Aidan's Obsession

21. Emmerson

Book smart means nothing.

Annoyance zips through me. Unless I'm clearly speaking to you, keep away from my thoughts.

They're just so fucking loud. Trust me, I'd ignore them if I could.

Oh, you can. You're a man. Men can ignore anything.

Not you. I've never been able to ignore you.

I try not to turn his words around and around in my head, but it's hard not to dwell on them, read into them. But I don't know if anyone has ever said anything that resonated so deeply in me, that I felt just as strongly. I can't ignore him either.

###

When we get back to my dorm, I throw things into my backpack while Aidan stands at the door, clearly eager to get going.

In the bathroom, I open a drawer and unzip the make-up bag where I've been keeping my pills. For some reason, I didn't want Aidan to see them, to know I've been taking them. Logically, I know there's nothing wrong with needing them, but he seems so invincible, so strong, that these pills feel like admitting a weakness.

I wait for a beat to see if Aidan invades my thoughts. Toward the end of the bike ride back, he seemed less able to read them without me having to push them in his direction. Hopefully, that means we're back to normal. I really don't need him hearing every single thought in my head. Who wants that?

I stare at the bottle in my hand. I'm almost out, and if we don't know how long we're going, I should call to get more. That's the responsible thing to do, what I've been doing since I went on them and they seemed to help my moods a little. Made me less impulsive. Less prone to uncontrollable rages. More pliable to my foster parents.

But I've missed taking them, here or there, since Aidan started watching me, and nothing terrible has happened. I've been fine. Completely fine. Happy, even.

Maybe I've outgrown the need for them.

Holding them tight in my fist for a beat, I drop them into my bag. If I go off the rails, at least I'll have something.

When I come back out into the main room, Aidan is sitting in the office chair with his head in his hands.

"Are you okay?" I ask.

"I've just been trying to go through all the pieces before we leave. You need to break up with your gnat. You haven't done that yet, right?"

"Brody? No, I..." But I have no good excuse for why I haven't broken up with him or why he hasn't crossed my mind even once in days. "We can stop by his apartment before going to Hailey's. It's sort of on the way."

"And you need to tell him you're going out of town for a while. Other than Hailey, he's your closest contact, and we don't need a manhunt on our asses."

"Right, yeah." I hadn't thought of that, but it makes sense. Brody is definitely the type to try to get back together and, if he couldn't find me, raise the alarm.

"And..." He takes a deep, heaving breath and runs his hands along his thighs. "In three weeks, I'll be my people's equivalent of married. I haven't been upfront about that. What's happening wouldn't be my first choice, but I have agreed to it all."

My heart stutters and then there's a painful constricting across my chest, as though someone is crushing my heart with their fist. "You're with someone right now?" It shouldn't feel like a betrayal, as though he's knocked me flat on my back and stolen my breath. We were just talking about me breaking up with my boyfriend a minute ago. Except, as Aidan already pointed out, Brody has never been a threat to whatever exists between the two of us.

He closes his eyes, and when he opens them, I can see how conflicted and determined he is. As though he's going to power through this conversation no matter what, but it's costing him. "It's an arrangement my parents made, and I agreed to it, years ago, before I ever even knew..." He shakes his head. "The agreement is the right thing for my people."

"Why are you telling me this?"

"I wanted you to know."

"Now you want me to know. On your terms. You could have told me a week ago when you started spending all your time here."

"Tell me one thing that would have changed if I'd told you earlier."

"Well, I wouldn't have—"

"Careful now," he says in a chiding tone, "don't lie to both of us."

"Okay," I say, cocking my hip and glaring at him to try to diffuse the well of sadness inside me that seems to keep expanding, getting deeper. It doesn't make any sense to feel this despondent over what he's told me. "If telling me makes no difference, why tell me?"

"Because staying away from you has proven impossible, but in three weeks, whatever is between us will flip off like a light switch, and I'll be gone from your life. It didn't seem fair for me to disappear without some sort of explanation. Now that you can remember me."

"Gone?" I sink onto the bed, my backpack resting between my feet. "I mean, I know we're not exactly friends, but we're not nothing. All those gaps in my memory..." I'm almost willing him to respond, to explain. How can he want to spend so much time with me, kiss me like he did in the state park both times, and think those feelings will just magically disappear the moment he gets married? "Your friend can watch me. I'm not going on this trip."

"You are. I'm not leaving you behind."

"I'm not going. I've had enough heartbreak and disappointment to last a lifetime. I didn't ask for this. I don't want this."

He leaves his chair, and he comes to sit beside me on the bed, and right away I feel it. The magnetic force of my need to be close to him, to be with him, to do anything to stay at his side.

"It's not fair that you can do that," I whisper.

"No," he agrees, "it's not." He tips my chin so I'm looking at him. "But you do it to me too. It goes both ways."

"But it won't forever. You'll forget me, like I've been forgetting you."

"We get these three weeks," he says. "We can run from what we feel, or we can bask in this ray of sunlight. Even when you didn't remember me, I didn't run from this feeling. I couldn't, and I don't want to. So I'm telling you the truth, but I'm also asking you to ignore it."

"Sounds selfish. What's best for you."

"It might be what's best for you too," he says, taking my hand in his. "Maybe we'll find out what you are, give you a better direction than dealing with human's blood and shit and piss for the rest of your life."

He's reduced my chosen profession to its worst qualities, so it's hard to argue that those things are what I really want. That's not the part of the job that I think I'll love. "What are we basking in, Aidan?"

"Each other," he says. "We take things between us as far as we want knowing it'll end in three weeks."

My body goes to war with itself—unfurling at the possibility of the intense closeness being with him would give me, and recoiling at the absolute devastation I'll feel when he walks away to be with another woman.

But when he's sitting this close, my hand in his, there's really only one answer I can give him. "I want it all."

See you next Wednesday!

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