“You said you also remember every emotion?”
I’ve hit something because the tectonic plates shift in his eyes. Now I realize the secret behind those eyes. They zoom and absorb and shift because he is living in many places and times all at once.
“Yes, I remember emotion.” His words are guarded, his voice harder. I know I have minutes, maybe seconds, before his sudden disclosure ends.
I sort through thousands of questions for the most relevant. “Can you ever forget?”
He smiles without his dimple and brushes his fingers against my cheek. He takes the book from my hand and tucks it back in its spot without looking.
“No, Elisa. I cannot.”
“Never?”
“Some doctors theorize it will wane with age. But since age seven when we first discovered it, I have noticed zero difference.”
His voice is slower, heavier, as though the memories of his thirty-five years are weighing it down. No matter how astonishing I find his brain, it just occurred to me what a fearsome sentence this must be.
“Do you wish you could forget?”
He smiles. “Some things, yes. Others—like the way you look right now—no.”
I walk into his arms and caress his stubble. “And the things you wish you could forget? Are those what make you tense this way?” I risk the thesis question.
On cue, his shoulders petrify. He has shut down. My time is up.
“Come,” he says. “We have a million books, one eidetic memory and one eager scientist who wants to read them all. Put me to work.” He kisses my lips lightly.
I kiss him back, feeling a surging emptiness. I thought once I knew something about him—something real—the craving would be satisfied. But it’s not. It’s beastly. Because I know that the eidetic memory, like his success and his looks, is superficial. The inner Aiden is still hiding.
We leave the Purple Room, winding through the maze hand in hand, my brain exploding with information.
“Aiden, can I please ask one more question?”
He narrows his eyes. “One.”
“If you remember everything, why have a painting of me to begin with?”
He stops walking. “Because I want the fantasy.” He shrugs.
“And what is that fantasy?”
His jaw flexes. “By definition, it’s something that will not come true.”
My stomach twists sharply again, as the voice inside starts wailing. The fantasy. Not the real girl. And the real girl, I cannot give for more than twenty-nine days. Run, you fool. Run now and secure some strong medication for the plane ride.
I swallow. “You’re probably right.”
The deep V cracks between his eyebrows. That same flicker of helplessness that gleamed in his eyes when he looked at my paintings this morning, flashes now. It’s enough to lock my feet. Madly, I miss the man who is hiding even though I’ve never met him.
“Let’s live the fantasy a little longer, then,” I say.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Secrets
After dinner at Aiden’s home—it was that or renting out Andina’s private rooms—I stare at the towers of books leaning against the glass wall. To my horror, Aiden bought every book we touched. All 178 of them. How am I going to bring them all to England? How can I leave a single one behind? The sun dips behind Mount Hood. The stabbing in my stomach returns so I take his feather quill and a stack of books.
“What are you doing?” Aiden asks, still sitting at the enormous salvaged wood dinner table. He traces the lip of his wine glass with his thumb.
I perch next to him, setting my treasures on the table. “Signing my new books.”
He smiles and reaches for a lock of my hair. “More rituals?”
I nod. “I always sign my books so if they get lost, maybe I’ll be able to find them someday.” I dip the quill in the indigo inkwell and start with Pride and Prejudice. Aiden leans in to watch, twisting my hair. His warm breath tickles my cheek.
“Want to do it with me?” I ask, wanting his handwriting on these pages for when this all ends.
He must hear the desperation in my voice because he smiles. “Sure,” he says and picks up Byron’s Poems from the stack. “So how do we do this? You seem to have a system here.”
“Just sign your name on pages eight, twenty-four and eleven.”
He frowns once, then smiles. “Ah! For the date you came here.”
“Yes. And for the first date we have in common.” I dip the quill and sign The Brothers Karamazov. When I look up, something has changed in his eyes. A shadow over the turquoise depths. He controls it in seconds but it’s enough to trigger a strange itching on the soles of my feet. Like they want to run. I curl them under me.
“Sign another?” I ask, holding out the quill for him.