Thirty Nights (American Beauty #1)(72)

“Why not? We’ll be very careful. I’ll always have my arm around your waist. Benson can come too. I’ll make sure no one sneaks up on you, I promise.”

“No.”

“But you went to coffee with me, and the presentation, and work?”

“Yes, in limited situations I can control—not at a party with children.”

“But what about my graduation? There was a whole crowd there.”

“I stood across the lawn against a tree. Benson in tow.”

“But—”

“No ‘but’, no ‘if’, no ‘and’, Elisa. This is exactly why I’m ending this.”

The air stills. How fast the past can stun the future! With one blink, with one look, with one word, and we are no more than what we were at our worst. I try to breathe as our pasts collide. Because even though it’s his demons this time, with all my guards down, I’m still the girl in that hospital gown four years ago, sleepwalking to the morgue.

“Elisa, baby, look at me.” He twines his arms around my waist and walks us to the kitchen table, setting me down on his chair. He kneels before me and wraps his hands like handcuffs around my wrists.

“Elisa, don’t you understand? If I continue this, I’d be giving you your green card but I’d be taking away the life it can give you. All you’ve worked for these last four years, everything you’ve built with these little hands—” he kisses them and looks up at me, “—you’d lose. Your world and mine cannot coexist. And remember that I’m always more dangerous when you’re around.” His voice hardens on the last sentence.

Perhaps because of that, my brain latches on it and ignores the rest. My breath catches as an idea occurs to me. “But if I calm you, shouldn’t my effect numb the bad memories too?”

He shakes his head. “No. You calm me, yes, but you can’t wipe out mangled kids or my mother’s broken body or m—” He stops like he said one letter too many. The silence is deafening.

“But even traumatic memories can rewrite themselves, can’t they? The neural pathways just need new stimuli, new associations—”

He puts his hand over my mouth. “Over a long period of time, maybe, but mine never have.”

My heart starts pounding as I lead him exactly where I wanted. “So if we spend a lot of time together, then maybe I can help you?”

His forehead locks and his jaw clenches as he wises up to my plan. His nostrils flare. “No!” he says so sharply that I fall back in my chair.

He releases my wrists and stands. He closes his eyes, pinching the bridge of his nose. It looks like he is counting in his head. At last, he takes a deep breath and looks at me. Instantly, his eyes lighten and now I understand why. They lighten in calmness.

“I’m very sorry,” he says, his voice softer. “I didn’t mean to startle you. But no, you can’t help me. Even if I were to allow you to spend time with me, which I won’t, you would never survive long enough, and even if you did, some memories I would never choose to numb.”

The air stops in my lungs as I finally understand. Not because he says I would never survive—apparently that doesn’t matter. But because he summons these horrors. He preserves them.

“Why not? If it would help you?”

He shakes his head, standing straighter, almost defiant. “Because I don’t want to.”

He stares beyond the window again, like he did when talking about his mum.

My thoughts are a stampede. Why would anyone want to hold on to such anguish? It’s a cruel punishment of the self. Then I remember the list of symptoms I just reviewed. Guilt. But what could he have possibly done to think he deserves this? How can I ever ask him without catapulting him to some horror that already holds him prisoner? A pain different than what I’ve felt before lacerates my insides. For my parents, I hurt because I’m mourning. But for him, I hurt because he is alive, yet buried.

I stand and pad over to him. “Look at me,” I say.

He meets my eyes. Purple to sapphire blue. I don’t blink as layer by layer, the darkness retreats and my calmness takes over. When the blue is bright again, I turn my head to the side and strike the pose from my painting.

He smiles and shakes his head. “What am I going to do with you?”

Be with me, make love to me until we both drop, lock us away because with you, that would be paradise. “Spend some time with me.” I pick the thing that will hopefully freak him out the least.

He shakes his head, ready to strike again. “Absolutely not. Time leads to opportunity, opportunity leads to you getting injured or worse, dead.” He shouts the last word.

“I still want to try.” Apparently, I’ve gone mental but I’d rather take a chance than be just a portrait.

He runs his hand through his hair, teeth clenched, like he is trying to contain a roar. “That’s because—you don’t—understand—what it would be like.” He speaks slowly, like he cannot trust himself to release his jaw.

I take his face in my hands. “Then show me.”

“What?”

“Show me what it would be like, and then we’ll both know if we can do this.”

He pulls my hands away from his face. “An experiment with your f*cking life? Have you lost your f*cking mind? Did something happen to you these last two days that I don’t know about or did I f*ck your common sense out of your brain?” He is yelling now. Straight to dragon. So loud is his voice that Calico hops on the kitchen window and presses his whiskers against the glass, peering in.