Page 56 of Intersect

I reach desperately for the only threat in my power. “If you do this, I’ll never forgive you.”

“Of course you will,” she says gently. “You’re not even going to remember it happened.”

* * *

My eyes blink open. For a moment I’m still seventeen. Pregnant and grief-stricken, waiting for Nick while the trucks blow past. Talking to a woman who seemed to be close to me—my mother, perhaps? Except she wasn’t. She didn’t sound like my mother, and even the way I felt about her was different. But who the hell could she have been?

Nick—an older version of him, an even hotter version of him—stirs beside me. His hand curves around my hip, keeping me close, protecting me, even in his sleep. The early morning light is just beginning to filter through the sheer curtains, the start of another day in Paris, but it won’t be like yesterday. I know what he wants. Every time he’s cupped my breasts, he’s grown still, as if trying to restrain his thoughts. I guess he’s indulged my desire to not know the truth long enough.

He wakes, pulling my back to his chest.

“We can do it,” I tell him.

“I kind of assumed we would,” he says, laughing a little as his hand slides down my bare hip.

I turn to look at him over my shoulder. “I was talking about taking a pregnancy test.”

“Not where I thought you were going with that, but still a good idea,” he says. He climbs out of bed and goes to his suitcase, from which he produces a box. “I bought them yesterday. I figured you’d give in eventually.”

I take the box to the bathroom, half terrified and half…something else. I guess there’s a part of me that wants it. That wishes I could dream and plan for a baby just like anyone else. It’s a selfish desire, one I try to ignore as I tear open the package. My best-case scenario is that I will give birth to a child, or children, who Nick will have to raise on his own. The worst case scenario is…much worse.

“How’s it going?” he calls.

“I’m still urinating. The test doesn’t work that fast, even for tempore sphincter or whatever the hell shifter was in Latin.”

I hear a low laugh. “I’m fairly certain the word isn’t sphincter.”

I finish and lay the stick on the counter before I exit the bathroom. “I’m too nervous to look,” I tell him.

He nods, setting his shoulders. “I’m looking for two lines, I assume?” he asks.

I raise a brow. It’s not that I don’t realize he’s slept with people before me, but that doesn’t mean I have to enjoy the reminder. “Know a lot about pregnancy tests, do you?”

He gives me a half-smile. “Obstetrics rotation.”

Of course. And how fucking ridiculous that I have room in my head for jealousy right now. “Yes. Two lines.”

He walks in. I can’t see his face as he looks at the test, but he stiffens, and I know right then what it says. He turns around, his face drawn, and hands it to me.

Two lines.

I sit on the mattress, too shocked to stand. We are silent, the two of us, dumbfounded. My mother calls at that very moment, and I let it go to voicemail. “It’s just not possible,” I whisper. “I’ve been on the pill without incident since I was 21. Seven years. And now we have sex once and …”

Nick’s mouth is a hard, set line as he thinks things I know he won’t share. “It was a lot more than once.”

“Fine, we have sex 700 times over the course of twenty-four hours, and I’m pregnant? It’s just not possible.”

He sits beside me. “There’s something that defies the laws of nature in almost everything about the two of us,” he says heavily. “I guess this is no exception.”

I swallow down the lump in my throat. “Am I…am I even going to live long enough?”

He takes my hand and squeezes it hard. “Yes. Because I’m going to find Sarah and solve this. But it means Cecelia was right, so I might as well tell you the other thing she said.”

I take a deep breath. “That we’re having twins?” I ask quietly.

His jaw drops. “How did you know?”

I was really hoping he’d tell me I was wrong. But this means my dream happened, and is happening again. “I dreamed about it last night—we were teenagers, and someone, maybe my mom, told me our twins had visited her.”