Thirty Nights (American Beauty #1) (28 page)

The moment we cross the threshold, the girls zoom in on my bowls of Baci and Aiden’s piano. For his part, Aiden marches to the kitchen where Cora—bless her from her brown hair to her white apron—has laid out gingerbread cookies. He goes straight for them and eats four. I bite my lip not to laugh. He is a stress eater.

Thankfully, the girls decide to slip out on the patio before Lieutenant Hale swallows Cora’s entire roasted chicken whole. They start playing in the wild meadow, tossing a beach ball around that is making the bluebirds mental. Every few minutes, Anamelia sprints back to Aiden—who has shoved his patio chaise flush against the glass wall and has erected a barricade of immigration books around himself—and shows him a worm or ladybug, demanding that he names it. (“Er, Benson?” “No, it’s a girl!” “Elisa?” “No!” “Anamelia?” “Yaaay!”)

Eventually, we sit at the dinner table, Aiden at the head with his back to the wall.

Maybe it’s the intense day crashing down on me, or the look of a table with four kids and Aiden and me on each side, but an emotion I’ve never felt before swells inside my lungs and takes over my body. The closest thing I have felt to this is happiness. I struggle for the word…
Rightness
—that’s what this is! A sense of life even amid the end. A life that until now, I have avoided thinking about. My own family.

I never thought I would wish for kids after the last four years. I would never want to leave them behind if something were to happen to me. But now, seeing Aiden the most tired I’ve ever seen him, surrounded by four little angels eating mashed potatoes and feeling this fierce protective instinct inside me, I see
rightness
. I want this. Not as a fantasy. As reality. With him. The force of the realization makes my blood pound in my ears. As with all awakenings with Aiden, it’s sudden, immediate and—I have a feeling—irreversible.

I watch Anamelia eat Aiden’s peas. He gives them gladly, trying to barter for a cookie in return. I smile. They’re so similar, despite being thirty-one years apart. Maybe his memory is propelling him back to his own childhood. In this moment, I have no doubt he will make an incredible father. Then I remember him telling me he won’t have children just so Daddy can break them. I shiver but not in fear. I shiver with loss. Because with him, I would have enough children to field the Manchester United football—umm, soccer—team.

He looks up at me. “Do you have any peas over there? We’re having a pea crisis on this end,” he says, unaware of the life-changing epiphany I just had.

I pass my peas to Anamelia. Aiden watches me with that same strong emotion as before. The half-panic, half-something-else one. I want to ask what it is but Bel is watching us like Denton watches boiling chemicals: sharply and barely blinking.

After dinner, we read
Percy Jackson
to the girls. Anamelia insists that Aiden should be the one who reads because she is used to a man’s voice. As they settle on either side of Aiden and me on the leather sofa, I finally feel that Aiden and I got this one right, all considered. I kiss him, ignoring their giggles and claps.

“Thank you for doing this,” I whisper. I don’t know how many years this evening aged him. He looks exhausted. Some vacation I gave him.

He smiles and looks at Anamelia, who has fallen fast asleep on his lap, drooling on his designer jeans and clutching his iPhone. Daniela is fading on mine. I decide to give Maria and Antonio the night off.

“Overnight guests?” I mouth at Aiden.

He shrugs. “We have room.”

I call Maria who promises to make us
tres leches
cake and we take the girls to one of the guest rooms with a pale-blue king bed. I sit with them as they fade off one after the other. Then, I turn off the light and leave the door ajar.

With every step away from the girls, the terror of the day—and its beauty—overwhelms me. I contemplate calling Reagan but she would only worry. No need to upset her until we know more. I trudge to the bedroom, needing only one set of arms.

When I walk in, Aiden is passed out on the bed diagonally, fully dressed, arms spread to the sides, mouth open, snoring softly. It’s as if he barely made it. More than ever, I want to touch him, kiss his scar, whisper
thank you
. Or just undress him and tuck him in. But I can never wake him. So I do the only thing I can. Watch him sleep.

His face is relaxed, the sculpted brow free of the deep V I give him during the day. But even in sleep, the tension never leaves his body. He sleeps like a warrior. Never at rest, always on guard.
My
guard. Would I have ever been able to get through this day without him? Even breathe? I search through my memories to find a moment where I’ve felt so protected despite all danger. There’s a vague whisper of childhood monsters and Peter. But for real monsters—death, distance, voids so black they make nights look like days—there’s only Aiden. Strong, silent, isolated…yet, have I ever felt less alone? Or more loved?

I pull a blanket over him gently. His shoulders flex.

“I love you,” I whisper the words for the first time.

“Oveutoo,” he mumbles.

I stare at his lips. Did they move? The silence is deep again, as though the words were never spoken. The only evidence they existed is my heart clawing against my chest. For the first time since the watch left Peter’s wrist, I stop it. 10:03 p.m. I take it off like Aiden did a lifetime ago and set it on the nightstand by the frame I gave him. Then, I curl next to him slowly, leaving the side lamp on. The bed is warm from his body heat. I reach with my index finger, touch the back of his hand once and pull it right back. Instantly, his eyes open.

I suck in a sharp breath.

“Hey,” he murmurs and slides his arm under me, pulling me on top of him. He kisses me slowly, as if each kiss should last a thousand years. His fingers fist in my hair and his lips flutter over my jawline to my ear.

“I love you,” he whispers.

I freeze in his arms, a sigh lingering in my ear. “Aiden? Are you awake?”

He tilts my head back, brushing his fingers over my lips. His eyes shift to that same powerful emotion I first saw at his Alone Place. The nameless one.

“Yes, I am.”

I expect another whisper or murmur but his timbre rises above our heavy breathing, sure and confident.

“I meant to wait up to tell you. I want you to know it when you walk into Bob’s office tomorrow. No matter what he says, or what this will mean for us, I love you.”

I stroke his cheek and caress his scar. “I love yo—”

“Shh, don’t say it back.”

“Why not?” I try to ask but his lips dominate mine, leaving no space for words or air.

He rolls me on my back, covering my body with his. He touches me without complexity, without design. He takes off my clothes and I take off his. Perhaps because we are both thinking the same words, our bodies love as one too. His breath in my mouth is my breath. His hand on my breast is my hand. I touch where he does, and our fingers lock. We caress together; my skin is his skin. We hold our hands locked, as he thrusts inside me. His moves are slow, like a litany. It’s as if our bodies are keeping a different time in secret. As the blood thickens, we move faster, deeper. His fingers lock tight between my own, and his iron grip is making my hands numb. I could stop him but I won’t, because his need is my need. My body builds and burns, and we come forcefully, silently, mouth to mouth. His teeth clamp down on my lower lip. I relish the sting of his bite that tells me he is real. That tells me what just happened was not a dream.

The moment my mouth is free, I say loud and clear, “I love you.”

Chapter Forty-Five

Choice

He loves me
,
I repeat like an incantation in my head as Benson drives us to Bob’s office.
He loves me. I love him. And love always wins. Right?

But because—to my knowledge—science has not tested love’s power against ICE, I clutch Aiden’s hand, shivering under his arm.

His hold tightens around me and he tucks my face into his neck. “Hey, shh,” he murmurs in my hair. “We’re still fighting, love.”

Love always wins
.

He runs his fingers through my tangles—I can’t even remember if I combed them. “Do you want me to recite the periodic table in Russian?”

I shake my head in his neck. I’ve tried it all morning, backward, forward, in Latin, Italian and Spanish. It didn’t work. “Just tell me something else…anything. I just want to hear your voice.”

His arms flex around me again and a hard swallow echoes from his throat. His body has turned to granite but I find the hard panes comforting. His lips brush over my hairline to my ear. “Do you want to hear a little story?” he whispers.

I nod.

“You have a birthday you don’t know about.” His whisper is almost a smile. I try to look at him but he keeps my face in his neck. “It’s April thirteenth, the night after the battle of Baghdad. At ten minutes past midnight. In a sand ditch. I was covered in mud, trying to get some sleep but the images in my head…well, you know. And there was Marshall next to me, flashlight in his mouth, scribbling a letter to Jasmine, this moronic smile on his face. I was pissed. What the fuck was he doing? He’d get us all killed with that damn flashlight. But then I realized I was just jealous. Marshall was going to make it through Iraq. He had something to live for and something to die for. He had Jasmine. I didn’t. Never wanted one. But I did that night. I wanted someone back home waiting for my letters. That’s when the fantasy of you started. You were perfect in my head, but you’re so much better in real life. And you kept me company all those nights. Now, what’s ICE going to do about that?”

Take you away from me
.

I look up at him, tears dripping from my cheeks into his charcoal jacket. “Not a bloody thing,” I sniffle.

“Not a bloody thing.” He smiles and tucks me back in his neck. I focus only on his scent until Benson stops at the curb and gets out of the car, probably to give us a moment. Or escape.

Aiden wraps his hands around my wrists. “What are you going to remember when you walk in there?”

“That you love me.”

“That’s right.”

“And that I love you too.”

His grip on my wrists slackens. “Don’t, Elisa.”

“Why not?”

“You know why.”

“You don’t think you deserve to hear it, do you?”

He places his hand gently over my mouth. “Not now,” he says and, before I can protest, he opens the door and lifts me by the waist, and we climb out into another drizzly morning.

Aiden’s stride picks up speed as we charge through the automatic glass doors of Norman Reeves LLP and into the private elevator off the corner. We’re not late but the motion gives us both a sense of accomplishment—the body doing something even if the heart cannot.

I watch Aiden’s reflection on the polished door. He’s wearing a pinstriped charcoal suit and a slate-blue tie that matches his eyes. His sniper focus is similar to his determination the last time we came to this office.

How will this time end?

The moment we step into the twenty-sixth floor lobby, the same Adriana Lima look-alike receptionist springs to her feet. For a second, I think my red-rimmed eyes scared her, but her blush and drool at Aiden say plainly she has not even registered my presence. Her eyelash flutter is wasted.

“We know where we’re going, Miss Patterson.” Aiden raises his hand and marches straight to the conference room with opaque glass walls.

Bob is pacing by the window, a pen twirling in his fingers. The moment we enter, his eyes flit to our joined hands and he smiles.

“Options!” Aiden fires without any preamble. I sink into the closest chair I can find. He takes the seat to my right, still gripping my hand.

“Before that, we have an update.” Bob plops onto the chair across the marble table from us. “Just ten minutes ago, our contact at the DOJ called. Things got a little more complicated. They’ll want to question Elisa under oath. Probably before her deadline.”

“Why?” Aiden snarls and I gasp at the same time.

“Well, they’re very interested in your knowledge of Feign’s work. As they’ve seen repeated footage of you, they reasonably assume you’ve witnessed his affairs.”

“Yes, but she knows nothing about that fucker’s finances,” Aiden hisses. “She got paid peanut shells, and not from the asshole himself. Couldn’t even be in the fucking lobby. That sleazeball has a history with fraud. Cheated in college, defrauded his ex-wife in alimony. And now, he has concocted this scheme, taking advantage of people with no power.”

Bob assumes the expression of a pallbearer. “That may well be true but, given the fact that Elisa also shows up in his sketches, I suspect that she
does
know something about Feign and his paintings.”

“What sketches are these?” I whisper. “I never modeled my face at Feign’s.”

Bob flips through a tall stack of papers in front of him and hands me a thick envelope. Aiden leans over to look, his breath hot on my cheek. I open it with shaking hands, and we both gasp. The sketches are practice runs for Aiden’s painting. I set them facedown on the table, unable to look at Javier’s rendition of my eyes. He has given them a happiness I may only ever find in paintings.

Bob turns his full body to face me. “I think it’s time you tell me the truth, dear. So I can help you. And remember—it’s all attorney-client privileged, except as to Mr. Hale here. Whatever you say, it’s safe with me.”

I look at Aiden. He nods without hesitation and fills me a glass of water from a curvy pitcher on the table. But what about Javier’s secret?

“I’ll tell you what I know but I won’t give you any names,” I say.

Bob nods and I start explaining, taking a sip of water every time I skip over Javier’s name. In the end, Bob’s face is pale. Aiden’s is hard steel.

“My dear,” Bob sighs and straightens the stack of papers. “You have no choice but to tell the DOJ the truth. If you don’t cooperate, the green card denial is the least of your worries. They may charge you with aiding and abetting or perjury or obstructing justice. There’s jail time for that. And you haven’t done anything wrong. Why hide?”

The floor is shaking under my feet. “Because they’ll want to know my friend’s name!” I choke.

Bob nods gravely. “Yes, they will.”

“And what would happen to him then? To my family?”

A deep silence descends on the conference room. “He’d likely be deported and not able to return for at least ten years. They can also charge him with fraud too, and a jury would decide whether a fraudulent artist or an illegal immigrant is lying.”

“But he’s innocent! He didn’t participate in Feign’s fraud! He just paints so he can eat!”

Aiden’s arm tightens around my shoulders and he glares at Bob. “What about witness protection visas—S-5, S-6?” he hisses again. “Could they apply to him? Maybe he himself can testify and relieve her of the burden?”

Bob shakes his head. “The government reserves those visas for terrorist or organized crime witnesses. Not an isolated fraud case.”

“What about another witness? Can someone else come forward and render the need for her testimony irrelevant? The smoking gun if you will—so the investigation stops before they get to her.”

“Who else would know about this?” Bob asks, squinting his eyes.

“No one,” I say. “Feign would not have trusted anyone with this.”

“We’ll find someone.” Aiden arm flexes around my shoulders. “I’d do it myself but I’d only implicate her further.”

Bob shakes his head, squinting more at a vein in the black marble. The longer he is silent, the more my airways tighten.

“It’s a good thought,” he says at last. “But we can’t bank on it. Not with only days left. Besides, she has to explain about her modeling work. Otherwise, she’d still lose.”

The deep V cracks between Aiden’s eyebrows. He rests his chin on his fist, narrowing his eyes at the same marble vein.

Bob turns to me. “Elisa, I know this is an impossible position. But my only concern is your best interest. My advice is that you talk to the DOJ and tell them the truth. It will actually help with your green card. By mid-June, you’ll have what you’ve always wanted.”

My head whips up. Despite Bob’s twinkly eyes, all the anguish makes room for anger.
What I’ve always wanted?
The chair starts shaking again. My teeth snap together before I can scream. The violence turns inward and propels me to my feet.

“Please, listen!” Bob says, raising his liver-spotted hands. “That’s not what I meant, dear.”

“Elisa? Please?” Aiden says very quietly, rising next to me. I meet his eyes. How can I listen to this with my heart imploding? How can I sit when everything inside is shivering like it did in that morgue four years ago? He puts his hand on my shoulder, pressing down gently. I drop. His arm wraps around me again like a rampart.

While we were looking at each other, something changed in Bob’s face. It has creased as though whatever he saw desiccated it. The lawyer is gone. An ancient man sits before me.

“I know what I’m asking you to do,” he sighs. “But I want to talk like a seventy-eight-year-old man to a…a granddaughter.”

I meet his gray aged eyes. Like the first time I met him, I think of Grandpa Snow.

“I won’t lie and tell you this won’t be the biggest regret of your life. It
will
be. Some days, it will hurt so much that you may even come to my grave and kick it. I won’t blame you. But then one day, holding your husband’s hand, you’ll bring to life a little boy or a little girl. You’ll hold them in your arms and you’ll think everything was worth it so they could be in this world. You’ll raise them with all the love you’ve been missing, and they’ll go on to do good things, change laws, save a friend. And this thing that feels so monstrous now, will hurt a little less because something beautiful will come from it.

“And maybe someday, you can fix things with your friend. Sneak him back in, make things right for his family. You’ll survive this one, just like you survived your parents. Not whole, but still good in the end.”

The room falls silent. I close my eyes, trying to see what Bob sees. A bright hospital room, Aiden in blue scrubs, a sapphire-eyed boy or a Clare-eyed girl in my arms.
I love you
, Aiden says. The nurse turns to put a little hat on my baby.
Bendita
, she whispers and becomes Maria. The door opens and the girls burst inside to meet the baby. My baby. Antonio wheels in too, a pile of Maria-knitted baby sweaters on his lap. And Javier at last. With a beaming smile like the first time I was able to tango again.
Sweetheart, you did it
, he says.

My face drops on my hands. Sobs start and I can’t stop them. The floor tilts as it did on that January night, four years ago, and I start shivering. Which love am I losing this time? My family or my life?

I hear a harsh oath from Aiden and his arms tighten around me, tucking my face in his neck. “Give us some time, Bob. We’ll let you know tomorrow,” he says.

I hear Bob’s footsteps, a hand clutching my shoulder and the conference room door opening and closing. Still, Aiden does not move or speak. He just holds me and lets my tears soak his jacket. The only thing still right in my world is he.