Chapter Ten

Elena

When I shut the apartment door, I’m still dripping wet. I kick off my shoes and pull off my socks, then Aiden and I walk into the living room, where Jamie lounges on the chair, phone in hand.

“Hello, hel—” Jamie looks up. “Oh, I…didn’t realize you—” She grins mischievously, eyeing the strange and beautiful boy standing beside me.

“Jamie, this is Aiden, my… ”

“Friend,” he says. “I helped her out with the car.” His voice is like velvet, calm and smooth.

I clear my throat. God, I hope she can’t see the way all the color surely drains from my face. “We worked on the transmission. There’s something else wrong with the car, though. I’ll get it towed in the morning.” I glance around at the shabby-chic decor.

She uncrosses her legs and sets her ComPad on the small table beside her. “You walked here? I guess that’s why you’re leaking water all over my carpet.”

“Yeah, sorry about that. Do you mind if Aiden stays the night here with me? Not with me, with me.” My cheeks blaze. “He just doesn’t drive, and I promised I’d take him somewhere. After I get my car working, of course.”

“I don’t mind.” Jamie sends me a cheeky look. “Make yourselves at home. There’s plenty of space in that bed for two.”

…

For hours, sleep evades me. After the first sixty minutes, I grew tired of watching the clock tick the minutes away. Now I stare at the ceiling, picking out patterns in the textured plaster. I didn’t expect to sleep well, but I did expect to at least sleep. This is a slow and monotonous kind of torture, and I can’t flipping take it anymore.

I roll my head to the side and see the back of Aiden’s dark hair. Pieces stick up from sitting on the floor, leaning against the bed. This is where he’s been for a couple hours now. Jamie offered him the couch, and I even offered him the bed. At least I’m attempting to sleep. Intentionally inflicting that kind of boredom on yourself sounds pretty stupid to me.

Not that I have any right to deem him the stupid one.

“Do you want to watch a movie?” I finally ask, shifting, still staring at the back of his head. “Or something on TV?”

Aiden twists around and places his palms on the mattress. “You don’t want to sleep?”

“Oh, I want to sleep. That doesn’t mean it’s going to happen, though.”

He smiles in the darkness, then moves to his knees, leaning farther over the bed. I notice his wrinkled shirt and frown. “Why haven’t you changed out of those clothes?”

Aiden glances down. “What I’m wearing hasn’t been a priority, I guess.”

Before I can respond, Aiden moves back, yanks his shirt over his head, and my breath catches in my throat. His shirt has been hiding a well-toned body. The muscles in his arms flex as he replaces his shirt with the clean one we’d bought at Walmart. I can’t drag my stare away or ignore the way my heart pounds. Stupid, stupid, stupid.

I become suddenly fixated on a loose strand of thread on the bedding. My cheeks burn, but it’s too dark for him to notice—I think.

The bed dips beside me, and I figure it’s safe to look now. I shift on the bed and motion for him to sit. I flip on the television but leave the volume down to almost mute. “So, what kinds of things do you like to do?” Hopefully he can’t hear the hesitation in my voice.

Aiden slowly lowers himself onto the bed and leans against the cheap headboard, fluffing the pillow behind him. “I’ve seen a ton of movies. I like video games and playing the piano. I’ve studied. A lot.” He shrugs casually. “Learned how the human body works, about the solar system, history, and the written word. I wanted to know everything there was to know about the world.”

“I bet your grammar skills put mine to shame,” I say with a laugh. “You watched movies and studied a lot of stuff—mostly boring, I’m guessing. You can’t tell me that’s all your life consisted of.” I watch the lights from the TV reflecting off his eyes as an odd expression passes across his face.

He slides his gaze my way and pulls on the too-short sleeves. “What else do you think there was?”

I shrug. “That’s…well, why I asked.”

Aiden’s shoulders roll back, and the muscles in his jaw clench and unclench as he stares, his eyes cutting into me. “I doubt our lives have been similar. I can’t claim to know anything about your life, but I’m sure you know nothing about mine.”

I hesitate, drawing in a slow breath and holding it in for much too long. It’s not that he said it unkindly, but the silence hangs heavy in the air, and I can’t tell if the hint of anger in his voice is because of my question or because of the answer.

“You’re right,” I say. “But I want to know you. I want to know…everything.”

His expression doesn’t change, but his face is inches away from mine. His legs are dangerously close to mine, too. Did I move closer, or had he?

“You…I want to know you.”

His fingers reach out to touch the side of my face gently, softly. My blood thrums beneath my skin, my heartbeat so loud, I’m positive he can hear it. His hand caresses my cheek, slowly moving to cup my chin. He dips his head, sending hair falling across his forehead. Now that we’re this close, I see what makes his eyes appear so luminescent, so different. Hidden in the green color are tiny specks of a silvery-metallic color. It’s like a kaleidoscope inside his irises. “Your eyes,” I say, breathless and stunned. “They’re…”

“They aren’t normal.” Aiden’s hand falls from my face, and the place where his fingers were feels cold.

I grab his hand before he can pull it away completely. “No, but what’s wrong with that?”

“I never said there was anything wrong with it. It’s just…most people don’t get close enough to notice.”

I look at our hands, lying in the small space between us, our fingers intertwined, silently begging him to touch my face again. “It’s kind of…amazing.”

“My eyes?”

“Mm, yeah. I mean, have you seen them?” Raising my gaze, I’m relieved to see the hard set to his jaw has disappeared. “But not just your eyes.” When he spears me with a questioning look, I add, “Your hair’s pretty nice, too.” And the way he played it cool with Jamie. The way he looks at me sometimes, as though I might evaporate into thin air.

And those muscles… He’s just like the guys I go to school with. He could attend Eastmont High and no one would think of him as anything other than simply a guy. Yet there’s something different about him, something foreign.

He laughs—a rough, pure sound I love—and he releases my hand so he can slide down to lie on his back. “Good to know.”

I shift, too, propping myself up on one elbow. “So tell me more about these doctors. The psychologist and…”

“You mean Dr. Niels?” He rests both hands against his stomach, staring at the ceiling. “Dr. Niels is…well, he’s the one who saved my life. He wasn’t the only one, but without him, I wouldn’t be alive. He and Dr. Burns helped me prepare for these tests they made me take.”

“Who is they?”

“The people in charge.”

“And the tests?” I ask. “Were they like school tests? Math, literature, science…”

He rolls his head to the side and looks directly past me, instead of at my face. “Not those kinds of tests.”

I bite my lower lip, squeezing my hands together to keep from fidgeting, trying to understand what he might mean. “Medical tests?”

His gaze flickers my way briefly before he stares into space again. “I had those. But that’s not what I’m referring to.”

I push my hair over my shoulder and wait for him to continue. I’m fresh out of guesses, and I get the feeling he doesn’t want to tell me, which only has me itching to know more. Instead of bombarding him with more questions, though, I watch the TV without truly paying any attention to it. I’m too busy thinking of how Aiden is lying beside me on the soft cotton sheets that smell of floral-scented laundry detergent and how I want to lie my head against his chest just to hear his heart beating.

After minutes of quiet have passed, he finally speaks. “The tests didn’t always make sense. My last one was an interview. With this guy named Carter.”

Carter? I bite the inside of my lip upon hearing my last name. It’s got to be a coincidence, though. Dad doesn’t work with patients. He works with technology and computers. Besides, Carter could be used as a first name.

Aiden continues. “Another time, they brought in a little girl for a test,” he says, using one hand to prop the pillow up some more. “She was five and very…animated. They put us in a room together, and she started asking me all kinds of questions. Most were the kinds of things your average five-year-old would ask. But…I knew they’d prompted her for some of them.”

“Why would they do that? I mean, what were they testing you for? Brain damage from the accident?”

Aiden’s smile fades slowly, replaced with a grim look of defeat. “I don’t know. I have enhanced motor skills and a perfect memory thanks to all the drugs and procedures, so it makes sense for some of their tests to be odd. But really, I’ve only come up with assumptions, nothing concrete.”

“So the facility is some kind of rehab center?”

“Something like that. But definitely one of a kind. It’s where I’ve been every day since the wreck.”

“If you never got to leave, then the doctors and the people they brought in to see you were pretty much the only people around?”

“For the most part. But Dr. Burns and Dr. Niels were the ones I spoke to on a regular basis. It was more than a few passing conversations or your ordinary patient-doctor discussions. They were my friends. The only friends I’ve ever had.”

“Weren’t you lonely?” After I say it, I want to shove my foot in my mouth. Way to be sensitive.

I’m relieved when he doesn’t look away or appear hesitant. “How can you be lonely when that’s all you’ve ever known? I spent most of my time alone, and that was normal for me.”

“And now?”

There’s uncertainty on his face. The glow from the screen creates swirling colors in his eyes, mixing with the green and silver, reminding me of a splattered canvas come to life. “I’m afraid I’ll never be able to forget how it feels to not be alone.”

“Why would you ever have to?” is on the tip of my tongue, but I bite the words back. I already know what he’ll say, and the worst part is I won’t be able to disagree with him.

Aiden’s eyes cast downward. What’s going on in his head? The smile is gone from his face, and God, I love it when he smiles. Instead of asking anything, I reach out my hand and grab his.

He looks up, his lips twisting into a lopsided grin, and my heart smiles in response.

After a few minutes, he abruptly pulls away and tries to stand.

“What’s wrong?” I ask right before his knees hit the carpet. Aiden’s hands are fisted at his head and—oh no—he’s doubled over in pain.

A moment passes. “My head,” he grunts, not moving. “It—aaah!”

I kneel next to him, holding my hand out as if it’s going to help anything. “What happened?”

“I don’t know.” His words are clipped, desperate. Fingers clench against the sides of his head, into his hair. Finally, he looks at me. “It—fuck, I don’t know.” Aiden’s eyes echo the emotion in his voice.

“Like…like a headache?” My hands reach out, then fall back. How can I help?

More anxious moments pass, and he sits back against his legs, his jaw relaxing. “I don’t get headaches.”

What kind of person doesn’t get headaches?

His hands fall to his sides. “It felt like someone tearing me open with a scalpel. It’s…better now. Just all of a sudden, there was this bright, blinding pain.”

Bright? I blink. His agonized expression is gone, replaced with a darker, grimmer one.

“I’ll be fine.” He places his hands against the carpet and pushes himself up.

“Fine? I…Aiden—” But I don’t know what to say.

His gaze holds mine for a second longer, then he looks away. “It’s gone, whatever it was. I’m fine.”

I’m not convinced, though. And judging from his hesitant tone, he isn’t, either.