TEN DAYS

by Jenna Mills

  A wrought iron fence surrounded the property, much like so many other Garden District homes, but this one was old and rusty, missing the occasional spindle, badly in need of repair.

  I stood there, at the gate leading from the sidewalk, checking the address on the neglected Greek Revival with the instructions I'd received four hours before. A mistake, I thought—

  But it wasn't. This was the location.

  And it was most definitely abandoned.

  Around me, the sun still shone, but unseen shadows draped the old mansion in a veil of sadness, the white yellowing, columns rotting and beige, windows grimy, dark shutters peeling or altogether gone.

  I let myself into the yard, following the cracked walkway to the front door, and knocked.

  Wasps lifted from the frame, but no one answered.

  "Hello?" I called, surveying the length of the verandah. "Is anyone here?"

  Someone who wanted to talk to me.

  Alone.

  A.

  But no one answered.

  Turn around, a voice inside me whispered. Leave, the voice insisted.

  Instead I kept walking, around to the side of the house, where two steps led down to a trail of stepping stones. In the back, a duplicate verandah, in equal disrepair, separated house from overgrown bougainvillea.

  "Hello?" I called again. "It's Kendall Lawrence. I'm here."

  Dumb, dumb, dumb, the voice inside me warned.

  But I slipped onto the porch anyway, toward the largest window, grimy and darkened, but open.

  And saw him.

  He emerged from the far side of the room that had once been a kitchen. I didn't think I made any noise, but I must have, because without warning he turned, and just like the night before, at the club, everything tilted.

  But this time, not because of a drink.

  His eyes. It was his eyes that made my breath catch, his eyes that sent everything inside me racing. The low light there. The blue gleam.

  "Kendall," he said mildly. "I wasn't sure you'd come."

  Shock held me motionless. "Aidan."

  His smile was slow, slightly tilted to one side. "Expecting someone else?"

  Seventeen hours. That's all it had been. Seventeen hours since he'd held me against the wall in the alley. Seventeen hours since I thought he was going to kiss me. Seventeen hours since he'd ripped back and told me he was done. Drove me home. Left me there.

  Seventeen hours.

  But it felt like days...weeks.

  Of all the people I'd considered to have sent the note, Aidan had not crossed my mind.

  And I was making a fool out of myself.

  I made myself step forward and through the window, easing from the first light of dusk into the shadows of the forgotten. I made myself smile as if this was absolutely perfect and absolutely part of my plan.

  "I try not to expect anything," I said, crossing the dirty marble of the floor.

  Dressed as he usually was, in jeans and a t-shirt both of black, Aidan met me halfway. "Then that's exactly what you'll get."

  Nothing. It was all gone, every last trace of the night before.

  "Always better to expect everything."

  I watched him, trying to understand what was going on. "Can I quote you on that?"

  A corner of his mouth quirked upward. "Always working, aren't you? Why is that? Why are you so afraid to let down...and play?"

  I looked away. I looked away because I had to. I looked away because of the words, let down and play. Because of last night. The alley. Because I could still feel him, pressed up against me.

  And I could still feel the burn, deep, deep inside.

  "Is that what this place is?" I asked, moving away from him, to wander deeper into the house, from the large empty kitchen to an even larger room, where the remains of an exquisite chandelier hung dusty and forgotten from the high ceiling. "You want me to let down and play...here?"

  Aidan came up behind me, stopping a step closer than he had on the first day. "Sadly, no."

  I turned too fast, turned without realizing exactly how close he stood, that I had to step back to see his face. "What does that mean?"

  That low gleam was back in his eyes, the embers of a fire burning where no one could see.

  "It means for me it's work," he said, pulling away and stepping over a ladder to reach the corner. There, beneath a mural of a paddle wheeler on the Mississippi, two duffel bags sat next to a pile of rusted paint cans. "Whether it's work for you...is entirely your choice."

  Slowly, the pieces were falling together. "More research?"

  He went down on a knee to run his finger along the ornate molding along the floor, pulling back to reveal dark smudges. "Plays a key role in my next book. Need to make sure I can bring it to life."

  The forgotten old house, with its faded colors and musty, rotting rooms took on a whole new importance.

  "What's the book about?" I asked. Then I remembered. "...Besides the sociopath in all of us?"

  He reached for his camera, went down on his stomach, and snapped two shots. "The usual—something bad happens. Something doesn't make sense. And Jonas has to figure it all out."

  I couldn't help it. I laughed.

  "Tell me what this house says to you," Aidan said, pushing to his feet. "How it makes you feel."

  It was summer. Outside, even with night falling, heat breathed through the trees. But not here. Not inside. Here, among the shadows, cool whispered from the warped floors and flowed like blood from room to room.

  "Sad," I said, staring beyond old scaffolding to the mural on the wall, faded after years of neglect, but the image still there. "Cold." The neatly stacked piles of white marble looked new. "Abandoned."

  Aidan looked away.

  "Is that what you want?" I asked.

  "It's a start."

  I had no idea what that meant. "It's as if someone started to bring it back to life, but stopped," I murmured as much to myself as to him. "Why all the desolate places?" I asked. Abandoned, fading in broad daylight. "Don't you ever need happy, beautiful places?"

  He went back down on one knee to photograph a small mound of trash. "My books aren't fairytales."

  Not even close. Not even a single short chapter. "And you think happy is only for fairytales?"

  He stilled. For a long moment. Then he pushed to his feet, grabbed a duffel, and headed for the foyer.

  I followed, trailing him up the wide staircase, or at least what remained of it, to the hall upstairs and the first door on the right, a large empty room with a carved fireplace along the outside wall.

  There, Aidan dropped the bag and pulled out a blanket.

  "What's that for?" I asked.

  Next he dragged out a pillow. "My scene takes place at night."

  And I knew. I knew exactly what he was saying—doing. But I asked anyway. "You're spending the night?"

  Finally he twisted back to me. "Care to join me?"

  Quid Pro quo

  There were countless reasons to say no. To leave and go back to his house, let him spend the night in the decrepit mansion by himself. So many reasons—but not one of them mattered, not when our eyes met, and everything inside me started to rush.

  Yes.

  Yes, I could join him.

  To watch him work.

  To...learn.

  "I thought you were done with me," I blurted before I could talk myself out of it. But I couldn't pretend the night before never happened. I couldn't leave it dangling between us.

  Aidan's face. The lines tightened. "I was. Last night, I was done with last night. But today is a new day, and tonight is a new night."

  And with nothing more than that, my heart thrummed low and deep.

  Wordlessly, I watched him unpack the duffel, removing two flashlights, a loaf of deli bread, grapes and strawberries, two blocks of cheese—and two bottles of wine.

  "I thought you might have more questions for me," he said, pulling out two plastic cups—and a corkscrew. "Unless...you're do
ne with me?"

  #

  He was performing. On some level, I knew that. None of this was real, or natural. The whole evening was another act meticulously staged by Aidan Cross. The question was why—toward what end? He obviously wanted something.

  But so did I.

  Dusk fell. Night took over. Darkness bled where shadows shifted. There was a quiet stillness whispering through the house, the kind that made you want to move, need to move, but reluctant to so much as breathe.

  "I'll give you twenty," he said, sprawled against the wall of the spacious bedroom, empty except for a ladder propped in the corner.

  I popped a juicy black grape into my mouth. "You'll answer whatever I ask?"

  He reached for the wine. "I will," he said as he filled one of the red cups to the top. "Now drink."

  I felt my eyes flare. "Excuse me?"

  He stretched out on his side, an obvious gesture of confidence, and propped his head against his hand. "Oh? Did I forget to mention that? You can ask twenty questions—but every time I answer, you have to drink."

  And then I knew. I knew what kind of game he was playing. "Do you really think—"

  "Sh-h-h," he murmured, cutting me off, "unless you want that to be your third question."

  I opened my mouth, closed it again, realizing he was right, I'd already asked two questions since he'd told me to begin.

  Not asked, I silently corrected. Wasted.

  "Go ahead," he said, watching me with maddening mildness. "Drink."

  "What if—" I started, but the gleam in his eyes stopped me. "I never agreed to this," I pointed out.

  He shrugged. "Then we can find another way to kill time."

  And that low burn inside me burned even hotter. Watching him, careful to keep my eyes on his, I picked up the glass and lifted it to my mouth, took a tiny sip.

  "That's one," I counted, then indulged in a second, slightly longer. "And that's two."

  He reached for another grape. "See? Not so bad. No reason I should be the only one with something to lose."

  Who was this man, part of me wondered. Who was this man sprawled so casually on the thick black blanket, watching me like we were old friends catching up after too long away?

  Nicky Ramirez.

  But I rejected that, rejected the name the second it formed. He was not Nicky, and we were not old friends.

  After a quick glance at the the prewritten questions I'd yet to ask, I set my phone to record. "What do you want people to know about you?"

  Aidan rolled the grape between his thumb and forefinger. "Nothing."

  "That's not an answer."

  One of the flashlights glowed between us, projecting the shadow of his body against the greying wall behind him. "That I would never hurt anyone on purpose."

  My throat tightened.

  "Drink," he instructed quietly, but I was already lifting my glass and sipping, sipping longer.

  The tightness, the inexplicable little ache, didn't go away.

  "What do you wish people didn't know?" These were all categorized under my General-Get-To-Know-You questions. I'd thought them to be the easiest, most casual. But the second the words left my mouth, memories played, of all I'd learned over the past five days.

  There was a lot Aidan Cross probably wished no one knew.

  "You really want that Pulitzer, don't you?" he asked, still in that same velvety quiet voice.

  A game. An act. A charade. I'd been so convinced that's what the detour to the old house was. But in that one raw moment...it didn't feel like a game. Or an act. A charade.

  Real.

  It felt real.

  Aidan felt real, for the first time since the afternoon I'd turned to find him standing in the foyer. Aidan the man. Nicky, the threadbare memory.

  "I can answer that," I tossed back at him, and my voice, it betrayed me, scraping lower than I intended. "But it's going to cost you," I added, shifting my gaze to his glass, full of wine, but completely untouched.

  His smile was slow, unmistakably languorous. "Do you want me to?"

  I flashed my eyes. "I can answer that..." I said again, quieter, silkier. "But it's going to cost you..."

  He laughed, picked up his glass, took one sip—much longer than mine—then a second, even longer.

  When he was done, no wine remained in his cup.

  And suddenly the cavernous room didn't feel quite so chilly.

  "I don't care about a Pulitzer," I said answering his first question. Then his second. "But fair is fair."

  He dragged the bottle toward him and refilled his glass. "Except when it's not."

  There was a regret to the words impossible to miss. I thought about asking him why, but decided that question would have to wait. There were other answers I wanted first.

  "You never answered me," I said. "About what you wish people didn't know."

  The repeated question hung there, an invisible explosive between us, while the light of the single flashlight glowed.

  I didn't think he was going to answer.

  But then he did.

  "Where I live," he said simply, and with his eyes on mine, I lifted my cup and finished off my wine. Why didn't he want anyone to know that, I wanted to ask. I could guess, but I wanted his words.

  But with only twenty questions, I didn't want to burn another.

  Later, I told myself. I'd ask later, when I wasn't bound by rules—or lightheaded from wine.

  "You could move," I pointed out.

  "I could," he said, leaning over to refill my glass. "But I learned long ago running changes nothing."

  I looked away, looked away fast. Because I'd learned that, too. No matter where you went, the lies followed you.

  "Who are you running from, Kendall?" he asked quietly.

  The truth, it was always there waiting.

  "No one," I answered.

  But I still didn't know how to stay where I was.

  "Not even yourself?"

  I winced. "Not even myself," I said, but my voice scraped on the words. "And that was two," I added, nodding toward his red cup.

  Eyes never leaving mine, he obliged.

  Realizing how far off-track he'd lured me, I pulled myself back, back into the moment—into him. Because that was all that mattered. He was all that mattered. Absorbing every moment I had.

  "I can't imagine what it's like," I said, "to live in the public eye twenty-four-seven." With every breath, every mistake, every tragedy twisted into candy for public consumption.

  His laugh was low, rough. "And yet isn't that what you're doing? Grabbing whatever I give you? Preparing to feed every juicy insight to the hungry public?"

  I sat there. I tried to breathe. But for the first time, little blades of guilt nicked at me.

  "I never looked at it like that," I admitted, but even as I gave voice to the words, I knew how lame they sounded.

  How lame they were.

  "Of course you didn't," he said matter-of-factly. "You're living your life. You're going after what you want, what you need—for you. Just like everyone else."

  That blade nicked deeper, harder.

  "But to answer the question you didn't let yourself ask—"

  My eyes flared.

  He laughed again. "Yes, Kendie. I know the technique. I know what you're doing."

  My own smile just kinda happened. "No question mark, though—no drink."

  "You're learning," he said. "When you live in the public eye, you adjust. You build walls."

  And he had. Skillfully. "Walls no one can see."

  The gleam back in his eyes, he looked toward my refilled cup.

  "That wasn't a question, either," I pointed out. "That was an observation. I still have sixteen to go."

  Abruptly he rolled to his feet. "Good thing I brought more wine."

  A quick little rush went through me—one glass and already my head swam. "Are you trying to get me—"

  He whipped around—

  —And I realized my mistake.

  "
Scratch that," I said. "Let's go with five words instead." Out of habit, I glanced at my phone to make sure I was still recording our conversation. "Tell me five words that best describe you."

  A single brow arched. "Are you sure you're not interviewing me for a job?"

  My smile was slow as I stretched forward to grab his glass. "That's a question," I said, pouring from the second bottle. "—drink up, Mr. Cross."

  He looked like he didn't know whether to laugh or—

  Or.

  It was the or that got me, the or that had my breath turning shallow. He strode closer, reached down and took the glass, finishing off the refill in one long, long sip. "You're enjoying this."

  I gave him a purely innocent look. "Like I said, fair is fair."

  His eyes held mine for a long moment, before he leaned down and refilled his glass once again. "Just in case."

  "Only doing my job," I reminded. "Sure hope you brought enough."

  Not really. Not if each sip he took equalled an entire cup.

  "No worries there."

  I picked up my own glass, extended it for a mock toast, then drew it toward my mouth—somehow, I'd never expected digging around in the elusive Aidan's Cross world to be fun.

  Or for him to be...playful.

  But I hadn't expected much that had actually happened, either.

  "I'm still waiting," I reminded, "for my five words."

  Standing a few feet away, his gaze met mine. "And if I give them to you, will you give me five in return?"

  This time it was me. This time I was the one who didn't know whether to laugh or—

  Or.

  Or roll to my feet, cross to him, lift my hands to his chest and—

  And.

  This time it was the and that got me. Possibilities shifted, each more forbidden than the one before.

  So I shoved them away.

  Or tried to.

  "You did that on purpose," I accused. "Asked a question."

  He held his ground. "Now why would I do that?"

  This time I did roll to my feet. And cross to him. And—

  Stood there. Stood there a whisper, a breath away.

  But I did not let myself touch, not like I wanted to.

  Because I didn't know what would happen then, if I touched him there in the shadows of the empty bedroom.