Soap opera.
“And,” I tried, “you knew Rosa, not Cora. I’m Cora and Rosa is my twin sister. Identical twins but she’s the evil twin. She’s a pain in my ass. She was watching my place when I was –”
“Jesus,” he cut me off, his brows going up, “seriously?”
I stared at him.
Okay, clearly Noc was not as bubbleheaded as Dave, my boss, who bought the amnesia story without a peep.
Shit.
“No, that was a lie,” I admitted.
“No shit?” he asked sarcastically.
Shit!
Then I decided to stall in order to come up with a different strategy so I asked, “Do you want a beer?”
“No, I wanna talk about what you’re gonna do about our kid,” he answered.
“I think you need a beer,” I told him.
“No, babe, I need to discuss this mess so I know what I’m dealin’ with. What you gotta get is, I’m a cop. You have the kid, can’t say that’ll make me happy, but I’ll take care of my kid. What I won’t do is bust my ass payin’ a shitload of child support so you can have fourteen hundred dollar shoes. And you’ll also have to get off your lazy ass to do somethin’ other than countin’ cards and goin’ shoppin’ ‘cause my kid’s Ma is not gonna be doin’ that shit. None of it. You get me?”
Hmm. Seemed he had Cora’s ticket too.
Not good.
“I’m getting you a beer,” I stated and started to the kitchen.
He caught my arm as I walked by him and I turned and tipped my head up as he exploded, “Fuck, Cora, I don’t want a fuckin’ beer!”
That was when I announced, “I’m in love with a man from an alternate universe. It isn’t your child I’m carrying, it’s his. He looks exactly like you except he has a scar on his face…” I turned fully to him, reached up and touched his temple lightly. His face, I noted distractedly, was frozen with shock but my eyes moved to my finger against his perfect skin. “Starting here,” I whispered then curved my finger down his cheekbone, “and ending here.”
“Fuckin’ shit, you’re insane,” he whispered back, his eyes, when mine shifted to them, were moving over my face.
But I didn’t really hear him. I was transfixed by his face, so like Tor’s, so beloved, but not Tor’s.
“He’s a warrior,” I whispered. “He has scars here,” I moved my finger to touch his chest where Tor’s scar was, “and here,” I kept whispering, touching another place on his chest, “and… here.” I finished with another touch and tipped my head back to look from his chest to his eyes. “He has your eyes, he has your voice and he has half my soul.”
Noc didn’t speak, just looked in my eyes.
So I kept going.
“I know you think it’s crazy, it sounds crazy, it is crazy, but it’s true. There are two worlds, the same people in each world. Cora from that world came here, you know her, not me. I’m not cold, I can’t count cards. I don’t even know how to play poker. And I’m nice. I make people laugh. They care about me. When I was there, I met you but the you of there. And I fell in love with the you of there and I’m having your baby…” I shook my head, “His baby. He was the man your people saw but I’m guessing they didn’t get a good look at him or they would have told you he looks exactly like you.”
His head jerked, his gaze grew intense, my heart leaped and I leaned closer to him.
“They did,” I whispered. “They said he looked exactly like you.”
“They thought he was me,” Noc replied, his voice quiet.
“Did they get video? Pictures?” I asked hopefully because if I never made it back to Tor, at least maybe I could convince Noc to give me the pictures.
“Only of the back of his head,” Noc answered, I closed my eyes and leaned back an inch. “Babe,” he called and I opened my eyes. When I did he said not a word, just stared into my eyes then his gaze moved over my face before it came back to me. “Jesus, fuck,” he murmured, “you believe this shit.”
“Only because it’s true,” I replied then I asked softly, “Standing here talking to you, am I anything at all like her? And looking around my place, is it anything at all like it was when she was here?”
His jaw clenched and he didn’t even bother looking at my tidy apartment.
This was my answer. It wasn’t and I wasn’t.
“At birth, in his world, half of his soul was separated from him and put in me. Now that we’ve met, our souls united so when he was pulled away, our souls were torn apart,” I explained. “You won’t ever be able to understand it, and I’m glad of that, but let me just say that the pain of having the other half of your soul ripped away doesn’t feel all that nice as in…” I leaned in again and my voice carried the ache I felt inside when I finished, “at all.”
He heard it, he may have even felt it and I knew that because it made him flinch.
Then he lifted his hand, curled it around my neck and whispered, “Cora.”
I closed my eyes again and dropped my head. His touch, so strong, so warm… but not Tor’s. His voice saying my name, so deep, so rough, the same… but not Tor’s.
God, it fucking hurt.
His other hand came up; he caught me under my chin and gently pulled my head back up.
I opened my eyes and searched his face.
Then I stated, “You don’t believe me.”
“I believe you believe you.”
I nodded and tried to move away but his hand at my neck held tighter and I stopped.
“Babe,” he said gently, so gently that that one word and the way he said it proved… yes, he was sweet, probably very sweet, “you gotta get help.”
“I know,” I answered with feeling because I knew I did, I just couldn’t find her.
His hand left my chin and dropped so his arm could curve around my waist and pull me closer as he kept talking gently. “You got my kid inside you, baby, we gotta get your head sorted. After we do that, we sort out other shit, yeah?”
I sucked in breath.
He thought I was mental.
This was not going my way.
That was when I decided to bargain.
“All right, Noc. I’ll make you a deal. I know someone who can get me back to Tor’s world,” I told him.
“Tor?”
“The other you.”
His eyes flashed. “You called me that –”
“I know, the other week, when I got back and the other Cora left. Anyway, I promise to go…” I hesitated before saying, “see someone if you help me find the person that can help me get back to Tor. If she doesn’t help me, then I’ll go to someone else to help me, someone you pick.”
“Babe –”
“It can’t hurt and it won’t take much. I have a first name and an address of where she used to live. If you can track her down –” I stopped speaking when his face started to get hard.
“Cora, I can’t use department resources to track some random woman down. That shit isn’t right.”
“And sleeping with someone you’re investigating is? You rolled with that, Noc, I get it but you kept rolling with it so much your clothes were in my closet.” I returned and scored a point, I knew it when his eyes flashed again.
Still, he said, “Babe, I was undercover. Shit happens.”
Damn. He was right and I was getting desperate.
I tried something new. “Okay, and the shit that happened is that you think you got me pregnant. That means you think we’re connected. And that means, as the woman who you think is carrying your child, you being a cop and all, one of the good guys, you have to help me. Just look her up, you find her, you give me her address, I’ll go to her.”
“I’m not gonna provide you with an address so you can visit someone who’s probably a whack job.”
“She’s not a whack job,” I returned though I couldn’t know that for sure, maybe she was, but I couldn’t worry about that now. “She can help.”