Текст книги "Thirty Nights"
Автор книги: Ani Keating
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Текущая страница: 22 (всего у книги 27 страниц)
Chapter Forty-Four
Rightness
The rose-covered horizon sways and tilts as if I’m falling. A strong arm clutches at my waist, holding me upright.
“What problem?” I gasp.
“Put him on speaker,” Aiden fires before Bob has a chance to answer. I try to press the speaker button but my hands are shaking so badly that Aiden takes the phone from me and does it himself.
“Bob, you’re on speaker. What’s the issue?” he demands in his hard business tone.
“Well, we just learned that the Department of Justice has launched a full investigation of Feign Art for consumer fraud and tax evasion. They’re inspecting everything, from his client roster to his personal finances.”
“What does that mean for me?” I splutter.
“It means that they’ll most likely discover your under-the-table work.”
“But how will they know my name? I’m not on any personnel files.”
“Apparently, there was video footage of you from the security camera, as well as sketches and some photos, dear. The DOJ did their normal procedure and ran them against the Homeland Security database. You’re on there because you’re a foreign national. So now, they want to question you to see what you know about Feign’s business and what you do for him. Our contact confirmed you’re on the list of persons of interest.”
The horizon tilts again. “Were there any other names on the list?” Not Javier. Please, not Javier.
“Ah, let’s see.” Some shuffling of papers. “Feign, his family, a Kasia Moss, accountant, financial advisor, landlord, a supply deliveryman. Why?”
I breathe a sigh of relief. Nothing that could lead them to Javier. I say a silent thank-you to every power that Javier always followed the rules and used the secret back door. “Just…nothing,” I answer a little late. “What happens now?”
A small pause. “Well, if they learn you’ve worked illegally, that could mean anything, even—well, let’s meet in my office first thing tomorrow morning and discuss options.”
I know his unfinished sentence. Even denial of my green card. My knees give out. The same strong arm breaks my fall before my face hits the fountain edge.
“Not tomorrow, Bob. Now!” Aiden hisses through his teeth.
“I can’t, Mr. Hale. I’m due in court—”
Bob’s words become disjointed, scrambled, until his voice fades into silence. The garden vanishes. No gurgling fountain. No rose-scented air. All that’s left is a dark void. And me.
Oxygen, 15.999— A gust of cinnamon breath on my face reactivates my lungs. Once, twice. Slowly, the smell of roses seeps through. Then Aiden’s midnight eyes and his body heat around me. And finally his voice—back to its furious, dominant timbre.
“And Bob?”
“Yes, Mr. Hale?”
“I will say this only once. England. Is not. An option. I don’t want to hear it tomorrow, the day after or ever. Is that clear?”
A moment of silence follows his words.
“I understand, Mr. Hale,” Bob wheezes at last. “And, Elisa, please try to sleep tonight. We’ll do our absolute best on this.”
It takes another gust of cinnamon air for me to find my voice. “Thank you, Bob,” I choke.
Aiden hangs up and tightens his arms around me. “Hey! Shh, shh,” he murmurs, sitting on the fountain edge and folding me on his lap.
The shivers I was managing to contain break through, and I start convulsing.
“I’ve got you. I won’t let them hurt you. Just breathe, baby. I’m here.” He kisses my cheek, my temple, my hair.
But his words give me no comfort. They only remind me of what’s at stake. Of how much more there is to lose.
“Shh, baby, shh. Hydrogen, 1.008. Helium, 4.003,” he recites slowly, in rhythm with the circles he draws on my back. He runs through the table five times before the shivers start receding. Still, his fingers never stop caressing my shoulders. I focus on their motion, imagining letters, words. L—o—v—e.
“Say something,” he croons, tipping my face up to look at him.
The moment I meet his eyes, the question I’ve never asked him breaks through. “What if I have to leave?”
His shoulders twitch once. “We’ll fight this with everything we have,” he says fiercely.
But I hear what he can’t promise me: that it will not happen.
“Let me see what I can find on that fucker, okay? I want anything that can get us leverage.” He sneers as he refers to Feign, and his foot starts tapping. Itching for action. I nod to give us both some relief.
He bolts to his feet—somehow managing to hold me to his side without a single jostle—and starts firing orders at Benson. I hadn’t noticed him hovering next to us even though his shadow darkens half the fountain. His forehead is crumpled like Javier’s.
“Find everything you can on that motherfucker. Grandparents, cousins, fucks, doctors, schools, banks. Then get me a list of every investigator involved—full briefs on them, their staff and their families. Full building sweep. Trail on Feign twenty-four seven. Download at twenty-three hundred.”
“Yes, sir.” Benson almost salutes him.
“I’ll call Sartain and Congressman Kirschner, and then head over to Boley Law Library. I want to read these fucking laws myself!”
Before Benson can nod again, Aiden grips my hand and starts marching across the Rose Garden. His face is so thunderous that visitors—and their dogs—give us a wide berth on their own.
“Aiden?” I rasp as I stumble and trip to keep up with him. “Can I call Javier from your phone? I have to warn him.”
He hands me his iPhone without breaking stride. “Tell him to avoid that whole area.”
I dial Javier, praying to every high power I can think of that he picks up. The powers answer. Or maybe I’ve depleted all the bad luck in the world. I splutter and huff everything as I jog next to Aiden.
“So you have to stay away from the gallery, Javier. Just don’t go around there at all! Please!”
“I won’t,” Javier mumbles, his voice sounding too far, too weak. Suddenly, I want to sprint to him, not the library. Hold him like he has held me all these years.
“Don’t worry, they don’t have your name or any footage of you. This is just a precaution.”
“I know. I just wish that asshole had told me the truth, not left me a message barking about vacations. Not to mention all the cash we’ll lose from this.”
“Don’t think about that. We’ll figure something out,” I say as we reach the trellis and Benson races across the parking lot to get the car.
“Yeah, yeah. Listen, don’t tell Maria, she’ll freak. And be careful with Bob.”
“Don’t worry about me. Aiden is all over it.” I look at Aiden. Black clouds are descending on his eyes, shoulders ready to demolish concrete. A flicker of hope glimmers in the void. I can’t imagine anyone—ICE or fire—brave enough to mess with him.
“I’m glad you have him,” Javier says in a quiet voice. And I realize something just changed for him with Aiden.
“Thank you,” I say, the words so fervent that Aiden looks down at me, his eyes stilling in concentration.
“Do everything you can to stay, sweetheart. No matter the cost.”
“We will. Love you, Javier.”
“Love you too.”
I hang up and hand the phone to Aiden. He is looking at me with an odd expression in his eyes—as though he is imagining something.
“He says he’s glad I have you. And that we should do everything we can.”
He nods, the V deepening, and yanks me by the arm as the Rover comes to a screeching stop in front of us. We climb in and peel away from the curb the instant my seat belt buckle clicks. Patty and Jack wave at us from the garden shop door.
“I have to babysit the girls tonight,” I whisper, now dreading the hours apart with every electron in my body.
If Aiden was tense before, it’s nothing to how he looks now. His arms lock around me like iron bars. “Elisa!” he protests though his teeth. “You’re almost fainting!”
“I know, but they have Antonio’s physical therapy and Javier has to work. I’ll be fine at Casa Solis, don’t worry.” I solder myself to him, gripping his arm.
Waves of tension roll over him like aftershocks. Or maybe foreshocks. But he takes a deep breath and cups my face. “I’m not letting you be alone tonight. You can babysit at home.” His shoulders twitch at the mere idea.
“At home?” I blink at him, mouth open. “B-but…you—what about your…distance and startle reflex?” For some reason, I whisper the last two words.
“I’ll lock myself in the library. You can have the rest of the house. Cora can help. I don’t want you alone—” He pauses. “And I don’t want to be away from you either. Not even for a minute.”
For one blinding moment, the terror disappears and I’m just a girl in love. For the first time. For the last time.
* * * * *
Seven hours later, during which Aiden assimilated three treatises and the entire three thousand pages of America’s immigration code, Benson parks the Range Rover in front of Casa Solis, Aiden and me behind him in the Aston Martin. The plan: the girls and I will drive in the Rover with Benson and Aiden will follow us, lest the girls touch his back by mistake.
Maria is out in the yard, watering the daffodils, while the girls teach Anamelia how to ride their one pink bike with silver tinsel on the handlebars.
“¡Ah! Amorcita,” Maria cries as she sees me climb out. She waddles to her feet and wipes her hands on the apron printed with suns. The girls dart around me, Anamelia crashing her bike into the Rover’s tire.
“¿Linda, estás bien? Pareces cansada. ¿Tienes frio?” Maria feels my forehead and pulls down my eyelid to check why I look tired. It takes at least two minutes to assure her that I’m all right. Even then, only Aiden unfolding gracefully out of the Aston Martin stops her. A long silence falls over the yard. Even the girls stop giggling.
He strides to us, seeming confident to the whole world. But I know his strain in his shoulders and the imperceptible look he exchanges with Benson, who moves subtly between him and the girls. Maria’s face folds into a beautiful, motherly smile.
“Ah, Señor Hale! Finalmente. Nice to meet you.” She places her sun-spotted hands on his face, reaches on her tiptoes and kisses him on both cheeks. Aiden stares at me over her shoulder, eyes frozen wide. Benson chuckles and tries to disguise it as a cough.
“A pleasure to meet you as well, ma’am,” Aiden says, as Maria releases his face and starts rattling off in English before Aiden can speak another syllable.
“Thank you for the water heater. They come put it up this Saturday, then warm showers every day.” She clasps her hands together. “And the girls go to camp this Friday because of you. But the iPads, Señor Hale, no—girls don’t talk to me no more, only watch Pixar. Bien, bien, come inside, I make posole soup.” She lifts her hand as though to pat him on the shoulder. I step between them.
“Maria, you’ll be late for Antonio’s therapy, and Aiden and Benson have some work to do. I was thinking of bringing the girls to his house and we can play there. Is that okay?”
She frowns as though she doesn’t understand my question. “Of course, amorcita.” Then she looks at Aiden, lifting her chin up with gravitas. “I trust you with all my children, Señor Hale, including Isa.”
“I’ll do my best with all of them, ma’am.” Aiden clears his throat when he finally has a chance to speak.
She nods with a smile and starts loading the girls’ toys and the “infernal iPads” in the Rover’s trunk. Without her buffer, as the girls face Aiden, I’m not sure who is more scared: they or he. I decide it’s Aiden. But he puts on his Marine face and smiles. Bel’s eyes widen but she doesn’t speak. Dora and Daniela greet him, smiling in a way that makes me proud. Anamelia, who was born only two weeks after I met the Solises, takes to him immediately.
“This is a big car,” she says to him point-blank. He blinks a couple of times.
“Yes, it is,” he says, eyeing Anamelia like she might eat him.
“I have a car for my Barbie. But it’s pink.” She looks at Aiden, expecting him to comment on this disclosure. He scratches his head.
“Pink is good,” he says after a while. The other three giggle and go climb in Rover’s backseat. I wish I had my camera out.
“Why do you have two cars?” Anamelia continues her interrogation.
“Ah…because you’re very important.”
She grins. “You have a lot of hair for a boy,” she announces. She is used to Javier and Antonio, who have shorter hair than Aiden. I pick her up, bite her cheek and tickle her. She squeals and reaches for Aiden who has an odd look between panic and something I can’t decipher.
I secure her in the booster seat before he runs for the West Hills.
“Aiden drives us,” Anamelia commands, pointing imperiously at Aiden. Maria turns and looks at him with a smile.
“Anamelia, Aiden has to drive the pretty car so it doesn’t break,” I say and close the door before she says she’ll ride with him to help him fix it. Her face falls and she presses her dimply hand on the window like she is waving at him.
* * * * *
The moment we enter through the doors of our home, Aiden makes a beeline for the library.
“Aiden, where you going?” Anamelia calls after him.
“I have to make a call, Anamelia. It’s okay, Elisa will be with you.”
Her bottom lip juts out but she recovers quickly. “Wait! I have a phone,” she says, digging her pink Barbie phone out of her Hello Kitty rucksack. She flips it open and hands it to him.
An endless moment passes in the foyer as the girls and Aiden look at Anamelia’s outstretched hand. Then his posture straightens, he draws a contained breath, and treads back to Anamelia, taking the phone from her gingerly.
“Er, thank you,” he says.
She grins and claps. “You have to put it in your ear.”
He puts it next to his ear (“Hello, Benson”), reaches in his back pocket and gives her his iPhone. She giggles and twirls in her Mary Janes. And with that small exchange, we troop into the living room, Aiden bringing up the rear while I squeeze his hand instead of doing something stupid like dropping on one knee and proposing.
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.”
