Page 78 of Intersect

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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.”

“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

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