Page 19 of Intersect

“As long as you keep your super sperm away from me, we’ll befine.”

He grins. “You realize we were young and stupid those other times, right? God only knows what we weredoing.”

I raise a brow. “We weren’t that young in London. And it sounds like someone’s making excuses to do something he wants todo.”

He laughs hard, as if relief and happiness have twined together. “There might be some of that going on.” He climbs out of bed and grabs a towel, wiping my stomach off, and then he is back under the blankets, pulling me againsthim.

“You okay?” he asks, pressing his mouth to the top of myhead.

“I’m so much better thanokay.”

“Me too,” he says. “Although I think more baby steps might benecessary.”

The mere suggestion of it is all I need. “How soon?” I ask, my hand sliding beneath the covers. Already he is coming back tolife.

He groans. “Right nowworks.”

* * *

Hours later,the room is only illuminated by moonlight and I’m cuddled up against him. Sometime between the second orgasm and the seventh—we ordered a pizza in the hours between them—things changed between us. I’ve never felt more naked or vulnerable, but his faith in me is a solid thing at his very core. Nothing I say to him is met with fear or disdain. It feels like I don’t have to be careful around him the way I did before, as if I finally know I’msafe.

“I lied to you,” Iwhisper.

“Youdid?”

My tongue darts out, tapping my upper lip—one of a thousand nervous gestures left over from childhood. “Earlier today I told you my mom hated the farm because it was a lot of work, but that’s not why she left.” I hesitate. That old warning in my head echoes:don’t tell, don’t tell, don’t tell. But I’m tired of keeping secrets, and he is not like my mother. There is nothing conditional in his acceptance of me. My heart is tumbling and tripping in my chest and yet I know this is going to bealright.

“I told you about the murders on the farm. It was awful, obviously, but what really upset my mom was—” I stop as fear begins to crawl in, replacing my newfoundbravery.

His hand cradles the nape of my neck, slides into my hair. “It’s okay, Quinn. Just tellme.”

“She thought I had something to do with it,” I whisper, raising my worried eyes tohis.

He looks every bit as stunned as I imagined he would. But not scared. “What?”

My nails dig into my palms. It’s the first time I’ve ever repeated this since it happened, something my parents made me swear I’d nevertell.

“The morning after Jilly died, I came downstairs and told my parents I’d gone to her house in the middle of the night and tried to stop them from being murdered. My parents had no idea what I was talking about. I was insisting it was Thursday, and that Jilly had died the day before, but they showed me the calendar and I was wrong. It was still Wednesday, and they kept telling me Jilly was fine, that it was just a bad dream. But I kept insisting. I remembered all of it. The police and the caution tape the day before, how I snuck to their house during the night and one of our dogs followed me but I was toolate.”

He’s so still he barely seems alive. “Then whathappened?”

“My parents told me it was just a dream. I started to believethem…”

My breath is coming in small pants now. His hand slides over my back. “And…?” heprompts.

“Our dog was missing. My dad heard him barking in Jilly’s house, and went to check. When no one answered, he unlocked the door and discovered Jilly and her parents in there, dead. My father was the primary suspect for a while, because the dog was in there and his footprints were outside.” I’m not sure I’ll ever recover from the guilt I felt when the police took him in forquestioning.

“Jesus,” he whispers. “You must have been terrified. And that means…you must have entered the house and seen them yourself,right?”

I shake my head. “I don’t know. It’s like I blacked a lot of it out. But I told my parents I’d had to leave really fast. That’s why I couldn’t get our dog. My mother…she never looked at me the same wayagain.”

I venture a glance at him, waiting to see condemnation or fear or uncertainty. But his eyes are the gentlestgray.

“You timetraveled.”

I shake my head. “I didn’t know how to time travel. I still don’t. I think I just kind ofknewthings as a kid. I had a premonition and created a story to explain it. Maybe I remembered it happening before. From one of these other timelines I have memories of. Like 9-11. When I saw the footage of the first plane hitting I knew what would happen next. I was just remembering it frombefore.”

“You know you don’t need to make excuses for it to me, right?” he asks. “Your mother’s response was just…wrong. She never should have reacted likethat.”

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