Thirty Nights (American Beauty #1)(68)

It’s terrifying that these words warm me when I should stay focused on my impending bone crushing, but they do. Inch by inch, fear leaves my body.

“So now?” I ask, and immediately regret it.

The smile disappears. “So now, every time I see you, I have my guard down. I’m not as vigilant, and therefore, I’m more dangerous.” His voice is sharp again. And his eyes—I’ve never seen them deeper.

For the first time, he steps toward me. I stand to go to him but he puts his hand up. “It all comes down to this, Elisa. I cannot risk hurting you and I cannot give up my own structure either, because without it, I become a monster.”

He shudders, but I feel like he just ripped my chest open. The warmth of his words evaporates as I realize he has not come back to me; he has come to say goodbye. The void that forms when I think of the car accident flares now as though another fatality is looming.

He closes the distance between us quickly, his arms out like he is trying to break a fall. “Elisa, f*ck! Are you okay? No—of course, you’re not! How could you be with everything I just told you? Here, sit down.” His eyes are wide. His hand hovers over my shoulder like he doesn’t want to touch me.

“I’m fine. I was just thinking,” I say, blinking at him, confused. Why is he so panicked? It’s not like I collapsed on the floor. Still, I sit on the sofa to calm him.

“Do you need some water? Or food? A break?”

“No, I’m fine, Aiden.” My tone is abrupt despite my intentions. I soften it at the sight of the V between his eyebrows. “I just need to understand you. Why come here at all if it’s just to tell me to stay away?”

His face hardens, his jaw clenches again. “So that you can move on without any regrets.” His voice is sharp. He scowls at me. Then something catches his eye to my right. He frowns and tilts his head to the side. I follow his gaze and freeze. Oh, bloody hell, my clinical psychopathology book! My PTSD list!

I watch in slow motion as he treads to the table and picks up the list with his long fingers. His eyes change as he reads it, from confusion to horror to fury to relief until the plates settle in their neutral, guarded spot. In the silence, I can only hear my heart pounding in my ears. He picks up the textbook and reads through it in seconds. At last, he looks up at me.

“How long have you known about my defect?” His voice is even, but I don’t know if the storm has passed or it’s coming.

Defect? It’s not a defect, it’s an illness. “I just put the pieces together right before you came over. After I heard you were in the war.” My voice is faint.

He nods, and with slow, deliberate motions, tucks the list back in the exact page and position he found it. Then he sits on the ottoman in front of me, at the very edge.

“And you’ve been sitting here, with this knowledge, seriously contemplating being with me?” Still even voice.

I nod and swallow.

His jaw clenches again. “Elisa, what you’ve read in this book and these symptoms are all true. But it’s one thing to read about them, and it’s quite another to live with them. And I cannot permit under any circumstances that your life is tainted with this. You need to grasp that, so listen very carefully to my words.” He pauses, waiting for me to look at his mouth where the words will materialize. I have a strange compulsion to close my eyes and ears because I know the words will make no difference. I will still want him and I will try to save him. Much like he is trying to save me.

“Look at me,” he says.

“I am.”

“No, look at me, not at what you see in your head. Put aside all the obligations you feel toward me, what we’ve shared, and listen like a scientist. You have your whole life ahead of you. You’re young, intelligent, beautiful, loving—despite all that life has thrown your way. Hopefully your immigration will work out, and you can finally move on from your past. I cannot. I will not. Whether I’m thirty-five or ninety-five, this is my reality: I am a trained killer, volatile and dangerous. And you—need—to stay—away.”

Every punctuated word feels like a stab in my chest. Not for myself but for him. Because under all his concern for me lies a big truth: his inability to see any good things about himself, his belief that he is a defective machine. Odd that after all he has told me, it took this moment to grasp the enormity of his struggle. And no matter what it may cost me, now all I want to do is soothe him. I stand, my decision made.

He frowns, but stands as well. I watch his face, feeling as though I broke through chains. Ever since I first saw him, I have been trying to fight him so I don’t get hurt. How little that matters now that I truly see his pain!

I take his hand in both of mine. It’s ice cold. “You also have goodness in you and you need to see it. I’m in awe of you.”

“That’s because you don’t know me.” He sounds defiant.

“I know more than you think. I know what’s here,” I say, putting my hand on his chest. His heart is breaking through his ribs in a strong, jagged rhythm. Like mine.

“I know the circles under your eyes.” I trace them with my finger. “I know the laugh with no sound.” I caress his lips. “I know that in one week, you’ve saved all my dreams.”

“With sex and money,” he says with contempt.

“No. With your humanity.” I take his right hand and put it over his frantic heart.