by Olivia Gates
Tension deflated out of him on a heavy exhalation. “I won’t tell you that. I can’t. I never forgot the bet.”
Was there no limit to the hurt this man could inflict on her?
She let out a choppy breath. “Thanks for not wasting either of our time on insincerities.”
Something bruised filled his eyes. “I remembered it constantly because I was jealous. Of Jalal. He was coming close to you in ways I was unable to. I didn’t know how to get you to talk to me, laugh with me as he did. All I had was your physical hunger. So I took all I could of it, aroused it as fiercely and frequently as I could, hoping it would be enough. It never was.”
She hadn’t expected him to bother explaining. She didn’t want him to explain. She’d long been resigned that she knew all the answers. She didn’t want him to threaten that security.
Before she could tell him to let the past lie in its grave, he went on. “At one of the functions you attended with your mother, where you avoided me per our agreement, you were so…at ease with Jalal. You both seemed so delighted with each other. And my mother—ya Ullah, my mother again—she commented on how much you had in common. My unease started to turn to dread then.” Her heart scrambled its rhythm, her eyes burning as he held them in a vise of bleakness. “One moment, I’d think it was my fault you couldn’t be that natural with me, the next I resented you for not granting me the same openness you gave Jalal. All the time I was seething with the need to bring it up. But what would I have said? I want you to like me not just love me? I need you to crave my company and companionship, outside of bed? What if all I managed was make you realize I didn’t appeal to you in any way but sexually?”
Her heart lurched to another level of agitation. She’d never suspected he could have felt anything like this…
“Then I found out you were faltering in your studies. The fact that I didn’t learn about it from you made me so…angry. I considered only what that meant to me, said about us, rather than how the problem itself impacted you.”
That’s more like it.
Her teeth ground together. “Another example of what made you the icon for self-absorbed sons of bitches everywhere.”
He continued to stare at her with that still, searing intensity. “Jalal believed it was due to my…disruptive influence. I didn’t know how to stop being disruptive without giving you up, or at least moving back to Zohayd and seeing you sporadically. I thought if he was right, you’d eventually come to the same conclusion. And if you did, you would be forced to make a choice between your progress and me. I feared it wouldn’t be me you’d choose. I knew it shouldn’t be. That’s why I kept putting off bringing it up.”
Everything froze inside her as if to stop the influx of new information that threatened to pulverize her long-held beliefs.
“It’s also why I remembered the damn bet every single second I was with you. Not because I was afraid of losing to Jalal. Because I was afraid of losing you.”
The stillness inside her trembled on the verge of shattering.
But wait—wait! Her view of him, of the past, was too well entrenched. It couldn’t be changed with a few words…
But were they only words? Or reality? She’d already conceded Haidar hadn’t been guilty of feeling nothing in Rashid’s case, but feeling too much to be able to show it.
Had he been the same with her?
What if this was his problem across the board? Not that he’d inherited his mother’s heartlessness and twisted, obsessive affection for the two people she considered extensions of herself, but only simulated it by his inability to expose his heart?
It would still make any involvement with him impossible, but it would rewrite his character, their whole history.
But…he was exposing his heart now, had been communicating with her, as she’d never thought he could. What if he’d matured into overcoming his emotional limitations?
As if reading her mind, he said, “Not that never sharing my fears or insecurities with you did any good. I lost you anyway.”
If this was the truth, then what she’d said to him, how she’d walked out on him, must have pulverized his pride, his heart. As she’d thought he’d done hers.
Could she— Dared she believe?
But what else could she do? There was no reason he’d have said any of that if it weren’t true.
Pain crashed over her.
God…what she’d cost them both.
Dejection receded, leaving his face blank. “I had it all planned from that first time I—pardon my presumption—claimed you. I intended us to be together while I worked to establish my success, while you did yours. The logistics of being in Azmahar when my base of operations was ideally Zohayd, of keeping our intimacies secret while being under the microscope of fame and notoriety, drove me to distraction. But I knew we needed to deepen our bond, protect it from intrusions, before we faced what the world would throw at us. With my mother, and your mother’s position, with my mixed bag of problems, I knew it would be a lot.”
She wanted to scream for him to stop.
He went on. “It was a mess, but I thought the passion we shared made up for the drawbacks. I thought you thought that, too. And though I didn’t believe in my ability to make anyone happy, when you claimed to love me, you gave me hope that you saw in me what I didn’t. I thought you’d give me the time I needed to trust myself with the new feelings, the unknown needs, the terrible vulnerability. But you didn’t.”
“Haidar…”
Her plaintive objection faltered. He was right. She hadn’t. It suddenly no longer mattered why she hadn’t. The fact remained.
The flow of his bitterness continued. “All these years, I rationalized your parting words, excused them. Excused you. I told myself that you lashed out when you saw me out of control emotionally for the first time and feared I’d turn morbidly possessive and controlling. I told myself you had every reason to worry with the gross imbalance of power between us. I kept thinking I must have scared you, made you say what you did to ensure I wouldn’t come after you, never stopped imagining how it could have been if I hadn’t. I never accepted that the woman I loved considered me a banal adventure. I never believed, not in my heart, that you never loved me at all.”
Before she could cry that his heart had seen what had been in hers, he went on, “Now I have to accept that you never did. At the first test, you proved it. What you heard me say could have been interpreted in different ways. You chose the worst one. You’d already condemned me based on the word of your declared enemy. You didn’t think me worth the chance to defend myself. All you thought of was how to protect your pride, how to avenge yourself. As if I’d been your enemy all along, not the man you claimed to love.”
The urge to say something, anything, mushroomed inside her chest, felt it would rupture it. But anything she said now would be too little, too late.
He wasn’t finished. “You have been treating me as your enemy, your only enemy even, since I reappeared in your life. I’ve been blaming my own actions again and hoping your intense desire proved you felt something real and powerful for me. But it seems you told me the truth only once. I was your exotic fling. You dressed it in higher emotions to feel justified in indulging in it, but in truth, you weren’t ready to give me anything but stolen hours of pleasure. You didn’t even give me what you would have granted any stranger—the right to be considered innocent until proven guilty. Whatever I was guilty of—the reticence and the jealousy and the inability to deal with the weakness my feelings for you engendered in me—I didn’t warrant that punishment. But you don’t even consider it punishment. You believe it’s what I deserve.”
She held back tears and self-recriminations. It wasn’t time to give in to them. But she had to say something even if it was deficient.
He wouldn’t let her. “But I don’t accept your verdict, Roxanne.
Whatever I was guilty of, I won’t take all the blame. I’m sick and tired of being the one everyone demonizes. I will no longer think it okay for the people who once claimed to love me to see my every action in the worst light.” His eyes flared with the molten steel of fury. “And I will no longer be held responsible for my mother’s actions or accept being considered interchangeable with her character. I am not only her son. I am also my father’s. But the thing that matters most is, I am me.”
Before she could draw another breath, he turned around. Shocked to her core, she watched him cross the room that every brushstroke and article said he’d had done for her, having so accurately read her intensely personal fantasies.
She’d rejected him again in the setting he’d prepared for her with such thought and care.
At the double doors he stopped, turned, buttoning his shirt in deliberate moves. “My mother always told me that no one will love me but her, and to trust no one. Every time I disregarded her wisdom, I lost something vital. You, Jalal, Rashid. But it’s clear the loss was always one-sided. You are all far better off without me.” His eyes filled with bitter irony. “But I didn’t get where I am by clinging to losing propositions. I’ll accept that the problem lies within me and deal with it.” He finished doing up his shirt, nothing left in his eyes but frozen steel. “So like I told them, I’ll tell you. I’m getting the hell out of your life. This time, I’m staying out.”
Eight
“Wow. Just…Wow.”
Roxanne squeezed her eyes shut. She didn’t want to see the incredulity, or the pity, in her companion’s eyes.
She was already sorry she’d told Cherie anything.
It had been about four hours since Haidar had walked out of that bedroom. She’d gone after him, but had soon realized he’d left the estate. Haleem, the driver he’d flown in especially for her, had been waiting to take her home.
She’d held on until she’d gotten there. But the moment she’d seen Cherie, it had all come flooding out. The tears, and the whole story.
Cherie’s exclamations didn’t show signs of stopping any time soon. “I mean, dude…wow. And I thought my love life was complicated. Roxy, babe, you got the market cornered on complex messes.”
Roxanne opened her eyes, exhaled her corroboration. “Yeah.”
“And it seems ’tis open season for the destruction of long-held misconceptions. Me with Ayman, you with Prince Haidar. Man, you really have a prince for a lover!”
Refraining from amending it to ex-lover, Roxanne sighed again. “And for eight years I cherished my grudge against him. Then he tears into me with his side of the story, and here I am.”
Cherie’s eyes filled with seriousness and sympathy. “You must be feeling pretty stupid right now, huh?”
She grimaced in self-deprecation. “Not the description I would have used. Rash, overreacting, insecure, vindictive. But yeah, stupid works, too. Actually sums up all the above.”
Cherie gave a bitter snicker. “You and me both. Since I came here, it’s been dawning on me daily what an oversensitive moron I was with Ayman. You think it’s something we picked up when we were in university together? We both started seeing our men then, and after a period of head-over-heels bliss, you walked out on yours, while I’ve been on a constant roller coaster with Ayman, mostly my doing. It’s a wonder your man even tried to hook up with you again. It’s a wonder mine married me and hasn’t divorced me.” The light blue of her eyes darkened with regret and despondence. “Especially after this last flounce.”
“You still love him.”
“God, yes. I love him so much it’s what screws me up.”
“You haven’t told me exactly what went wrong between you.”
Cherie rolled her eyes. “I’m a messy, outspoken-in-all-wrong-things, emotionally reticent pain in the butt, that’s what went wrong.”
“And you came here blaming him for being an anal, sanctimonious, overemotional jerk. Now you’ve switched to shouldering all the blame. I bet there’s a middle ground here.”
Cherie arched a delicate blond brow at her. “Like it exists in your situation?”
“Touché. But in yours, I can tell you that no matter what, he’d rather have your mess over perfection in a life without you. When I talked to him on the phone, he said, quote, ‘Cherie’s hell is better than anyone else’s heaven,’ unquote.”
Tears poured down Cherie’s cheeks as she collapsed back on the couch. “And of course he tells you that!”
“He’s been trying to tell you. And he knew I’d transmit his words. So what are you going to do?”
Cherie leaned forward, burying her face in her hands. “I don’t want him to put up with me and ruin his life. I want him to have the children he craves. I want him to let me go.”
Roxanne scooted over, hugged her. “He doesn’t want to let you go. He said he’ll do anything to get you back. But have you ever told him what you just told me?”
Cherie raised drenched, smirking eyes. “Which part of emotionally reticent didn’t you get?” Roxanne vented a frustrated breath. Cherie echoed it. “One thing we share is, we both pretended to jump because we thought we’d eventually be pushed. But we basically have the opposite of each other’s problems. Ayman has always been the one pouring out his heart, and I’m the one who holds back and wisecracks his butt off. While your prince—excuse me again as I boggle over this—you really have a prince!” Had a prince. Roxanne bit back the correction. “And he was the one who had a glitch in his express-show machine. While you expressed yourself only too well, but only on your terms. So when he needed you to do it on his, tell him you were Team Haidar all the way, you didn’t act on your professed love, proving it never existed.”
Roxanne plopped back, hands grabbing her head in frustration. “Go ahead. Put it in an even worse light than he did.”
Cherie grimaced apologetically. “I’m just sympathizing with someone who shares my inability to gush about my love. At least, to the object of my love. I get him.”
A spasm pinched her heart. “And I’m only beginning to get him. When it’s too late.”
It was Cherie’s turn to hug her. “Do you have an Azmaharian mother-in-law breathing down your man’s neck to discard you and get a model that will provide the required brood? Do you have a terminal disorderliness disorder and live with a neatness freak? Do you have five years of marriage behind you, and you’re at the point where you think the only man you’ll ever love is better off without your baggage and shortcomings? If you answer no to all the above, you’ve got it easy, lady.”
“Put that way, my problems seem trivial in comparison. Except for one tiny point. Your man wants you back. Mine doesn’t.”
“Sure he does. He’s been holding a torch for you for eight years even after you seemingly pulverized his heart and pride.”
“Now he’s blown out said torch.”
“He’s hurt and he’s sulking. But one thing for sure. This guy has never run after anything or anyone. He’s a high-and-mighty prince-cum-god, for Pete’s sake. And he’s gone against everything in his nature and done all the running in your relationship. He’s in dire need for you to go after him this time.”
“What if he says to leave him the hell alone?”
Cherie jumped up, and wonder of wonders, started gathering her cups and plates. “Here’s what we’ll both do. I’ll open up to Ayman, and you’ll go after Haidar. It is a definite danger neither maneuver will work. Are we going to let that stop us from trying?”
* * *
Roxanne had started thinking this was a terrible idea. Hours ago. Now she knew it was the worst one she’d ever cooked up.
Even Cherie hadn’t thought she’d go this far. She’d thought she’d only go as far as calling Haidar, beg for face time.
She’d texted Haidar instead, told him when and where to me
et her. She’d thought if she was doing this, she might as well go all out. In a blaze of glorious recklessness.
Not that it was working. She’d been waiting for eight hours.
She’d made allowances for everything that could hold him up. If he meant to come. Every minute after the fifth hour when no more excuses sufficed had felt like sandpaper being dragged over her raw nerves, every one telling her she’d just dialed his outrage higher with her presumption.
Even if she hadn’t, why would he want to see her again? He’d made up his mind that he’d heard all he needed to hear from her. She no longer had a right to his indulgence or patience, which he’d been showering her with since he’d showed up in her life again.
Her phone rang.
She fumbled with it as if it were a squirming fish, hit Answer, put it to her ear, heart turned inside out.
“Kaif hallek, ya azeezati?”
At hearing the drawled How are you, my dearest, the detonation of disappointment made her cover the mic to groan. Jalal.
Why was she so surprised? He’d called her half a dozen times a day ever since that first meeting. They’d made quite the headway in his campaign at first. But since her confrontation with Haidar a week ago, only her word to Jalal had made her work on his case at all. That and the need to get everything out of the way so she could obsess over Haidar with her full focus.
Wanting this over with, she skimmed the niceties. “Have you checked your in-box? I sent you the demographic analysis.”
“Aih, I saw them.” From the brief pause, Jalal had noticed her haste. As gentlemanly as ever, he glossed over it. “Brilliant work. I don’t know what I would have done without you. You have incredible insight.”
She almost scoffed. Selective insight was more like it. When it came to Haidar, she’d had that in the negative values.
“But this isn’t a business call,” Jalal said. “You weren’t looking as well as usual a couple of days ago.”
