“Mmm…still perfect,” he moans, his breath making me hiss. He switches between tongue, teeth, and lips in a sucking, nibbling, kissing pattern. As my belly tightens in a familiar, sharp ache, I grasp what he is doing. He is retracing our first time, with perfect, infallible detail.

And like the first time, my body bows to him down to my last cell. But unlike then, now I move with him. In a togetherness we haven’t had before.

I wrap my legs around his waist, soldering him to me. His mouth and tongue travel to my other nipple, then lower—circling my belly button, nipping at my waist, sucking at my hip. With each kiss, his fingers skim along my calf, inside my thigh, around the all-but-gone welts, until they meet his lips on the relentless pulse beating between my legs. His mouth wraps around me in the same move as his fingers slide inside.

I moan a garbled version of Aiden, gripping his hair and pushing myself into his mouth.

“Open up,” he orders as he sucks hard. He spreads my legs as far apart as they will go. “I want to taste you…all of you… I wanted to do this since I first tasted your candy… That’s when I knew it was you…” His tongue laps away in circles, jolts, dips and flicks. Exactly as then. Yet new.

Everything burns and shivers at the same time. I hold on to his hair like I might drown if he lets go. He doesn’t. Another suck, another stroke. I’m suspended for a timeless moment—then I soar and vanish. Reincarnated back into that first night of wakefulness.

* * * * *

A faint gust of air wafts over my face, then a distant chuckle, a faraway sigh. I open my eyes and Aiden’s face is here.

“Hey,” he whispers, smiling. He has taken off his clothes, his skin blazing against mine.

“Hey,” I breathe, expecting his kiss and my citrusy residue on his lips. I kiss him until all I can taste is his fiery cinnamon flavor.

“I wish I could explain how this feels for me,” he sighs, raining kisses on my nose, my eyelids, my cheeks. “Always like the first time”—he kisses my jawline—“and always better.”

“It’s like that for me too,” I whisper, wrapping my legs around him.

Eye to eye, he slides inside me. My body knows him now and grips his every inch. Our hips circle and roll together. He lifts my hips up until my toes touch the mattress above my head, and thrusts hard inside me. My cries mingle with his rough breathing. Aiden. Baby. Aiden. Elisa.

His rhythm picks up—hard, fast and blinding. On every thrust, my insides close around him with precision. Eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, one.

I explode violently, crying out his name. Just like then. Just like always. He follows in seconds with a final word.

“Elisa!”

* * * * *

From somewhere far away, there is a buzz like a mosquito in a summer loll. I bury my nose in Aiden’s chest to ignore it. But it buzzes again. And again.

“Umm, Aiden? Do you need to answer that?”

“No…vacayshon.”

“Vacation?” I squeal, shooting up in bed, instantly alert. He said he never takes vacation!

He opens one eye. “Mmm.”

“Really?”

“Mmm.”

“So what are we doing?”

“Surp—rise,” he mumbles, drifting into a soft snore.

Chapter Forty-One

Truce

I could lie here all day looking at a sleeping Aiden. His parted lips, the long lashes brushing his cheekbones, the sculpted jaw. But the urge to touch him is so compulsive that I slip out of bed one inch at a time and tiptoe around the bedroom, tidying up. As I gather Powell’s books from the floor—Byron, Neruda, Dickinson, Brontë—I stifle a gasp, realizing what they have in common. Except Byron, they’re the books we never got a chance to sign together on our second night.

I flip through the pages, and there it is: his signature on pages eight, twenty-four and eleven. He signed them all. I caress his autograph, smiling at the difference a night can make. From numbered hours, we went to what? Numbered days?

The books almost cascade from my arms as I sink into his chair. In the rare moments I allow myself these thoughts, my knees inevitably give out and the questions tear through me for five periodic tables.

What if I still have to leave? Or just as awful, what if I can stay but not with him? He said he’ll try but what does that mean for someone like Aiden? How can he overpower his memory? And what happens when the doctor starts delving deep and Aiden has to talk? How long before he shuts down and quits? An image of his flexed jaw forms in my mind, as he mouths, You’re not my health, you’re my pain.

I leap to my feet. No! I must not think this way. He can do this. I know he can.

I set the books on the dresser and scurry into his closet. Against his suits—like every morning—hangs a new Margolis dress. This one is a simple gray sheath with tiny pearl buttons along the back. I search through the soft cotton, knowing that somewhere I’ll find the next lines of “She Walks in Beauty”. They’re inside the hem this time, embroidered in violet silk.

“The smiles that win, the tints that glow,

But tell of days in goodness spent”

Before I realize what I’m doing, I bring the hem to my lips and kiss it. And because that’s not crazy enough, I photograph it too. Then I skip to the restroom to get ready before the dress kisses me back.

Fifteen minutes later, my fingertips still itching to touch Aiden, I escape out on the patio to check in with Javier and Reagan.

The backyard is virgin, stretching into a meadow of wildflowers, blackberry shrubs, thistles and yellow-barked Ponderosas. Peaceful and untamed. As though it safeguards all tranquility missing from the man who owns it.

I start weaving through the knee-length grass. It will be easier to handle the call with Javier if I’m moving. But the moment I switch on Aiden’s phone, I trip on a giant fern.

His screensaver is a picture of me sleeping, lips pressed against his pillow. Bloody hell, that’s what I look like when I’m asleep? I pick myself up and tap Javier’s number, pretending I didn’t see the drool on my chin.

The longer Javier’s phone rings, the faster I roam and the less I hear the bluebirds chirping. How am I going to explain things to him? What if he hates Aiden now?

“Mr. Hale?” Javier finally picks up, his voice formal.

I almost collide with a pine this time. “Javier, it’s Isa.”

“Isa?” His voice warms. “You okay? Why are you calling from Hale’s phone?”

“Because you have mine from last night.”

“Oh, yeah. Forgot. It’s in the Honda, locked in the trunk.”

“I’m not worried about it. I just wanted to see how you are. And to say sorry about last night.” My voice drops to a whisper and I plop on the grass.

“Why are you apologizing? It wasn’t your fault.”

I split in half. I don’t know whom to protect. “It wasn’t anyone’s fault, Javier. Not yours or Reagan’s, not even Aiden’s, although he said some awful things. He’s terrified of anything happening to me and lashes out when he feels helpless.”

A long pause. I twist a fern frond, trying to draw in some air. “Yeah,” Javier says at last. “He’s something else.”

“I know but he means well. He’d never hurt anyone I love.” I leave out Aiden’s rant that he’d destroy anything that hurts me. He’d never break me that way.

“I don’t care about his threat, Isa. What’s he going to do that I’m not already in danger of? I’m more worried about you with him.”

“Don’t worry about me. I will take care of myself.”

A six-chemical-elements-long sigh. I picture him squinting his eyes, as he does when he visualizes the finished painting, not the sketch.

“You don’t hate him, do you?” I whisper, twisting the fern into knots.

“Oh, hell! No, I don’t hate him. Actually, after last night, I kind of get him a little more. He’s got issues—that’s true—but no dude freaks like that over a dress. Not unless he really cares about the girl.”