Still, he slid the box back toward Jin and nodded when she pulled it closer. Aiden nodded, satisfied. “Well, good then. All right. Glad we had this talk.” He turned to leave and Jin stopped him.
“Look,” she sighed. “I get that you care about this job and I’m the job. I understand. But you’re going to have to relax.”
“I can’t just relax—”
“You are going to have to relax,” she said slowly. “You do a good job—I’m still here, right? Just turn the burner off high. We both can’t be nervous wrecks, okay?”
She was right. This is a job, this is a job, this is a job, he told himself. He repeated it like a mantra. This is a job, this is a job, this is a job.
The mantra wasn't working, even when he shouted the words into his pillow at night and felt like he was wearing it, whatever you wanted to call it—affection, lust, emotional vomit—on his sleeve. It was a liability, making her a liability. There was a line he shouldn't cross.
But damn it, the only thing he wanted to do was sail over that line. Reach out and touch her. Listen to her voice and ridiculous quips. See her. Because he was here and the rules were stuffed in a binder thousands of miles away. Because every morning when she would crack open her door with a tired smile and her hair, wild and messy from sleep, standing up all over her head, he could see the line fading and slinking away in between the floorboards.
“It’s going to be okay, Aiden.”
Aiden didn’t turn around, didn’t look over his shoulder, just wrapped his hand around the handle and opened the door.
“I’ll try harder.”
November
Aiden tsked from the window seat. “You watch too many movies. You’ve got small hands, but your arms are strong.” Aiden rubbed his chest playfully where she’d punched him because he called her a fuzzy-headed centaur. “However, you’ll want to stop thinking you’re Laura Croft and hold the gun properly.”
“That’s bullshit. I don’t think I’m Laura—Okay, I think I’m Laura Croft. All right,” she said as she blew a strand of curly hair out of her face. “What am I doing wrong, Mr. Miyagi?”
“Funny!” he deadpanned.
“Yoda.”
“Jin—”
“Morpheus?”
“Slide your foot in,” he growled. “Straighten your back.”
Aiden stood and circled her as she followed his instructions. When he saw her slip into the correct form, he moved in behind her. “Disengage the safety.” He watched as she fumbled with flipping the switch. “Try it with your right thumb,” he said as he stepped even closer to her, this time wrapping his larger hand around hers.
Jin looked over her shoulder with an arched brow. Her eyes darted from his bottom lip to his eyes. “Most guys,” she said conversationally, “will wait at least until the second date.”
“Say what?”
She glanced in between them and he realized he was flush up against her. He dropped his hands like she’d burned him and took a step away.
“I have to say this. Is that a gun in your pocket or are you—”
“Finish that and I’ll kill you.”
“So it is a gun.”
“Well,” he stammered, “I think that’s enough for today. Keep practicing and…um—” He about-faced so fast that he stumbled for a second. There was some muffled laughter at his expense, which he ignored as he ran for her kitchen.
January
“Happy New Year!”
Jin reached across him as they sat in front of a fire and pulled the string on a popper right by his ear.
“You’re like a jackal from hell,” Aiden muttered as he smacked the popper away from him.
“Wow, turn down the beam on the Death Star and take this.” She pressed the champagne flute up against his lips.
“I’m not supposed to drink.”
Jin rolled her eyes. “You’re not drinking, you’re sipping. There is a difference.” She raised her own flute of cheap champagne up to her lips. “Here, let me show you how you sip.” Jin threw the entire drink back.
“Lush,” Aiden quipped.
“Deputy Do-Right,” she shot back. “So, what are your New Year’s resolutions?”
“Hmmm. Earplugs. A new soccer ball. A way to get through the night without someone blasting show tunes into the walkie-talkie at four in the morning. For the Doosan Bears to win the championship. For you to stop arguing with me because you think it’s funny. New cleats. Peace and quiet. You want me to stop? I can do this all night.”
“I said resolutions, not wishes.”
“Yeah, yeah. What are yours?”
Jin reached for the champagne bottle and poured herself another glass. “If I were home, my dad would be calling me, reminding me to eat my collard greens and black eyed peas for New Year health and prosperity. I tried making them, but I can’t cook,” she admitted quietly.
“You can cook. You make the best noodles I’ve ever eaten.”
“Yeah, I’m the Iron Chef of Top Ramen.” Jin drank again. “I miss my family.”
“Jin,” Aiden began, “you lived thousands of miles from your family. It’s not like you saw them often.”
“Yeah, but I talked to my mom almost every night, my dad every Sunday evening. Skype and Facebook and email for my brother and sister.” Jin sobered. “This sucks.” She turned to him, a soft smile working its way back to her lips. “What about your family?”
“After my dad died, my mom turned into this super-obsessed humanitarian. We’re were pretty well off. I wouldn’t say filthy rich but I wasn’t hurting for anything, and she turned that into a love for charity, and charity work suits her. She could be anywhere right now, she never tells me until she lands. No brothers. No sisters. I’ve got Jon, my partner, but he puts up with me because he has to.”
Jin clinked her champagne flute against his. “Well, you’ve got me now, so cheer up!”
“Cheer up, she says, like I’m the one who’s—”
“We’ll take a cup of kindness yet—” A loud voice, singing off key, echoed up from somewhere outside and cut him off.
“Is that…is that someone singing Auld Lang Syne?” Jin said, laughing as she craned her head toward the sound. She stood, eyes wide and mouth slack with wonder, and looked out her open window. Squealing, she pointed to a pair of men framed by an open apartment window, one of them drunkenly belting out the lyrics, the other laughing when those lyrics were hopelessly mangled. She reached back to slide her hand into Aiden’s and pulled him toward the window.
“They look happy. Like they’ve forgotten all of their troubles. Like they are living a different life, if only for tonight. Sometimes I feel like I’m living ten lives at once,” Jin said as she looked up to the sky. Colors flashed across her face and Aiden wanted to stop time. “That there’s another Jin looking out her window right now at a party downtown, or another Jin with her kids. She lets them stay up late so they can count down till midnight. There’s a Jin who is a singer, a Jin who is the sun and a Jin who is the universe.”
Aiden’s brow rose. “Quirky.”
“Quirky.” Jin laughed. “Hey! Do you think there is another Aiden standing by another Jin in one of these other universes? With the fireworks, or at the party, or as a star in her universe?” Silently, she tugged him closer. “I hope so.”
Aiden looked down at Jin. Her hair was pulled back and she had some shiny, sparkly lip gloss on. She smelled nice. There was a look in her eyes that inspired him to think of every way he could make her smile.
She was like fire and he was like air.
I hope so, too.
March
“So, what do you want to eat? We have rice and we have rice, and then we have rice. Take your pick.”
“Whatever you want,” he murmured sprawled across the couch in her living room as he scanned a crossword puzzle. “Hey, Jin, nine letters. What is invisible and makes people suffer from symptoms like heart palpitations and sweating, yet people think they can’t survive without it
?”
“Stupid mouse,” Jin muttered, glaring at a hole in a bag of saffron rice. She tied it shut and looked over her shoulder at Aiden. “Affection.”
“Aha! You’re so smart.” He penciled his answer in and noticed she was silent. “What’s wrong? You usually go nuts when I call you smart.” When she remained silent, Aiden looked up, frowning because she was staring at him with a weird look on her face. That always meant trouble. “What?”
Something passed over her face, stormy, maybe contemplative for a second, before she drew her lips between her teeth.
“Jin?”
“You know what? It’s nothing.” She turned around, hands on her hips and her head tilted before she whipped back toward him. “It's just...do you know what I want?”
“Rice?” he answered slowly. No reaction. “Okay, not rice. Well, I can run out and get some takeout or a burger...” He paused as her brow bunched. “Or not? Are we not talking about food?”
“Considering it’s your job to unveil secrets, it’s amazing that you’re this one big, clueless force of nature. No, we are not talking about food.”
Aiden clutched the crossword puzzle like he was walking into a trap and it was the only thing saving him from dropping to his death. “Then we are talking about…”
She walked closer, only stopping at the thin metal strip on the floor that separated the kitchen from the living room. “I like you,” she said simply, like it was simple. It wasn’t.
Aiden’s mouth dropped open before he quickly closed it. “Uh…where is this coming from…?”
Jin leaned against the wall by the refrigerator and stared at the ceiling. “I was sitting on the floor last night staring at the blue tip of a walkie-talkie and it wasn’t chirping. Seriously, it was so absolutely silent that it was ear-splitting. So I get up to make noise, any kind of noise and then, tragically, it hits me—well actually, it hit my toe. I stubbed it on the bookshelf because I told you it needed to go by the fireplace and you put it by the door and the first thing I do when I walk out of my room is turn right and bam, there’s a hunk of fucking laminated pressed wood in the way—”
“Jin—”
“I missed you,” she said before he could say another word. “Which is ridiculous! I mean, I’ve known you for what, like seven months, so what am I attached to, you know? Then you called and said you’d be late and I felt like a mass of unsettled feelings because holy shit, I actually missed you. It’s hilarious and it’s scary as hell. It’s like you are insane, but you’re not, you’re brilliant and you’re gorgeous but you get on my nerves and…word vomit, great.” She ended her speech with a lopsided frown. “So, yeah, I like you.”
The crossword puzzle crumpled in his grip. He wasn’t expecting that, not from her, not now. “Jin, you’re a…” He searched around for a safe word. “…you’re a nice girl.” He winced. In his head, sirens where going off and something blunt and incredulous was mule-kicking him in his chest. You stupid, stupid, stupid monkey- brained idiot!
Jin’s brow rose like she was waiting for more but Aiden's lips weren't working in a way that allowed him to form words—more along the line of gaping like a fish rather than applying phonetics to cut away at the net keeping him silent. When his lips finally clamped shut, she pulled her chin in, disbelief written all over her.
“That’s it. That’s your answer? I’m a nice girl.” Jin laughed. “Wow, that’s...” She turned on her toes, slinking deeper into the kitchen.
Aiden reacted, the need to explain raising him from his seat. “Jin. It’s not—”
“Don't do that. Not only am I a ‘nice girl’, as you so bluntly put it, I’m also a big girl. You don’t have to do whatever you think you’re doing, so don't.”
“I’m not—look, I’m just—” Aiden carded his hand through his hair, frustrated when she wouldn’t turn around. “You’re making this seem simple when it isn’t!”
She ignored him, flitting around the kitchen and searching through cabinets and drawers. Slam!
“What do you want to eat?” Her words were terse. Low. Emotionless.
“Jin.”
Slam!
As Jin reached above the refrigerator for a bowl, he cuffed his hand around her arm and spun her around. “It’s not you,” he said slowly and heavily when she finally looked at him.
“No,” Jin snapped, snatching her arm out of his grip. “I said you don’t have to do this. Go run a lap or do another background analysis on that old woman you’re suspicious of or whatever you do to make up for being an emotionless robot.”
Aiden sighed internally. “That’s not fair, Jin.” Sometimes she was so stubborn that he wanted to rip every hair out of his head and throw them at her.
“I don’t care what’s not fair and I wish you would stop this because it’s not as big a deal as you’re making it. You don’t feel the same way. It’s fine.”
If he opened his mouth and agreed with her, it would be the most grossly oppressive lie he'd ever told. So he didn’t.
“It is a big deal.” He wished he’d said it at a lower volume, because this was a conversation that was probably best had over soft music and moonlight, something outrageously meaningful and amorous, but he was frustrated and couldn’t control himself. “I think about you when I’m not supposed to, in ways I’m not supposed to. Sometimes I dial three just to hear your voice because even though you’re only twenty steps away, it feels like a thousand miles. I want you, Jin, and not in the stupid way people want candy or a new car. I want you because…that’s it. Because I do. So save me the guilt trip because it’s not you.”
Jin looked at him for a second, all narrowed eyes and pursed lips, right before she pressed forward and kissed him, slow and deep, like his kiss could be converted into oxygen, like it could sustain her. Against the nagging voice in his head, he kissed her back.
“Wow.” She breathed when they broke apart. “You do.”
“It’s not you,” he insisted as he rubbed his hands up and down her arms. “There are rules and I can’t break them. Not when it comes to you. Not when I have to keep you safe.”
“Rules.” She said the word like it was the stupidest thing she’d ever uttered. “You and your rules. Don’t talk to strangers. Don’t keep eye contact with anyone longer than two seconds. Blend in, be unnoticeable. Don’t do this, don’t do that. I don’t care, Aiden. I don’t care about rules and I damn sure don’t care about your misguided homilies on what will keep me safe. I don’t care. The only thing I care about is this.”
“Jin…” Aiden pleaded.
“I want you to not care with me. You keep me safe, I’ll keep you happy.”
Aiden opened his mouth to object but Jin kissed him again. He couldn’t disagree with her now, not when it made more sense than anything he'd ever felt.
April
It was a Tuesday when Aiden got a call from Ruiz. The only reason anyone would reach out to him directly would be because of an emergency or bad news. He found out when he printed off the crime scene photos.
It was murder scene—a woman, late twenties, medium build, Chinese-African descent. Sighing, he flipped through the photos with a crinkled nose. A photo of a mattress soaked in blood greeted him, and he'd seen enough. He scrubbed his hands through his hair and pushed the photos away. He couldn't let Jin see this. How was he supposed to tell her that someone murdered Chaerin Williams in her own home?
He began to rip up the photos when something caught his eye. In one photo, a close-up of Chaerin’s hand, was a folded slip of paper. None of the other photos showed what was on it and there was something about it that bothered him. Taking a chance, he picked up the phone and dialed Jon on a secure number. As soon as he picked up, Aiden started talking. “Have they processed the scene yet?”
“Yeah, most of the items are down in the lab. Why?”
“There was a slip of paper in Chaerin’s hand.”
Jon hummed into the phone. “The riddle.” When Aiden was silent, Jon continued. “There
was some riddle on the paper. We’ve got some fancy, overstuffed cryptographer down here to decode it. We’re paying him thousands to decode a fucking elementary-school riddle.”
“What does it say?”
“Uh—” There was tapping in the background. “It says...wait, I’m just going to send it to you. You should have it right about...now.”
The picture in the email was bloodstained and hard to read. Hard to decipher, too. “What is hidden from sight but thrice seen by the desires of men?” he mumbled out loud.
“A genie,” said a voice from behind him. Aiden whipped around to see Jin, her eyes heavy with sleep as she stood in the hallway with his shirt hanging off her shoulder. “Jinn, actually. It’s Arabic for ‘hidden from sight’. Jinn…thrice seen by desires…three wishes. It’s a genie.”
Aiden gulped. “H–how do you know that?”
“A Thousand and One Arabian Nights,” Jin announced, tapping a book on her bookshelf. “I don’t know why I still have it. Shen got it for me because of a story in there. ‘The Merchant and the Jinni’. Emphasis on the Jinni.” When Aiden didn’t answer her, Jin walked farther into the room. “What is that?”
Aiden turned and saw that Jin was pointing toward his laptop screen. He reached over and snapped it shut.
“Were those pictures? They must be bad. You look like you’ve seen a ghost.” Something clicked in his brain, and it clicked so hard that it hurt. Suddenly, there were monsters—suspicion, deception, twenty-twenty vision into the power of terror—lurking around them, filling the space with charged fear. Aiden was out of his seat and wrapped around Jin, holding her tight against him, making her gasp.
“Jin...babe...”
“What? You’re scaring me.”
He kissed the crown of her head over and over again. “Baby…they know.”
Chapter Six
June
A month ago, Jin would have said she was petrified knowing she had to board a plane, fly across the world, and confront a man who’d changed her life. Today, as she walked up the long flight of steps that led to the court, she felt none of that. Anger, disbelief, sadness…yes. But fear? Absolutely not.
The Halo of Amaris Page 5
