I shiver and look out the window. We are racing through the Columbia River Gorge now, the cavernous canyon between Oregon and Washington. The sharp, craggy peaks of the Cascades pierce the skies. There are no longer lights around. Only a dark, quiet beauty.

Aiden’s index finger comes under my chin and I turn to face him. He is smiling. “Were those all your questions? Some scientist you are.”

“I was just thinking of what I would have done to stop you from ever joining the Corps in the first place,” I whisper, afraid of making him angry with my wish to take away all his chances, let alone the second.

But there is no anger on his face. His smile becomes a grin. “Well, for you, it wouldn’t have taken much. Just showing up naked and being chained to my bed. Eighteen-year-old Aiden would have lost his shit over you.” He winks. “I suppose I have not changed much.”

He shakes his head in mock horror but I am floating. Does that mean he is losing his shit over me now? Who needs poetry. “I was thinking more along the lines of lying in front of the plane that shipped you off but chained to your bed seems marginally better.”

“You sound like my mother. Minus the bed part, of course.” He pauses as though deciding whether to say something. “She did come,” he adds, his voice now very soft.

“Your mum?”

He nods. “Yes. The day I was deployed to Afghanistan, she came to the airbase in Monterey where I had just finished intelligence school. How she got in, I still don’t know. She was a mess. Begged me not to go—grabbed me right here…” His hand flies to his shirt collar. “Of course, I was appalled at having to deal with a hysterical mother when all the other Marines were loading up. The rest is history—well, technically with me, nothing is history,” he adds, his voice dry. I wish I could see his eyes.

I lean over and rest my head on his shoulder. Maybe he needs calmness now. He presses his lips to my hair. “How are things with your parents now?”

He sits up straighter. His muscle bands almost creak under my ear. “They’re safe and set up for life. That’s what matters.”

He doesn’t exactly answer my question but it’s there, between the lines. A chill spreads like radionuclide in my veins. I pull back and look at him. “How often do you see them?”

His jaw ticks. “As you can imagine, I can’t afford another accident that may kill my own mother.”

He still doesn’t answer my question but he doesn’t have to. I know.

“Aiden, no!” I grip his arm, the words exploding before I can control them. “Sweetheart, you can’t do that. You can’t shut them out of your life!” My voice shakes and I feel moisture in my eyes. Here I am, even four years later, stumbling through continents with craters in my chest, searching for anything that can fill the void. And he still has this pure love and denies it to himself. How can he stand it?

He doesn’t speak. His posture is changing. Inch by inch, the strain of his shoulders is seeping to the rest of him. He pries my fingers from his arm so I swirl them in the hair at his temple.

“Aiden, it’s obvious you love them. Take it from someone who knows. Someday they will be gone and nothing will be able to take this grief away from you. Not your work, not my paintings, not Marshall—”

“Stop, Elisa!” His voice cracks through the air like a bullet. So sharp, so loud that I fall back against the Rover’s door. His hands turn into talons on the steering wheel, bleached from the strain. His rib cage expands and the muscles are reverberating. The Rover picks up speed as though it’s absorbing the tension through his foot. My heart starts pounding. I’m suddenly afraid, a natural instinct telling me I need to calm him. Is this anger? Or something worse?

“Aiden, I’m sorry,” I breathe.

His hands don’t relax—it looks like he will rip the steering wheel apart. His eyes are trained unblinking ahead, locked beyond the road. The speedometer arrow rises. Eighty now. Something sharp cracks on the windshield—a pebble maybe. The Rover veers slightly toward the I-84 rail guard. No, not a car accident. I cross my arms around me, whispering frantically.

“Hydrogen, 1.008. Helium, 4.003. Lithium, 6.94. Beryllium—”

He draws a deep breath and blinks. Once. Twice. His rib cage contracts and the muscles stop shaking. He scans the highway and the Rover slows down, firmly in the center of our lane. I know the trance is broken when he turns his head and looks at me. In the faint light of the speedometer, I cannot decipher his eyes.

“I’m very, very sorry about that,” he murmurs, sounding ashamed. “I didn’t mean to—are you all right?”

I cannot speak or look away from him. But I sense the Rover veer abruptly to the right again and he hits the brakes. Peripherally, I notice our lights blinking. He faces me, his hand caressing my cheek.

“I’m so sorry,” he says again, his voice the softest I’ve ever heard it. “I don’t want to frighten you.”

He didn’t. Whatever he saw in his head did. And my parents’ crushed Beetle.

“Isa.” He uses my nickname for the first time, perhaps to comfort me. “You’re safe. This is just the…the flashbacks. A short one.”

A short one? What does a long one look like?

He leans closer and blows gently on my face. His delicious scent jolts me to life and I draw a deep breath. “Talk to me, Elisa. Do you want to go back?”

That breaks through me. I’d rather he tear the Rover to shreds than go back. “Of course not! I want to be here. Take care of you.”

He closes his eyes and shakes his head. “That’s wrong.”

“No, it’s right. I’m fine. You didn’t hurt me.” I’ll never tell him the flashback triggered my own memories. I’d never see him again after that.

He doesn’t say anything. I place my hand on his face, lest he really start driving back to Portland. “Will you please tell me what I did that made you upset? So that I don’t do it again.”

He looks at me and turns on the car light. “You didn’t do anything wrong. You calmed me. This is all me. Trust me on this.”

I search his eyes. They are calm now. “Yes, but I obviously said something that reminded you of something—”

He puts his hand over my mouth gently and shakes his head. “Elisa, reminders do nothing for me. I operate on triggers. And this—is—all—me.”

He seems resolute to take the blame so I tuck it away for deep analysis later. Was it about his parents? Can’t be, we’ve talked about them before. I nod, and put my hand over his where it is resting on my cheek.

He smiles. “That’s my girl.”

Maybe it’s his smile, or the fact that he called me his girl but I smile too. He kisses my temple, then my lips. “Let’s go. This place has been waiting for you for a while.” He turns on the car and pulls onto I-84 again. He presses a button on the steering wheel and looks at me.

“In your honor,” he says as the music starts. I expect “Für Elise” but no. “Ice Ice Baby”.

At that, I have to laugh. “My national anthem.”

He keeps changing the songs—all having to do with something terrible befalling ICE. “The Ice Is Getting Thinner”, “Break the Ice”, “Choc Ice Goes Mental”. I laugh at his version of a romantic mix tape.

“Baby, I can make you feel hot, hot, hot,” he sings in a low voice. My stomach starts fluttering. He is smiling again. And singing. And we’re getting closer to wherever we’re going. If I need this beautiful dress, it must be breathtaking too.

“Were you reciting the periodic table earlier?” Aiden asks, his voice lighter.

I blush despite the ice concert. “Yes,” I mumble.

“Is that a trick you use to calm yourself?”

“Too often,” I confess, feeling geekier by the second.

He chuckles. The sound is so beautiful that I would recite a million periodic tables to hear it again.

“That’s charming,” he says, caressing my jawline. “Very useful too. It calmed me as well. First your sight, now your voice.” He looks at me with a lovely glare. “What are you doing to me?”