Thirty Nights (American Beauty #1)

by Ani Keating

  “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 kitc
hen 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 thr
ough 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.”