Page 71 of Parallel

He raises a brow. “I thought you’d be happy to seeme.”

Ishouldbe. And maybe I actually would be if I hadn’t expected Nick in his place. If I buckle down, if I avoid Nick from now on and focus, could I be happy with what we have again? That’s the problem though. I’m not sure how you stop craving joy, and fullness, once you realize they exist. “I just hate that your bachelor party wasruined.”

He steps close, backing me to the door. “I had an idea anyway, and it inspired me to come straight home,” he says. His mouth fastens on mine. His lips are dry and thin, the kiss perfunctory. Has it always been like this? I feel panicked, unable to respond, and my reluctance only makes him tryharder.

I slide away. “What was youridea?”

“I was thinking about Vegas, like you said a while back—you were right. I booked us on the first flight out in the morning,” he says, pulling me back to him. “By this time tomorrow, you’ll be my wife and it will all be over with, just like youwanted.”

I freeze. I’m…I’m just not ready. That other version of me, the one from London, saysstop this.Tell him you can’t go. But I just stand here with a blank stare on my face and the words trapped in mythroat.

He laughs at my reaction. “Thought I was incapable of spontaneity, didn’t you?” he asks, wrapping an arm around mywaist.

I did. And I fall asleep wishing I’d beenright.

* * *

Nickand I are in the master bedroom of the house at the lake. I hear the crinkle of a condom wrapper being torn. The mattress dips as he climbs in behind me, his hand grasping the curve of myhip.

“You can still change your mind,” he says against my ear. “At any point.Okay?”

I roll toward him. “I’m not going to change mymind.”

Everything I want in life is a distant second next to him. Even the promise I made my mom. I think I’ve known this for a while, but when he pulled himself into the boat today and said those words—"I’d never just let you float away”—I felt it. And I knew it wastime.

My bikini is untied, and the bottoms are tugged down. His hand slips between my legs. “Jesus,” he whispers, pressing his face into my hair and breathing deep. “You’re alreadywet.”

My hand slides between us, but he stops me. “Just the idea of it has me close. This will be over before it starts if you dothat.”

He moves down the bed. His breath skates over my inner thigh, closer and closer until he reaches my center. His tongue flicks—once, twice, again—and he slides a finger inside me the moment my back arches. He continues and after a moment he adds a second finger, glancing up at me to make sure I’mokay.

It hurts but it’s oddly pleasant at the same time. His fingers move and it becomes less like pain, and more like a small fire that burns and warms simultaneously. I’m floating, anchored only by the pressure of his hand. And I wantmore.

“Come up,” I plead and I feel a pulse of breath against me, his lowlaugh.

“Not yet.” He adds a third finger and my objections die on my lips. It burns, but his tongue is moving faster and without even a second to warn him I shatter, squeezing those fingers of his so hard I’m surprised nothingbreaks.

I just came but it’s not enough. I lean up just enough to rest my hands on his shoulders and pull him down to me. “Now,” Idemand.

There’s a small, ragged noise in his chest at the words, need and capitulation and relief. He shifts until he’s right there. I feel that first hint of pressure, of the fullness that’s coming. “I’m not going to last long,” hegroans.

* * *

Lightningstrikes outside and I jolt awake, my entire body rigid, seconds from coming. Jeff is snoring quietly beside me and all I want in the entire world is to go back where I was. Because being with Nick just now felt so different, so much better, than anything I’ve ever known that I can’t stand not havingit.

I sit, curling my knees to my chest and pressing my face against them. In a few hours Jeff and I will be heading to the airport and it’ll be over. I’m never going to risk anything and I’m never going to know what it’s like to hand myself over to another person, to love someone so deeply and want him so much I’d give up anything on hisbehalf.

Outside, the storm is upon us, and the thunder hammers overhead, making our house shake like a terrified small thing. I slip out of bed and stand by the window, watching the trees sway. My father told me a story once, during a storm just like this, about the good wind and the bad wind. He said they came one day to visit a little girl just like me, because all of his stories were about a little girl just like me. The girl had waited a long time for the good wind to come along and blow all kinds of wonderful things inside, but when it finally came knocking, the bad wind was right there alongside it, which meant she couldn’t let in one without letting in the other.“All the wonderful gifts the good wind would bestow could only come alongside the bad wind’s chaos and disaster,” hesaid.

“Couldn’t she tell the good wind to come back later?” I asked, and he shook hishead.

“They’re a package deal. So nothing bad ever came into the house, but nothing good did either. And that’s when the girl discovered there was something far worse than the badwind.”

I frowned at him. “What?”

He picked me up and set me in his lap, and I think it’s only because his voice was so grave and serious when he replied that I remember the story at all. “What’s worse than the bad wind is the emptiness of letting nothing in at all,” hesaid.

It puzzles me now, that story. I’d almost forgotten there was a time when he wanted me to eschew safety, to soar to greater heights. But when the end came he wanted the very opposite for me. What changed? Is it possible my father knew about Nick somehow? Because it seems obvious that finding Nick is the point at which my life seems to end, again and again, and pushing me toward another man might have seemed like the only foolproof solutionleft.

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