

I nod, bewildered, as he presses a kiss to my forehead and waits for me to unlock the door. What the hell just happened? And what did I do wrong?

* * *

“You look dazed,” Caroline says with a grin as I stumble into the apartment. “He must have done something right.”

I lean against the door. “He didn’t do anything at all.”

“What are you talking about?”

It just ended so abruptly. After all the build-up between us over these long weeks, how could he just walk away like that? “I’m saying he walked me to your door, kissed me, then apologized and left.”

She is outraged. “Why the fuck did he apologize?”

I huff in frustration, slumping into the chair across from her. “Exactly. I don’t get it.”

“And you’re sure he’s single?” she asks. “Because this exact thing happened to me with that douche Eric. Remember him? He told me he was single and then he was all weird about it during sex and it turned out he was fucking engaged.”