Page 36 of Intersect

I roll toward him, taking in the upward curve of his generous mouth. Right now, it’s hard to imagine him being the badanything, but that’s precisely what makes him so dangerous. “You’re both, potentially. Because the more you let someone in, the more they’re able to hurt you, or drive you to do something terrible.” I get a sudden flash of Nick’s face when he walked in that room and saw me with Ryan, the agony there, and there’s a tightness in my chest—dread. Is it just residual guilt, or is it because I made a mistake after that, a grave one? That party was the night Ryan died. I already know I shot a kid out of a tree. What else might I have done that I couldn’t takeback?

“I’m never going to hurt you,” he says, pressing his mouth to the base of mywrist.

I focus on the warmth of his mouth against my skin, trying to drive away thoughts about Ryan. “People hurt each other all the time without meaning to. It doesn’t have to be malicious. Like Darcy. When she dies it will destroy her parents. I’m not sure how anyone recovers fromthat.”

He brushes the hair back from my face and lifts my chin toward him with his thumb. “That’s why you’re hedging your bets,” he says. “You dumped Jeff and you were willing to risk being with me, but you’re still scared. You’re still trying to hold a little of yourselfback.”

I’m on the cusp of arguing when it strikes me: he’s right. I agreed tomarryJeff but for some reason that never seemed risky, while with Nick it feels like I’ve gotten behind the wheel for the first time, and the only way I can stay safe is by riding the brake the whole way. “A lot could go wrong with us,” Iwhisper.

He pulls my head onto his shoulder. “And a lot could go so, so well. I can wait. You’re going to let me ineventually.”

That’s what I’m scared of. Because it feels dangerous, being withhim.

And I’m worried I won’t find out why until it’s toolate.

16

QUINN

We spend a blissful week acting like newlyweds. He goes to work, and I putter around the house, putting our meager belongings away, going to the store every five minutes for mundane things like trash cans and spatulas, the sort of stuff that doesn’t seem important until you discover it’smissing.

I’ve also tried to time travel a bit, without success. I know Nick doesn’t want me to—he's too worried about what happened to his grandmother. Every night he comes up with some new way to find Sarah’s address: he tells me we should check my dad’s will, go to the state department, search my parents’ computer. But it seems like it would be so much easier if I could just go back and find Rose myself, and it’s frustrating when I come up empty, time and timeagain.

For the most part though, we exist in a happy little bubble, and it’s easy enough to shrug off my fears. We cook together, shop together, sit out on a picnic blanket under the stars each night to eat our dinner. We could have gotten plastic chairs until the real dining chairs arrive, but I sort of like our little tradition. I like that there is no TV, that we aren’t on our phones, that I get his full attention and he gets mine. And then we go to bed, where we do a lot of things, but we don’t havesex.

Which is getting more difficult to deal with by theday.

It shouldn’t be. We should be fine just as we are. But I miss it, desperately…not with Jeff, but with Nick. I miss something I don’t even remember having and he does too. Each night I see the toll his restraint takes, the way his teeth clench as he tries not to head in directions we can’tgo.

We are in bed and he is above me, separated only by the paper-thin fabric of my boy shorts, and he’s got his eyes squeezed shut, wanting the feeling of being pressed against me and tortured by it all the same. “Maybe we should,” I whisper. I’m not sure if it’s logic or desperationspeaking.

His eyes open, a hazy blue, with that drugged look they get when he’s in this exact position. “What?” hesays.

“Maybe we should just do it,” I whisper. “We have no idea what will happen this time and I’m on the pill. So maybe weshould.”

He is hard as steel against me the second the words emerge, and then a sort of panic comes over his face. “God, Quinn,” he groans, pushing harder against the fabric, burying his face into my shoulder. “Do not say that to me right now.” His leg swings off me, and in a flash he’s gone, nothing but a blur walking straight out the bedroomdoor.

I guess my timing could have been better, but I don’t feel like it was a mistake. I’m no longer sure what I believe in, but I know being with Nick makes me happier than anything in my life ever has, and every step we’ve taken together has only improved things. It’s just hard to imagine sex would be any different. It’s hard to imagine something so good could end up goingbad.

Nick returns a minute later, and lies down beside me. “I’m sorry I left likethat.”

“Why didyou?”

He laughs unhappily and pushes his hair off his forehead. “Do you have any idea how hard it is for me to stop every time? Suggesting it might be okay atthatmoment, when my defenses are down…could have been disastrous. I had to get out of here because it was the only way to make sure I didn’t lose it entirely. I mean, what were youthinking?”

“What I’m thinking is that we don’t know everything,” I reply quietly. “And that we are supposed to be together, and there is obviously something driving this. Fate or history or something else. Maybe it knows more than wedo.”

His hands go to his hair again. “Don’t. Don’t go down the path of justifying it. It fucking kills me, the fact that Jeff has had something I want this badly. And every day it gets harder. But until something changes, until we know you could actually survive a pregnancy, we cannot take that risk. Because as badly as I want it, I want you more. I want you to survive and be here with me for the next seventyyears.”

I don’t realize I’m crying until he pulls me against his chest and brushes away my tears. I want everything he does. I want to give him those seventy years. And I’m so bitter right now about all the things—fate, the crazy blond lady, whatever—conspiring to separate usagain.

* * *

The next afternoonI go to the hospital to visit Darcy. I’ve been in a few times, but this is the first where I can say definitively that she’s getting worse. She’s thinner and pale and the circles beneath her eyes have gone from lavender to a bruised sort of blue. There’s a wheelchair in her room permanently now, which leads me to think she no longer roams the halls freely dragging her IV behindher.

It’s late in the day when Nick walks in to join us for the cutthroat Connect Four tournament now underway. He smiles at Darcy and Christy before he allows himself to look at me, but when he does there’s a single long moment where I forget there’s anyone else in theroom.

“Who’s winning?” he finallyasks.

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