Page 67 of Parallel

I tip her chin up, feeling a little desperate. She can’t start losing hope now. I need her to keep fighting until we find a solution. “Do I think it’s unlikely this can fix the tumor? Yeah. But your tumor is also unlike anything I’ve ever seen. And how could I say it was impossible anyway? Every day, you and I are witnessing the impossible. We’re having the same dreams, for God’s sake. You know things you couldn’t possibly know, and from the moment I met you, it felt like youwere…”

“It felt like I waswhat?”

“Mine,” Ireply.

The awkwardness of that word washes over us both. I’ve never called anyoneminein my life, and she is with someone else. But I also know what I said was right. She is meant to be mine, and somehow today I need to convince her ofthat.

* * *

She sitson the dock and keeps me company while I prepare to pull the jet ski out of the water. I throw my shirt in the grass and I’m just about to pull the trailer up the hill when I glance up and catch it—Quinn’s eyes on me, cheeks flushed, her full lips slightly ajar. I’ve never seen a female watch me with such blatant, unconscious lust. Probably the way I’m looking at her every time we’re together. God, what I wouldn’t give to act onit.

I catch her eye. “Remembering ourhoneymoon?”

“Our honeymoon was in December,” she says primly. “No one was wearing a bathingsuit.”

I grin. “If it was agoodhoneymoon, I imagine we were wearing a lotless.”

“Yeah,” she breathes, her lids fluttering closed for a second. She’s fucking remembering it, right here in front of me. Today is going to be a test of my self-restraint, as it is, without having to watch Quinn when she’s thinking aboutsex.

“Jesus, don’t do that,” I plead, giving the waistband of my shorts a quick, desperatetug.

“Don’t dowhat?”

“Don’t sayyeahlike that, as if you’re remembering it all while you sitthere.”

Her cheeks turn pink. “Sorry,” she begins. “I wasn’t remembering our honeymoon, Ipromise.”

My teeth grind. I haven’t gotten laid in weeks and the only girl I actually want has her dress hiked around her thighs and is swinging her bare legs a couple feet from my face. “Well, you were sure as shit rememberingsomething. It was written all over yourface.”

“I had this dream about you,” she begins. “We were in high school, right after homecoming, and we were in the back seat of your car. In the parking lot.And—”

Her voice has gone low and breathy again, full of longing. She’s been with her idiot boyfriend for so long, she’s forgotten what a turn-on she is, even when she’snottalking. Add in that rasp to her voice while she describes a memory of something that was clearly sexual—withme, no less—and I’m a goner. She may not know she’s doing it, but my dick certainlydoes.

“Don’t do that either,” I tell her, and I turn away, pulling the trailer up the hill. I feel like an asshole almost immediately, but I just don’t know how to do this—how to balance being what she needs and restraining what I want all at the same time. I get the jet ski into the shed andreturn.

She watches me, her face solemn. “What did I do wrong?” sheasks.

I push my hair off my forehead, racking my brain for any excuse I can make, before I give up entirely. “Nothing. But you were describing the two of us, together, in the throatiest, sexiest voice imaginable. Let’s just say I walked away for areason.”

“Oh.” Then her eyes widen. “Ohhhhh.”

There’s something so innocent about her at times. I love that innocence and want to preserve it, but at the same time, I want to destroy it into a million pieces. The jury’s still out on which way I’llgo.

32

QUINN

Nick goes to the house and returns with our sandwiches and drinks in his hands. He hasn’t bothered to put his shirt back on, though I wish he would. I find my eyes going south far too often, resting on that trail of light brown hair below his belly button, imagining where it might lead if I flicked the button of his shorts to followit.

I don’t want to be having these thoughts about him, thoughts I’ve never in my life had for anyone else. But how do you make yourself stop thinking the wrong thing, and wanting it? He swings the bag down behind us, sitting too close. The distance he might sit if I were his and he weremine.

I think of the way he said that word earlier—mine—and how it sent a visceral thrill through my chest. The way something inside me—that hard seed that began to flower the moment I met him—took another leap, came into fullbloom.

While he pulls food from the bag, I look over at the paddleboards on the beach, the Sunfish bobbing nearby. “Is this what we’d have done if we came here in high school?” Iask.

He gives me a sheepish grin, handing me my sandwich on a paper plate. “Well, I’m guessing, based on your memory of condom purchases, it’s notallwe’d havedone.”

I feel myself blushing as I remember that moment of intense déjà vu at the deli. It was our first time together. Something we’d waited years for. Different than London, where we mustbarelyhave waited, given how fast we got married. I don’t know how many lives I’ve lived with him, but it feels a little unfair that I can’t live this one with himtoo.

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