Chapter Twenty

Wide Awake

Close your eyes, Elisa, Aiden says.

I do, and he kisses my bare skin. My lips, my throat, my breasts. Suddenly, his lips leave me. I wait for them, but instead arctic air bites my skin. I open my eyes and all I see is blizzard. Heavy snow blinds me, as I stand naked in a white expanse. Ice crystals are blocking my airways. I look at my hands and they turn purple. A disembodied, blue, rigid hand grips mine.

Come back, Elisa, my mum’s voice calls me. At the sound, the blizzard turns into the Portland airport. I’m naked at PDX. Alone. No Aiden. No Javier or Reagan. Last call for Flight 602 to Heathrow, London. Flight 602. Passenger Elisa Snow… Elisa Snow… The disembodied hand grips mine tightly and drags me to the gate.

I jolt awake, gasping for air. I find none. My name is echoing. Elisa. Elisa. Two sapphire eyes meet mine as the world comes into focus.

“Elisa? Elisa! You’re fine. Look at me. Look at me.” Aiden’s voice is urgent, his hands hovering over my face as though he is not sure whether he should touch me.

At the sight, air finds its way into my lungs. It comes out in fast and shallow spurts, and a sheen of sweat gathers on my forehead. I have not moved an inch but even my skin is trembling.

“Elisa, you’re here. You’re safe.” Aiden speaks methodically, as though he is walking me through a survival exercise. “Breathe. Breathe.”

I obey, drawing in a deep breath of sandalwood and cinnamon air. It soothes my throat as my lungs start stabilizing.

“That’s good. Good girl.” Aiden smiles and his fingers brush lightly against my cheek.

I blink to banish the image of my mum’s blue hand and focus only on him. He is sitting up in bed, close to me. His eyes are vigilant, shoulders tense, spine rigid as though he is preparing to fight. The bedroom light is still on. The feather quill is still at the foot of the bed. Everything is the same. Except me.

“Better?” he asks.

I nod, suddenly embarrassed. I want to crawl into a fume hood and stay there at least until after June thirteenth. But since that would require not seeing Aiden, I force a smile.

“I’m fine, don’t worry. I’m sorry I woke you.”

“You didn’t.” He cups my face. “Are you sure you’re all right? Do you want some water? Food?”

“No, I’m okay. It was just a bad dream, that’s all.” I put my hand on top of his.

He leans in and kisses across my cheek to the corner of my lips, back and forth, back and forth. Light like the feather quill, as though anything more might startle me. “Do you want to talk about it?”

“Not really,” I respond a little late, focusing only on his lips. Talking about the dream would breach the embargo to its fullest and ruin every minute of fairy tale left.

“What is six-oh-two?” he asks, his lips still on my skin.

Oh, bloody hell! I was talking? That’s not my usual dreaming style. Reagan says I mostly just whimper. Well, at least this one is somewhat explainable. “Avogadro’s number. My dad’s favorite constant. Apparently my brain borrowed it for the dream.”

His eyebrows knit together and I can see the battle in his eyes: ask, don’t ask, embargo? At last, he nods but doesn’t press further. Maybe he wants the embargo to last a little longer too.

“So how come you’re awake at this hour?” I change tracks. “Can’t stop watching me drool?”

The beautiful, lopsided smile lifts his lips until the dimple forms on his cheek. “Something like that.”

“Do you want to go to sleep? It must be late.” I look at the night beyond the glass wall, wondering what time it is. It’s the worst possible question for me. How many hours do we have left? How can I leave after this?

“No. Unless you want to. I’m not the best sleeper.” He shrugs. But I know sleepless nights too well. Nights when the terror of your dreams is just as awful as reality. This is not one of those nights. And I’m wasting it on nightmares that would cause Freud to retire early, instead of ogling Aiden.

I scoot closer to him on the bed. He wraps his arms around me.

“So, if you don’t want to sleep, what do you want to do?” I ask, kissing the corner of his lips.

He watches me for a few heartbeats but does not pounce. Perhaps doing so on a woman who just had a nightmare goes against his morals.

“I want you to tell me something that’s not embargoed.”

“What do you want to know?”

“Anything.” He plays with my hair, giving me time to think. He is barely breathing, perhaps afraid of pressuring me.

In the silence that follows, I have a sudden urge to leave something behind—here, with him. Not on his bed, his wall or even his skin. Somewhere deeper, in a place only he knows. The urge becomes a compulsion. It crashes against my ribs with the urgency of someone strapped to an electric chair.

“Are you up for a midnight stroll?” I ask.

His eyebrows arch. Perhaps he was expecting a long story or, with my track record, a battle for information. “Where?”

“There’s a place I usually go to alone. It will be closed now but we can still go in. I’d like to show you,” I say, more than a little bewildered by my choice. Over Javier, over Reagan, over everyone I have met here, somehow it is this beautiful stranger who feels right.

Aiden smiles. “It would be my honor.”

That little ember between my lungs glows and vibrates while the rest of me starts hunkering down for what I’m about to do. Making the end excruciating. But I’ll worry about that tomorrow. And maybe this way he will share something that matters with me too.

“Let’s go,” I say, climbing out of bed. He does the opposite. He leans back on his elbows, his eyes traveling over me. I cover my breasts and scuttle to the other side of the palatial bedroom where my dress is in a heap on the floor. He laughs a buoyant, carefree laugh that fractures the night. It’s freeing, like the sound of a waterfall.

“Elisa, I have memorized for life everything you’re hiding. So you might as well let me enjoy the show.”

He’s right, idiot. He’s seen it all. Still, I pick up my dress and clutch it to my chest, blushing head to toe. He uncoils from the bed covers and saunters my way in nothing but flawless skin. I know he is walking at his normal pace but it looks like slow motion to me. In fact, I’m pretty sure angels are singing.

“Doing some memorizing yourself, Elisa?”

“Not really. Just realizing that memory does not do reality justice.”

He smiles but this time, the dimple does not form in his cheek. “Depends on the memory,” he says so quietly that I’m not sure I heard him right.

He reaches me, covers my hands with his and pries the dress from my fingers. His eyes start a path from the roots of my hair to my curled toes. He leans in, his mouth to my ear.

“Don’t hide from me.” His breath sends a fiery current over my skin. But the instant my breathing picks up, he pulls away.

“Tempting though you are, I don’t want you to be sore. You have to sit for your painting tomorrow.” He winks, and just like that, his humor returns.

Oh, bloody hell, my painting! Will he still insist on that when he hears the truth?

He strides into his walk-in closet—or rather, walk-in apartment—taking my dress with him.

“I don’t think my dress will fit you, Aiden. Might be a bit tight around the—ah—groin.”

He laughs that waterfall laughter again. The closet lights flicker as he crosses the threshold. He flits to the far back, the muscles of his exposed back rippling with tension even from this distance. Why? What causes this? I want to ask but I’m sure the reasons are embargoed.

He puts on a pair of dark jeans and a navy sweater with blinding speed. Then he digs some clothes from a polished wood dresser and is back to me in seconds.

I look at the mountain of clothes, horrified. “These are for me?”