Not that I blamed him. We were definitely in need of some liquid courage if we wanted to survive this.
Chapter Fifteen
Going through the motions of disembarking the aircraft, getting through customs, and picking up our luggage felt a little bit like one of those strange dreams where everything around you felt fuzzy and unreal, but there was a part of you, deep down in your consciousness, that knew it wasn’t real.
Only this time, it was. And the loud thump, thump, thump in my ears was evidence of just how much.
And yet, as much as that part of me kept repeating that I would wake up while my heart kept screaming that I already was and that this was really happening, the moment the Arrivals gate came into view, my whole body froze with realization.
My suitcase wheels screeched against the floor as my two feet became rooted to the floor. Breath stuck in my throat, I watched the gates opening and closing, letting out whoever had been walking ahead of us.
I glanced at Aaron, who had been walking beside me but was now a couple of steps ahead. My overpacked bag hung off his shoulder again.
“Aaron,” I croaked, that thump, thump, thump growing louder and louder. “I can’t do it.”
Feeling as if my lungs had been filled with cement, I brought a hand to my chest. “Ay Dios.” I heaved. “Ay Dios mío.”
How had I let this get so far?
What was I going to do if everything blew up in my face?
What if I made it all worse?
I was crazy. No, I was plain stupid. And I wanted to punch myself in the face. Maybe that would snap me out of it.
My gaze roamed around desperately, probably looking for an escape. A way to get out. But I couldn’t see anything past those gates that separated us from my parents and kept swallowing passenger after passenger.
“No puedo hacerlo,” I muttered, not recognizing my own voice. “I can’t do this. I just can’t go out there and lie to my whole family. I can’t. It won’t work out. They’ll know. I’ll make a fool of myself. The fool that I am because—”
Aaron’s fingers found my chin, tilting my face up to meet his gaze. “Hey.” The blue in his eyes shone under the fluorescent light illuminating the terminal, snatching all my attention. “There you are.”
Not able to voice a single word more without completely losing my shit, I shook my head lightly. His fingers remained where they were.
“You are not a fool,” he told me as he kept staring into my eyes.
My lids fell closed for a moment, not wanting to see whatever he was looking at me with on top of everything I was barely keeping at bay. “I can’t do it,” I whispered, opening my eyes and meeting his gaze.
His voice hardened. “Catalina, stop being ridiculous.” Contrary to the gentle grip of his fingers, his command was blunt. Unsensitive, considering he was talking to a woman on the verge of flipping out.
But something in it forced me—enabled me, I realized—to take the first full breath in the last couple of minutes. So, I did exactly that. I breathed in, and then I breathed out. All the while, Aaron looked me straight in the eye with something that should have made my anxiety shoot back to the roof but that instead brought me slowly back.
“We’ve got this,” he said with confidence.
We.
That simple two-letter word somehow sounded a little louder than the rest.
And then, as if he had been waiting for me to be ready to hear it, he went for the killing blow. “You are not on your own anymore. It’s you and me now. We are in this together, and we’ve got this.”
And somehow, for a reason I knew I would never be able to explain, I believed him. I didn’t question or fight him.
Neither of us said anything else. My apprehensive brown eyes held his determined blue ones, and some kind of silent understanding passed between us.
Us. Because we, Aaron and I, had just become an us.
Aaron’s fingers dropped from my chin and wrapped around the hand that hadn’t been clutching my chest.
He squ