Thirty Nights (American Beauty #1) (21 page)

He starts strolling toward me, eyes on fire. He stops only when he is close, so close that there is no space for air between us. Then, slowly, he dips me over his arm so that my throat is exposed and presses his lips there once.

“You look so beautiful.” His voice is almost pained. I know the feeling—the sense that you are beholding something so wondrous that it could not have been meant for you.

“As do you,” I whisper. I feel his smile against my skin as his lips start fluttering over my collarbones and my exposed shoulders. Suddenly, the corset is too tight. I want to rip it open.

“Do you want me to beat up whoever was making you upset on the phone?” I start babbling so that I don’t tear off my dress and undo all my hard work.

He chuckles against my skin and pulls back. “No, I don’t want you to beat him up. In fact, I don’t want you anywhere near him because he has a really filthy mind.”

“Jealousy from you, Aiden?” I smile, wondering when jealousy became attractive to me.

“Only where equally dirty-minded bastards are concerned.” His affection for the unknown dirty bastard coats his harsh words.

“So who is this dirty-minded bastard so that I can have my skunk spray ready?”

He laughs. “James Callahan. He was one of the Marines in my squad.”

“Oh, is this the trip you were planning earlier?”

“Yes.”

“But now you’re not sure if you’re going?”

He shakes his head. “No. I’d like to be around in case Bob needs something.” His eyes are tight, careful. The warmth of his kisses starts draining out of me. It’s not to spend time with me. It’s to see my green card through so he can let me go.

“Is that the only reason?” My voice is too soft for the sharpness of the feeling.

He smiles and drops his hand from my waist to my behind. He squeezes it hard.

“That, and your ass. Although at the moment it’s quite eclipsed by this dress, I’m afraid.”

Well, it’s something. “Thank you. A U.S. Marine bought it for me. You should steer clear of him. Jealous bloke. Descendant of dragons, that one. Ghastly big too.”

“I’ll be on my guard. Although I hope you have better sense than to be involved with such a brute.”

“I like brutes, I’m finding. Seriously misunderstood creatures.” I reach on my toes to kiss his scar. He looks like he is about to press his case against brutes everywhere so I move on.

“Do you see the other Marines often?” I’m afraid of the answer. I don’t know if that would make the PTSD worse or better.

“At least once a year. We meet at the end of May at my cabin on the Rogue River for a few days.”

At the end of May—when he returned home. “Aiden, you should go see them. I’ll be okay with Bob,” I say, even though the idea of not seeing him for a day, let alone several, suddenly dims even the green card for me.

“We’ll see.” He shrugs.

“Who comes to visit other than Callahan?”

“Hendrix and Jazzman.”

“What about Marshall? Is he a Marine too?”

“Once a Marine, always a Marine.” He caresses my jawline.

“Oh, so why isn’t Marshall coming?” I don’t know why but I really want to meet his best friend.

“Because of me,” he says evenly. He wraps his arm around my waist and starts walking to the library door, but I barely notice over the strange tightening in my chest. I want to ask him what he means but this is one line I don’t know if I can ever cross. What if Aiden attacked Marshall too? I shiver, my brain rejecting the idea. No, it’s more likely that Aiden is pushing Marshall away for his safety, like he is doing with me. How can I ever ask him about this without it being either the grossest of accusations or the most painful of reminders? I kiss his neck as I begrudgingly concede that this information has to come from him.

“What’s with the big doe eyes, Elisa?”

I shrug. “Just thinking about you…and your military service.”

“What about it?”

Hmm, what question can I ask that won’t hurt? “Why is it not in your CV?”

He gives me an indulgent smile. “Elisa, with my dragon behavior as you call it, how long do you think it would take the world to suspect I have a defect if they knew that information?”

“It’s not a defect, Aiden. It’s a wound. And nothing to be ashamed of.”

He rolls his eyes. “That’s a cliché, Elisa.”

“That doesn’t make it less true.”

“Can we go now?”

He sounds like Anamelia when she is at the dentist’s office. I kiss his scar. “Yes, although I wish you would tell me where we’re going.”

He smiles. “It’s a surprise.”

I’m abruptly excited. Maybe this will be a fun night for him too, away from old memories and forming new ones. For my part, I will do my best to make those memories brilliant.

“Chemists don’t like surprises,” I pretend to grumble, even though I’m only referring to myself.

“Then this should be an easy success.”

Success? Success at what?

Chapter Thirty-Five

Top of the World

The Range Rover flies past all city exits, heading east toward Mount Hood and the airport. The moment I see the reflective green sign boasting P
ORTLAND
I
NTERNATIONAL
A
IRPORT
, I shiver.

“Aiden, you’re not flying us anywhere abroad, are you?” My voice starts trembling because this is exactly the kind of thing he would do.
Hydrogen, 1.008. Helium—

He chuckles, reaching over and squeezing my knee. “No, little refugee, I’m not. Somehow I didn’t think you wanted to leave the States just yet.”

I slump in the leather seat, taking a deep breath. He keeps his eyes on the road, checking the back mirror every few minutes and stealing glances at me. In the few moments that our eyes meet, I notice that the blue depths are calm. Then occasionally, at no apparent trigger, they brew again. The tectonic plates seem to have three settings: shifting when he is remembering, stilling when he is thinking, and locking. Locking is rare. I only witnessed it earlier today when he talked about injuring me or his mum.

I watch the last rays of sun fracturing on his skin with a million questions raging in my brain.
How did this all start for him? What would fix it? How do I convince him to stay with me?

Perhaps feeling my gaze burning a hole in his lovely cheek, he peers at me. “What are you thinking so hard about?”

“All the questions I have about you.”

I was expecting immediate shutdown but to my surprise, he nods. “That’s the point for tonight. So that you can finally question what you see and hear.”

At the answer, I almost decide not to ask anything but as any scientist will tell you, leaving a question unasked is a bigger sin with our lot than leaving it unanswered.

“Well?” he prompts.

“I’m afraid of asking something that would be too hard for you to relive.”
And too hard for me to hear.

He nods. “You should be afraid of that. But don’t worry, I would stop you. I don’t want that shit polluting your head. Or mine for that matter.”

It’s a twisted thing to give me relief but it still does.

“Well, I was wondering why you joined the Marine Corps to begin with? I mean, with your memory…it seems like such an enormous risk to take with your life.”

He shrugs. “We’re all invincible at eighteen. I finished college-level math by fifth grade, Elisa. What lure could academics possibly have held for me? The military, on the other hand, was knocking on our door daily. At first sergeants, then lieutenants, then General Sartain.”

“Who?”

He waves his hand dismissively. “He’s a big shot in the CIA. Anyway, I started having vague fantasies of being some type of James Bond.”

“But you never went into intelligence?”

“Started to.” His words become clipped, guarded.

“But then?”

He takes a deep breath, his eyes firmly on the road although with his memory, who knows if he is really looking. “But then 9/11 happened. There wasn’t a single Marine in the Corps that didn’t want to avenge it.” His voice hardens.

I remember watching the Twin Towers, huddled on the couch between Mum and Dad in our cottage. “That’s the kind of evil science can’t explain,” Dad said.

Aiden’s fingers brush against my cheek. “Are you okay?” he asks gently.

I look up at him and nod. He smiles. “Good. It worries me when you’re so quiet.”

“Would you have done it again?”

He looks back at the road. The sun has set now, and it’s darker in the car. Minutes tick in the dashboard clock.
8:29, 8:31.

“We all want second chances,” he says at last. His voice is a mix of anger and regret.

I take his answer as confirmation but I cannot fathom his words. What would he have done with his second chance that would have been worth this hell twice around?

I shiver and look out the window. We are racing through the Columbia River Gorge now, the cavernous canyon between Oregon and Washington. The sharp, craggy peaks of the Cascades pierce the skies. There are no longer lights around. Only a dark, quiet beauty.

Aiden’s index finger comes under my chin and I turn to face him. He is smiling. “Were those all your questions? Some scientist you are.”

“I was just thinking of what I would have done to stop you from ever joining the Corps in the first place,” I whisper, afraid of making him angry with my wish to take away all his chances, let alone the second.

But there is no anger on his face. His smile becomes a grin. “Well, for you, it wouldn’t have taken much. Just showing up naked and being chained to my bed. Eighteen-year-old Aiden would have lost his shit over you.” He winks. “I suppose I have not changed much.”

He shakes his head in mock horror but I am floating. Does that mean he is losing his shit over me now? Who needs poetry. “I was thinking more along the lines of lying in front of the plane that shipped you off but chained to your bed seems marginally better.”

“You sound like my mother. Minus the bed part, of course.” He pauses as though deciding whether to say something. “She did come,” he adds, his voice now very soft.

“Your mum?”

He nods. “Yes. The day I was deployed to Afghanistan, she came to the airbase in Monterey where I had just finished intelligence school. How she got in, I still don’t know. She was a mess. Begged me not to go—grabbed me right here…” His hand flies to his shirt collar. “Of course, I was appalled at having to deal with a hysterical mother when all the other Marines were loading up. The rest is history—well, technically with me, nothing is history,” he adds, his voice dry. I wish I could see his eyes.

I lean over and rest my head on his shoulder. Maybe he needs calmness now. He presses his lips to my hair. “How are things with your parents now?”

He sits up straighter. His muscle bands almost creak under my ear. “They’re safe and set up for life. That’s what matters.”

He doesn’t exactly answer my question but it’s there, between the lines. A chill spreads like radionuclide in my veins. I pull back and look at him. “How often do you see them?”

His jaw ticks. “As you can imagine, I can’t afford another accident that may kill my own mother.”

He still doesn’t answer my question but he doesn’t have to. I know.

“Aiden, no!” I grip his arm, the words exploding before I can control them. “Sweetheart, you can’t do that. You can’t shut them out of your life!” My voice shakes and I feel moisture in my eyes. Here I am, even four years later, stumbling through continents with craters in my chest, searching for anything that can fill the void. And he still has this pure love and denies it to himself. How can he stand it?

He doesn’t speak. His posture is changing. Inch by inch, the strain of his shoulders is seeping to the rest of him. He pries my fingers from his arm so I swirl them in the hair at his temple.

“Aiden, it’s obvious you love them. Take it from someone who knows. Someday they will be gone and
nothing
will be able to take this grief away from you. Not your work, not my paintings, not Marshall—”

“Stop, Elisa!” His voice cracks through the air like a bullet. So sharp, so loud that I fall back against the Rover’s door. His hands turn into talons on the steering wheel, bleached from the strain. His rib cage expands and the muscles are reverberating. The Rover picks up speed as though it’s absorbing the tension through his foot. My heart starts pounding. I’m suddenly afraid, a natural instinct telling me I need to calm him. Is this anger? Or something worse?

“Aiden, I’m sorry,” I breathe.

His hands don’t relax—it looks like he will rip the steering wheel apart. His eyes are trained unblinking ahead, locked beyond the road. The speedometer arrow rises. Eighty now. Something sharp cracks on the windshield—a pebble maybe. The Rover veers slightly toward the I-84 rail guard. No, not a car accident. I cross my arms around me, whispering frantically.

“Hydrogen, 1.008. Helium, 4.003. Lithium, 6.94. Beryllium—”

He draws a deep breath and blinks. Once. Twice. His rib cage contracts and the muscles stop shaking. He scans the highway and the Rover slows down, firmly in the center of our lane. I know the trance is broken when he turns his head and looks at me. In the faint light of the speedometer, I cannot decipher his eyes.

“I’m very, very sorry about that,” he murmurs, sounding ashamed. “I didn’t mean to—are you all right?”

I cannot speak or look away from him. But I sense the Rover veer abruptly to the right again and he hits the brakes. Peripherally, I notice our lights blinking. He faces me, his hand caressing my cheek.

“I’m so sorry,” he says again, his voice the softest I’ve ever heard it. “I don’t want to frighten you.”

He
didn’t. Whatever he saw in his head did. And my parents’ crushed Beetle.

“Isa.” He uses my nickname for the first time, perhaps to comfort me. “You’re safe. This is just the…the flashbacks. A short one.”

A short one? What does a long one look like?

He leans closer and blows gently on my face. His delicious scent jolts me to life and I draw a deep breath. “Talk to me, Elisa. Do you want to go back?”

That breaks through me. I’d rather he tear the Rover to shreds than go back. “Of course not! I want to be here. Take care of you.”

He closes his eyes and shakes his head. “That’s wrong.”

“No, it’s right. I’m fine. You didn’t hurt me.” I’ll never tell him the flashback triggered my own memories. I’d never see him again after that.

He doesn’t say anything. I place my hand on his face, lest he really start driving back to Portland. “Will you please tell me what I did that made you upset? So that I don’t do it again.”

He looks at me and turns on the car light. “You didn’t do
anything
wrong. You calmed me. This is all me. Trust me on this.”

I search his eyes. They
are
calm now. “Yes, but I obviously said something that reminded you of something—”

He puts his hand over my mouth gently and shakes his head. “Elisa, reminders do nothing for me. I operate on triggers. And this—is—all—me.”

He seems resolute to take the blame so I tuck it away for deep analysis later. Was it about his parents? Can’t be, we’ve talked about them before. I nod, and put my hand over his where it is resting on my cheek.

He smiles. “That’s my girl.”

Maybe it’s his smile, or the fact that he called me
his girl
but I smile too. He kisses my temple, then my lips. “Let’s go. This place has been waiting for you for a while.” He turns on the car and pulls onto I-84 again. He presses a button on the steering wheel and looks at me.

“In your honor,” he says as the music starts. I expect “Für Elise” but no. “Ice Ice Baby”.

At that, I have to laugh. “My national anthem.”

He keeps changing the songs—all having to do with something terrible befalling ICE. “The Ice Is Getting Thinner”, “Break the Ice”, “Choc Ice Goes Mental”. I laugh at his version of a romantic mix tape.

“Baby, I can make you feel hot, hot, hot,” he sings in a low voice. My stomach starts fluttering. He is smiling again. And singing. And we’re getting closer to wherever we’re going. If I need this beautiful dress, it must be breathtaking too.

“Were you reciting the periodic table earlier?” Aiden asks, his voice lighter.

I blush despite the ice concert. “Yes,” I mumble.

“Is that a trick you use to calm yourself?”

“Too often,” I confess, feeling geekier by the second.

He chuckles. The sound is so beautiful that I would recite a million periodic tables to hear it again.

“That’s charming,” he says, caressing my jawline. “Very useful too. It calmed me as well. First your sight, now your voice.” He looks at me with a lovely glare. “What are you doing to me?”

“Teaching you chemistry?”

He shakes his head like he is arguing with a voice inside his head but his dimply smile is not listening.

“Almost there,” he says, taking an unmarked exit. There is only thick forest around as we start winding up the Cascades. The pressure of the ascent builds in my ears. He drives faster but there’s no anxiety in me now. Only exhilaration. Suddenly, we break through the forest onto an open field on the highest hilltop. The Rover comes to a screeching halt.

In the deafening silence, I press my nose against the window, squinting so I miss nothing. Moonlight floods the low grass, the soft rise of the peak, the contours of the craggy mountains above—turning them all silver. There is a soft glow some distance away, streaming between the sentinel trunks of ten or so evergreens.

Aiden rolls down the window. At first, I shiver. The winds are free up here. Then a sultry, floral scent stuns me. I sniff the air, trying to match it to any fragrance I know but cannot. It’s somewhere between gardenia, rose, coriander and brown sugar.

I turn to look at Aiden. He is facing me, his elbow propped on the steering wheel, his index finger pressing into his temple. There is a powerful emotion in his eyes, something I have no name for. His smile is soft. It hangs on his lips like the moonlight hangs on his lashes: enough to brighten them, but not enough to dim him. The tip of his middle finger brushes absentmindedly over his lower lip.

“Where are we?” I whisper.