TEN DAYS

by Jenna Mills

  "Aidan, no—"

  "It killed me when she looked at me like that—"

  I moved fast, slipping forward in the boat until I could lift my hands to him—

  But he kept going. "And then you were gone and I couldn't find you—"

  And with his words, a whole new picture was starting to form, his picture, the life he was living, each moment as it played for him.

  I'd been so consumed living through my own filter, seeing through my own eyes, my own biased lens, that I'd never once stopped to think about Aidan. Aidan the man. The man who'd lost so much. Who'd survived. What my questions might do to him. My reactions. About the uncertainty I couldn't hide. And yes, the fear.

  The fear of all I didn't know.

  And of all that I thought I did.

  "And I ran," he was saying, but at that moment, I had no idea if he even knew I was there. "I ran like I did before, and then I saw you, and you were in that bathroom, and all I could think was that it was happening again...holy Mother of God it was happening again."

  "Aidan." My hands to his face. I lifted them, had to touch. Had to let him feel me. Feel me there. "It was a misunderstanding, that was all."

  "Then you looked at me..." he said, his eyes suddenly on me, on mine, but not seeing, not seeing me.

  Seeing her.

  His wife.

  Laurel.

  "...Looked at me like she did during those last few days, every time I tried to touch her..."

  "Aidan, no—"

  "And I realized I'd done that to you. I'd done that to you, too, just like I did that to her—"

  I didn't stop to think. I didn't stop to consider or analyze, not when everything inside me was a crazy twisted mess. There was only Aidan, and me, and the darkness he couldn't get away from. That he lived with.

  That I'd resurrected.

  "No," I said. "You didn't do anything to me." And then I kissed him.

  He stilled. It was like life becoming death, his whole body locking into place, locking against me.

  "Aidan, I whispered, hovering there, a breath from him.

  His eyes. They glowed in the starlight, lit only by that fire inside him, the one that smoldered, no matter how hard he tried to make sure no one saw it.

  "Aidan," I said again, this time slipping closer and skimming fingertips against the rough shadow at his jaw. "You have to quit punishing yourself."

  The moment held us, held us so, so tight. I could feel his breath, warm against the side of my face, the heat of his body—the rapid screaming of his heart.

  "Nicky," I murmured with another brush of my mouth to his. "Please—"

  He never gave me the chance to finish. All those invisible chains, the ones that held him, locked him away, fell into nothingness, and with a broken breath, he reached for me and dragged me closer, opening to me, his mouth to mine, opening—demanding.

  And I went, and I gave. I fell against him and kissed him back, kissed him with all the longing I'd been trying to deny, the hunger and the need. But with something else, too, something more. Something that made everything inside me fall apart, even as everything inside me fell into place.

  The boat rocked. I'm not sure how we ended up on the floor, me on top of him, pressed closer, feeling...absorbing. But I didn't care, not when his arms closed around me with a possessiveness that made all those places inside me beg. His hands ran along my body, rough but gentle. His legs wrapped around me. And with his mouth, he claimed, and he took.

  And I gave.

  And I died.

  So long. Maybe from the moment I'd turned to see him standing in the doorway that very first day. Maybe longer than that, back years to the little girl I'd been, nursing a secret crush on the older boy in my uncle's driveway. I didn't know. I only knew that it felt like forever that I'd been wanting to feel his mouth slant against mine, consuming.

  This, I realized, lost there in his arms and the moment. This was why. This was everything. Him. He was why I was here. Because I'd wanted...to be with him.

  Dreamlike, I melted into him, loving the feel of him against me, the hard ridge pressing against my middle. I shifted, pressing closer, rocking—

  The rough sound that ripped from his throat fired through me.

  "Yes," I murmured against the growing ache, a different kind of ache.

  He ripped away fast, rolling out from beneath me and leaving me lying there on the floor of the boat, trying to breathe. It was like being ripped from a dream, so completely and swiftly that as the pieces fell away, they disintegrated into absolute nothingness, leaving you confused...and lost.

  "I'm sorry," he breathed. "Fuck—I'm sorry."

  I lay there, stunned and aching, cold sweeping into all the places that warmth had caressed moments before. "I'm not," I breathed.

  His eyes flashed. The lines of his face, they were so tight. He looked like a man, not awakened from a dream, but ripped from a nightmare.

  Because he was.

  I know that now.

  Maybe life went on. Maybe days passed. But that didn't mean people moved forward. People could remain, locked, held prisoner, long after the last words were written.

  "Aidan," I started, but then realized that was the wrong name. Aidan was not who he was. "Nicky..."

  "Don't," he said roughly. "Don't call me that."

  I pulled myself up, kneeling there inches away, but knowing not to touch, at least not with my hands. "But it's who you are."

  Around us the night played on, the gentle splash of unseen fish and the occasional shift of vegetation, the breeze and the moon and the glimmer of the stars.

  But we weren't part of it, not any of that. We were somewhere else, caught between reality and fiction.

  "You want to be Aidan Cross," I said pressing the only way I could—with truth. "You want to be the aloof, controlling man of mystery. But you're not." It was all so clear now. The life he led was as much a pseudonym as the name itself. "You're Nicky Ramirez—and you always have been."

  He looked away, toward the skeletal remains of another tall cypress tree. His shoulders rose, fell with each jerky breath.

  "We should go," he said.

  I laughed. I couldn't help it. "That's Aidan trying to talk. He's the one who shuts down when things get out of control. Nicky—"

  "Damn it," he gritted out, twisting back toward me. "Don't you get it? I'm trying like hell not to take advantage of you—"

  This time I was the one who stilled. It was my breath that caught. My heart that forgot to beat. "What if I want you to?"

  His eyes, still burning, burning so hot, darkened.

  "What if I'm right where I want to be?" I said, edging closer. "What if I know exactly what I'm doing?"

  His throat worked. "Then you're asking for trouble."

  "Not trouble," I said, keeping my voice low, even though there was no one there to hear me, only him. "I'm asking for you."

  He was so good at hiding. So good at building walls and living behind them. But for a fractured moment, I saw the glimmer of pain, the hell he lived with every breath of his life.

  "It doesn't have to be like this," I whispered. Then, without moving, I crawled out on the thinnest limb of my life. "What happened to Laurel was not your fault."

  And in that moment, his plan backfired. There was nowhere for him to go. We were there together on the small boat in the middle of a swamp. It was not why he brought me there—to trap himself.

  But I wasn't about to turn back.

  "Yes," he said slowly—horribly. "It was."

  That was one of the most devastating realities of suicide. It didn't take only one life. It didn't stop only one heart. There were those left behind, those alive but dead, who had to find a way to make it through each ensuing day.

  "I should have realized how fragile she was, that she was falling apart right before my eyes—"

  "There's no way you could have known," I tried.

  "If I'd paid closer attention—"

  "No."

>   "If I'd listened...heard her—"

  "No."

  He looked beyond me, toward the trees rising up from the murky water. "I found her."

  Again my breath caught, this time for far different reasons.

  "We'd just bought the house. I was downstairs, working when I realized I didn't know where she was. She was upstairs, in the bathroom—the tub. There was a broken wine glass on the floor."

  I closed my eyes to the image, opened them a broken moment later. The bathroom.

  The bathtub.

  "And I knew. I knew before I touched her—her lips, they were already blue. And the water, it was cold...."

  Silently, I slipped closer to him, and reached for his hand.

  His fingers closed around mine, tight.

  So tight.

  "She looked like she was sleeping. She had her hair up, a necklace on—the ruby I gave her for our anniversary—and her nails...they were painted to match—"

  I swallowed hard. "I'm so sorry."

  "It was like slow motion," he said hoarsely. "Then I reached for her, and everything sped up, and I had her out of the tub and on the floor, and I was shouting and doing CPR, even though I knew."

  I squeezed his hand.

  "We were never right for each other. I made her miserable. She would have been better off—"

  He broke off abruptly.

  "Better off what?" I asked, even though I was pretty sure I knew.

  He turned back to stare at me. "With Sloan."

  The pain in his voice lanced straight through me. "Don't say that."

  "It's true."

  I wanted to say something, but couldn't find a single word that felt right. So I kneeled there and held his hand, while the memory bled through his eyes.

  "That's when I first started coming here,' he said, still suspended in that other time and place. "After she died, when everywhere I turned..."

  He didn't finish, but he didn't need to. People. Everywhere he turned. There were people looking at him. Knowing. Wondering.

  Accusing.

  "It was peaceful here," he said, pulling his hand from mine to slip it down into the water. "Quiet. I could get away."

  "It's beautiful," I agreed, looking around and seeing the tall trees and inky water through his eyes. Eyes that needed to look without anyone looking back.

  "I've never brought anyone else."

  My heart kicked hard. "Why?"

  "Because I never wanted to."

  "No," I said quietly. "Why me?"

  His eyes were back on mine, seeing again, I realized. Seeing me.

  "Why bring me here, then push me away?"

  A corner of his mouth lifted. "Because I wasn't thinking—I was wanting."

  And something inside me started to tear.

  "But then I saw it again," he said. "The fear in your eyes, like last night—"

  "Aidan—" No. Not, Aidan. "Nicky."

  "—and I realized my mistake."

  "No," I said. "Not a mistake."

  He was still looking at me, his eyes dark and lost. "You know about Danielle."

  I rocked back—it was the first time he'd breathed her name to me. "Yes."

  His jaw tightened. "Tell me then," he said. "Tell me what you know."

  The breeze was still blowing, summer warm, but a sudden swirl of cold gripped me.

  The news stories about Danielle had been as disturbing as those about Lauren.

  "The two of you were involved," I began, but he cut me off with a hard slash of his eyes.

  "Lovers," he said. "Just sex. Nothing more."

  The images formed, fast and stark, of Aidan, and a lover, of sex...

  Nothing more.

  I hated the quick twist that wound through me. Jealousy—envy.

  Something else.

  "You met while you were running," I supplied.

  "I should have walked away," he said. "I should have gone home. But she...made me feel alive that night. She made me want to feel alive for the first time in over a year. And..."

  My imagination filled in the blanks.

  Just. Sex.

  With Aidan.

  "It was like I was drunk," he said. "Drunk after not having a drink for months. And I couldn't stop. Didn't want to. And for those first few weeks, that was all that mattered."

  I sat there, listening to him, knowing on some level that he was giving me a once-in-a-lifetime look into his private life. This was the kind of juicy detail that sold like crazy.

  But already, I knew I would never repeat a word of what he was saying.

  At least, I thought I wouldn't.

  "No strings," he said. "No commitments."

  Just sex.

  "Until there were."

  He wasn't looking at me anymore, but back toward the moonlit swirls of the water.

  "She started wanting more," he said. "She started to want..."

  I waited for him to finish. When he didn't, I asked, "Want what?"

  His eyes met mine. "Me."

  And everything inside me tightened.

  "She thought that's what it was about, us as a couple. She didn't realize I couldn't do that again, that I was just..."

  He hesitated, and I knew it was going to be bad.

  "...Using her," he said. "I was taking what she was willing to give, but I wasn't giving anything back."

  "Because you didn't have anything to give," I said quietly.

  He looked surprised.

  "Because of Laurel," I finished for him.

  Close. We sat so close. But I knew he was somewhere far away. "I tried to pull back, but Danielle...Danielle didn't want to let go."

  There were allegations of public fights and 911 calls, rumors of domestic violence.

  "We were bad for each other," he said. "Gas and fire. It was too soon. I know that now."

  Sloan had told me much the same. "Everyone makes mistakes."

  "She brought out something in me, something that wasn't good...that I couldn't control. I scared her."

  I didn't mean to pull away. I didn't mean to wrap my arms around myself. I didn't even know that I did, until I did. "That's why she called 911."

  He winced. "I knew I needed away from her, that being together was poisoning us both."

  I sat there, listening. Hearing.

  Hurting.

  "But I never wanted anything bad to happen to her."

  "Maybe she ran away," I said. "Maybe she got scared and—"

  His eyes flashed. "Maybe."

  Danielle Melancon vanished. It was as simple as that. One day she was there, the next she was gone. Her car was found a few days later, abandoned on a side road near the Intercoastal Canal. Her purse and cell phone were never recovered. Her credit card accounts never touched.

  "Why are you telling me this?" I asked. "Why now?"

  The breeze cast shadows across him. "Because I don't want you to end up like her—or Laurel."

  I sat there a long moment, with the night playing around us, and looked at him, there in the moonlight. But I didn't see who I'd come expecting to find, the cold, arrogant author who turned his back on anyone who got too close. Instead I saw him, the boy he'd been, the man he'd become, the man behind the self-made wall, the carefully constructed life, the lie, the mystery he used to make sure no one got too close.

  The man who'd lost too much.

  "And you think I will?" I asked. "You think I'll end up like them?"

  Beneath the Stars

  "No." His eyes were so, so flat. "I won't let you."

  The force in his voice, behind the words, sent something fierce and dangerous thrumming through me.

  "I'm not afraid," I told him. Maybe I should have been. He was a master storyteller. I knew that. He knew how to use words, how to choose them and twist them. He knew how to make people feel—to make them afraid.

  Make them believe.

  Want.

  But when he looked at me like that, with the starlit water shimmering behind him and the longing in his eyes, I was
n't.

  I wasn't afraid.

  "I'm not a little girl anymore," I said. "Despite what you think, I'm not fragile or gullible. And I know what I'm doing." That was important. I needed him to know I wasn't Laurel. I wasn't Danielle. I didn't want more than he had to give. "You can't crush me."

  And yet, even as I said the words, the lie burned.

  The lie screamed.

  Because he could.

  He could crush me.

  I knew that with every slam of my heart.

  Aidan Cross could crush me into a thousand irrecoverable pieces.

  "Come here," he said, sitting there so, so still.

  And I did. I slipped across the boat, closer to him, so close our bodies touched. Then I slipped closer, until I was in his lap, my legs straddled around him so that I could feel him, all of him—the strength, and the heat.

  All the while, he watched me, not moving until I lifted my hand back to his face.

  "I didn't expect you," he said, and then he was touching, too, his hands to my face, his fingers skimming—promising.

  Destroying.

  Destroying with nothing more than a touch.

  A touch that seared to the bone.

  "I didn't expect this." Nothing prepared me for him to lean forward, and kiss me. Not hard. Not urgent. Not desperate like the crazy current crashing through me. But soft. Slow.

  Tender.

  I could feel him, though, could feel there was nothing soft or tender about his body, the hard, solid lines pressed into me. The heat.

  More little kisses, along my cheekbone, my eyes, his mouth skimming lower, past my mouth to my neck, the warmth of his breath, the promise of his lips.

  "Jesus," he said, ripping back from me, or at least as far back as he could rip, with our bodies tangled in the small boat. "Do you have any idea what you're doing to me?"

  No—

  But that was a lie, too, because I could feel him straining against me, between my legs. I could feel him, and I knew what he wanted. "Show me."

  The breath shuddered out of him. "You like playing with fire, don't you?"

  I felt the glow move into my eyes. "I told you I'm not afraid."

  "I know," he murmured. "And that's what terrifies me." And then he was reaching for me and pulling me against him, pulling me down.