Thirty Nights (American Beauty #1)

by Ani Keating

  “Would you like to sit down?” I ask. “Or something to drink?”

  He shakes his head and starts to pace. Left, right. Left, right. With each step, he flits in and out of the ray of sun streaming from the window. Unsure what to do, I perch on the arm of the sofa, listening to the rustle of his suit.

  He grasps his forehead like he wants to rip it off. I try to think of something to say but instinctively I know I shouldn’t. He is at the edge of a precipice and he will either jump on his own or not. He stops pacing and fixes me with his stare.

  “From the moment you fell asleep in my arms on our first night, I’ve been trying to deserve you. Or if not deserve you, at least deserve the thought of you.” The words gush from his mouth.

  “I’d touch your hair, your face. You smiled, then started whimpering in terror ‘six-oh-two, six-oh-two’. I had no idea what it meant but I knew you were in trouble and I knew no matter what it was, I’d try to save you. From anything, especially myself.” His teeth clench, and he runs his hand through his hair, grasping his neck.

  “You deserve better, Elisa. Someone to heal you, not to drag you down. Gentle, not violent. The best thing for you is to let you go.

  “But I’m selfish. I kept telling myself, ‘One more day, just one more day. I’ll be extra careful, always on my guard, never turn my back.’ The trouble was I hadn’t counted on your effect. All my structure, all my rules, they evaporate around you.” He splays his fingers in the air. “It took just holding you for a few minutes and I slipped… Such a simple, elemental mistake, and it could have been deadly.” His voice rises abruptly on the last word, making me jump.

  “Deadly?” I gasp. “Why? What mistake?”

  His hands turn to fists. “I fell asleep, Elisa… You have no idea how very close you were to getting hurt—” He sucks in a sharp breath and looks away. His eyes lock on the window. His frame shudders like he is seeing something vicious in his head.

  But I relax as I finally understand. “You mean your nightmare? Aiden, I was fine. Nothing happened to me.”

  Instantly, his jaw clenches. “Yes. By sheer dumb luck.” His voice is harsh, angry. “If you had touched my back instead of my face or had wrapped your arms around me, I would have attacked you and not known what I did until it was too late.” He fixes his eyes unblinking on the scratched hardwood floor.

  A chill seeps through my skin to my bones. A gust of fear, if I’m honest. Yes, PTSD has nightmares and flashbacks but this sounds different. “Why would you have attacked me?” I try to put volume in my voice but it’s muted.

  He looks up at me for an immeasurable moment. The ever-present tectonic plates slow down until they still. “I have a startle reflex, Elisa. No one can sneak up on me or touch me from behind, whether I’m asleep or awake… If they do, I will rip them apart or crush their bones, much like I did my own mother when I came home from Iraq… All because she tried to wake me one night from a nightmare. Just like you did.” His voice drops to a whisper, and he looks back at the window, beyond the glass pane. His eyes gloss with a liquid film. His right hand closes into a white claw, and his muscle bands quiver under the tailored lines of his jacket. Exactly as they did during his nightmare.

  At the sight, my fear scoots to the corner and makes room for something else: for him. What is it about healing the pain of others that liberates us from our own ache? It must be cellular, in our blood, because right now, seeing his anguish, the only thing that matters to me is wiping it away.

  I stand to go to him but he steps back, now almost against the wall. He stands tall, in his high-alert posture.

  “Don’t!” he says.

  I sit back on the sofa to give him the space he needs. “But your mum is okay now?” I ask gently, even though I know she must be if she is traveling to Thailand. But maybe if he starts thinking about the good things, it will help.

  He scowls. “Not thanks to me. If my father hadn’t been there to save her, she would have been torn to pieces.” He closes his eyes. Quiver after quiver ripples under his jacket like the flesh of a steed reined close to the bit. My stomach clenches in sync with his shudders. I replay my time with him through this new lens that explains everything. Everything but how this started. What happened to him? Can I ever ask this question without forcing him to relive it?

  I have a sudden urge to hold him but his force field is almost tangible. “When did you come back from war?” I ask, hoping this will not trigger any horrors.

  “May 31, 2003, at 8:24 p.m.”

  “So long ago,” I whisper. A whole epoch away. “And you think because it happened then, it will happen again with me?”

  “I don’t think. I know.” His voice is resolute. “Remember what I told you about my memory, Elisa?”

  I think through our dialogue for something that can explain this. Then the chill returns to my bones and I shiver.

  “That once you experience something, you will always relive it with perfect clarity?” I whisper.

  He nods. “Once that flashback is triggered, whether I’m awake or in a dream state, I will act exactly as I did then, feel exactly what I felt, and the outcome will be exactly the same.” He speaks slowly, as though he is reading a judgment.

  “Always?”

  “Always.”

  The word hangs between us, having none of the promise that it holds for other couples. Madly, in my mind, I picture another girl across the world in this very second, warm not cold, with another man, beaming not ashen, their bodies tangled on a tight sofa, whispering “always”.

  “I cannot control it, Elisa.” The couple vanishes. “Especially not with you.”

  I look up at him. He gazes at my jawline, at my throat. Another shiver runs through me, this one for myself. “Why not around me? What makes me more in danger?”

  For the first time, he smiles. It’s a sad smile, the kind we wear sometimes instead of tears. “There is a complication with you.”

  “What complication?”

  “The fact that when I first look at you, I feel calm. It is very difficult for me to maintain my control and vigilance when you’re around. It’s not a feeling I’ve ever had before with any other person.”

  I am only a woman so despite the chill, I cannot help but ask, “Why not?”

  His smile becomes true, with a shadow of a dimple. “How to explain this?” He looks around the living room. His eyes alight on a picture on the wall: Reagan and the Solises gathered around me as I blow out a single candle for my first anniversary in the States. He looks back at me.

  “See, when we meet people, it’s always in context. Where they are, what they’re saying, doing, feeling. We all have first impressions, but for me those are permanent. Whatever reaction they elicit in me then, that’s what I will re-experience when I see them next. My feelings may develop but that initial perception will always be my first response.

  “For example, your roommate and your tango partner. The first time I saw them was from upstairs at Andina. They were letting you get plastered and potentially endangering you. And he was dancing with you, your legs in knots, but you looked so…so lost, sad. I watched you dance. You move like water. So beautiful, but you never smiled once. Then you started downing your drinks like a Marine before deployment and neither of them stopped you. Well, demented as I am, the idea of you upset or sick or drunk or in a car accident with a man who turns out doesn’t even have insurance—it made me taste blood. So every time I’ll see Mr. Solis or Miss Starr, they will piss me off. I may grow to like them, respect them, be grateful to them for the love they’ve shown you—” he points to the picture, “—but still, on first sight, that initial anger will be there until I control it.”

  I can’t speak. Even here, discussing my own danger, the idea of his eyes on me while I danced, and his worry about me, starts to restore me.

  “But with you, it’s different.” His voice becomes
almost a caress. “The very first time I saw you, you were in a painting, only a small, virtuous part of you exposed.” He cups his hands like he is holding a soap bubble. “The light on your shoulder, the way you looked like you were breathing, the gentle curve of your neck…was peaceful. I felt…strangely calm… And calmness is something I’ve coveted for a very long time. It was instantly addictive. I just stood there, watching…” The tectonic plates shift slightly, and the turquoise depths lighten and still. Then they smolder. “But the painting was also sensual so calmness morphed to lust. Maddening lust… It was a perfect storm. The two things that most erode one’s control.”

  It’s terrifying that these words warm me when I should stay focused on my impending bone crushing, but they do. Inch by inch, fear leaves my body.

  “So now?” I ask, and immediately regret it.

  The smile disappears. “So now, every time I see you, I have my guard down. I’m not as vigilant, and therefore, I’m more dangerous.” His voice is sharp again. And his eyes—I’ve never seen them deeper.

  For the first time, he steps toward me. I stand to go to him but he puts his hand up. “It all comes down to this, Elisa. I cannot risk hurting you and I cannot give up my own structure either, because without it, I become a monster.”

  He shudders, but I feel like he just ripped my chest open. The warmth of his words evaporates as I realize he has not come back to me; he has come to say goodbye. The void that forms when I think of the car accident flares now as though another fatality is looming.

  He closes the distance between us quickly, his arms out like he is trying to break a fall. “Elisa, fuck! Are you okay? No—of course, you’re not! How could you be with everything I just told you? Here, sit down.” His eyes are wide. His hand hovers over my shoulder like he doesn’t want to touch me.

  “I’m fine. I was just thinking,” I say, blinking at him, confused. Why is he so panicked? It’s not like I collapsed on the floor. Still, I sit on the sofa to calm him.

  “Do you need some water? Or food? A break?”

  “No, I’m fine, Aiden.” My tone is abrupt despite my intentions. I soften it at the sight of the V between his eyebrows. “I just need to understand you. Why come here at all if it’s just to tell me to stay away?”

  His face hardens, his jaw clenches again. “So that you can move on without any regrets.” His voice is sharp. He scowls at me. Then something catches his eye to my right. He frowns and tilts his head to the side. I follow his gaze and freeze. Oh, bloody hell, my clinical psychopathology book! My PTSD list!

  I watch in slow motion as he treads to the table and picks up the list with his long fingers. His eyes change as he reads it, from confusion to horror to fury to relief until the plates settle in their neutral, guarded spot. In the silence, I can only hear my heart pounding in my ears. He picks up the textbook and reads through it in seconds. At last, he looks up at me.

  “How long have you known about my defect?” His voice is even, but I don’t know if the storm has passed or it’s coming.

  Defect? It’s not a defect, it’s an illness. “I just put the pieces together right before you came over. After I heard you were in the war.” My voice is faint.

  He nods, and with slow, deliberate motions, tucks the list back in the exact page and position he found it. Then he sits on the ottoman in front of me, at the very edge.

  “And you’ve been sitting here, with this knowledge, seriously contemplating being with me?” Still even voice.

  I nod and swallow.

  His jaw clenches again. “Elisa, what you’ve read in this book and these symptoms are all true. But it’s one thing to read about them, and it’s quite another to live with them. And I cannot permit under any circumstances that your life is tainted with this. You need to grasp that, so listen very carefully to my words.” He pauses, waiting for me to look at his mouth where the words will materialize. I have a strange compulsion to close my eyes and ears because I know the words will make no difference. I will still want him and I will try to save him. Much like he is trying to save me.

  “Look at me,” he says.

  “I am.”

  “No, look at me, not at what you see in your head. Put aside all the obligations you feel toward me, what we’ve shared, and listen like a scientist. You have your whole life ahead of you. You’re young, intelligent, beautiful, loving—despite all that life has thrown your way. Hopefully your immigration will work out, and you can finally move on from your past. I cannot. I will not. Whether I’m thirty-five or ninety-five, this is my reality: I am a trained killer, volatile and dangerous. And you—need—to stay—away.”

  Every punctuated word feels like a stab in my chest. Not for myself but for him. Because under all his concern for me lies a big truth: his inability to see any good things about himself, his belief that he is a defective machine. Odd that after all he has told me, it took this moment to grasp the enormity of his struggle. And no matter what it may cost me, now all I want to do is soothe him. I stand, my decision made.

  He frowns, but stands as well. I watch his face, feeling as though I broke through chains. Ever since I first saw him, I have been trying to fight him so I don’t get hurt. How little that matters now that I truly see his pain!

  I take his hand in both of mine. It’s ice cold. “You also have goodness in you and you need to see it. I’m in awe of you.”

  “That’s because you don’t know me.” He sounds defiant.

  “I know more than you think. I know what’s here,” I say, putting my hand on his chest. His heart is breaking through his ribs in a strong, jagged rhythm. Like mine.

  “I know the circles under your eyes.” I trace them with my finger. “I know the laugh with no sound.” I caress his lips. “I know that in one week, you’ve saved all my dreams.”

  “With sex and money,” he says with contempt.

  “No. With your humanity.” I take his right hand and put it over his frantic heart.

  “Listen,” I tell him. The defiant boy leaves his eyes, and the man stills as he listens to his own heartbeat.

  “Now listen here.” I take his other hand and put it over my own heart. His touch sends tremors along my spine but I don’t move.

  Our heartbeats spike under our hands in harmony, and then our lungs fall in sync too. At that precise moment, I reach on my tiptoes for his lips and kiss him.

  His shoulders relax under my touch, and now I know why. His lips start moving with mine. Light and hesitant, like questions. I answer them as best I can. Then his kiss changes. His hands fly to my face. I press myself against him, fisting my fingers in his hair. He responds so forcefully that we stagger across the room until I feel the wall at my back. His hips pin me against it. My feet leave the ground as his kiss literally sweeps me off my feet.

  I bite his lip like the taste of his mouth is not enough. He lifts me and wraps my legs around his waist. His erection finds its spot and presses against me.

  “You will not make this easy, will you?” he asks, his breathing harsh. His eyes are scorching.

  I shake my head.

  “Ceasefire,” he says and kisses me hard.

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Boy, Man, God

  I flex my thighs to bring him closer. He moans. My dress has bunched up on my hips and the thin layer of my knickers is not enough to block him. He starts grinding against me and rolling his hips slowly. He brings his lips to my ear. His words start. Different words. Not hard, not dirty. Loving. Between each whispered word, he nibbles, kisses, bites and grinds.

  “I missed you… I missed the way you smell…the way you moan. Speak up, baby… I love the way you say my name. Don’t ever call me Mr. Hale again. I hate it… Yes, like that… It sounds good when you say it… I love the way you look when you’re about to come. Eyes open. Look at me… What do you want? Tell me… No, not yet. This one is for you. Only you
… I know, I know… Here, shh. I’ll take over.”

  He picks up his tempo against my knickers. The throbbing increases with each grind until the tension in my body becomes unbearable. Every muscle flexes and snaps. My insides convulse violently and I soar.

  When I float back to earth, the only thought I can form is extraordinary. I open my eyes. He looks triumphant as always but his jaw is locked and his fingers dig into my buttocks. The sight is both predatory and hunted. I realize now that he stopped himself from coming. This was all mine.

  “Where is your room?” he says, kissing along my jaw. I don’t have the power of speech back so I point behind him across the living room. He strides there, with me wrapped around him, his tongue speaking with strokes now instead of words. My body, already sensitized, inflates again.

  In my room, he leans me against the closed door and lowers me to the floor. When my feet touch the ground, he steps back. He doesn’t look anywhere else but at me. He takes off all his clothes except his trousers. I stare at him, apple-and-Eve again. With one step, he closes the distance and lowers his mouth to my ear.

  “You get more beautiful by the hour. Even my memory can’t do you justice.”

  His hands roam my body and trail up along my spine. He finds the zipper there and lowers it slowly. The nail of his thumb grazes my spine as my dress comes undone. He caresses my back and slides the dress off my shoulders. As my skin is exposed, he kisses it. His lips are hot, his breath fire.

  In one move, my bra and knickers come off. He runs his thumb over my lips and, like the first time he did this, I have an urge to taste him. I part my mouth and he pushes his thumb inside. He tastes like nothing and yet, like everything. He repeats the process with his index and middle fingers, then with his other hand. The gesture is so erotic that the buzz in my body becomes tangible.

  Wet now, his hands mold my breasts. He is gentle at first, then rougher and, finally, I feel the delicious pinch that I have started to know well. I lean against the door as my weight becomes too heavy. His mouth closes around my nipple. Slow strokes of his tongue change to bites and back again in a heavenly pattern. He moves not like my body is the end, but like it is the beginning.