by Alisha Rai
Kareem surveyed the man in front of him. “Are you Aunt Livvy’s brother?”
Sadia had told Kareem stories about Livvy and Jackson even when Paul had been silent on them, but her son was still young and trying to figure out how everyone was related to him and each other. She waited for Jackson to answer, but when he was silent, stepped in. “Yes. He, Aunt Livvy, and Daddy were all brothers and sister.”
Kareem looked up at her. “Does he have a potty mouth too?”
Sadia winced. She might be annoyed with Livvy right now, but having her home was generally great. Except for the fact that Kareem had already learned at least two swears from her.
Kareem’s teacher wasn’t impressed with Aunt Livvy at all. “It doesn’t matter. We don’t use grown-up words even if grown-ups do.”
Kareem shrugged and looked back at Jackson. “Hello.” After another moment, Kareem pressed tighter against her side and picked at a scab on his arm.
Sadia dropped her hand on his shoulder, disappointment making her heart ache. Her son was intuitive, and he was picking up on Jackson’s clear discomfort. Livvy hadn’t seen her nephew more than a handful of times in his life, but when she’d come home, she’d been affectionate and eager to grow acquainted with Kareem.
She shouldn’t have expected the same from Jackson. She didn’t know why she had. Because you used to fantasize about laying Kareem in his uncle’s big arms and watching Jackson melt.
Family was everything. She’d sacrificed so much to give Kareem the protection of a large extended clan, and it had always hurt that she hadn’t been able to give him all of Paul’s family too.
Plus, Jackson had never only been her husband’s brother. He’d been her best friend too. He should have loved Kareem on two fronts.
She had to remember that this wasn’t the same Jackson she’d grown up with. Sadia rubbed Kareem’s shoulder, ready to end this awkward meeting, but Jackson stopped her. “Hello,” he responded.
Jackson cleared his throat. His single greeting had been raspy and too rough, but he didn’t know how to be soft and sweet.
Baggage could be a tricky thing. It could be carried over, gifted, inherited. Jackson might have turned his heart off, but he’d never been able to completely bury the surge of emotions he felt when he thought about his brother. Especially the bitterness or the anger.
Jackson hadn’t wanted to meet Kareem, because he feared what he might feel. What would happen, if at first sight, Jackson discovered he loathed the child? What kind of monster would that make him?
He tiptoed around his own soul, his breathing coming faster when he realized there wasn’t a shred of malice lingering there.
Curiosity. Nostalgia. A spark of something that felt dangerously like . . . affection. Or maybe something stronger.
No cruelty, no desire to punish Paul’s son. Jackson’s hands shook in relief.
Jesus, this boy was beautiful. He took after Sadia, with her skin and eyes and the same chubby cheeks she’d had as a child, but there was something in the shape of his face, his smile, his chin that reminded Jackson of his brother. Of him.
He seemed tiny though. Were all children so small? How did they accomplish anything?
He took a knee in an instinctive effort to get on the same level as this mini-human. “You look bigger than when I saw you last.”
“When did you see me?”
“I—” he faltered, and didn’t look at Sadia. “I saw you in photos.” So many photos. Whenever he would see the little paper clip icon on any of Sadia’s emails he’d always rush to open the thing and scroll through to get to the attachments.
Kareem took a few steps toward him, so he was within reach. A lock of the boy’s hair was sticking straight up, and Jackson was hit with an urge to smooth it down, but he controlled it. He didn’t know the boy and didn’t want to startle him by touching him.
Kareem searched his face. “I saw pictures of you. Mom showed me. But you were little in them.”
Sadia had showed her son pictures of him? Ah. “I was little once.”
“Are you gonna live here now?”
“No, Kareem,” Sadia interjected. “Uncle Jackson is only visiting.”
I don’t expect you to stick around for me.
Kareem cocked his head, not taking his attention away from Jackson. He took another step closer. “Where do you live?”
“All over.” Everywhere and nowhere. He had no place to call his own. Hell, he couldn’t even claim a country.
He cast about for something innocuous to talk to the child about. He was, oddly enough, loathe to let this conversation end.
Motorcycles. The child had been talking about his when he bust in. “Do you like motorcycles?”
“Yeah. Can I ride yours?”
“No,” Sadia said firmly.
Kareem smiled at Jackson, revealing adorable baby teeth. “Maybe Uncle Jackson will say I can.”
Children were smart. “That’s probably not a good idea.” He felt like an immediate ogre when the boy looked crestfallen. “You could sit on it,” he offered, then glanced up at Sadia, wondering if he’d spoken out of turn. “If your mom is with you.”
She was watching them closely, a frown wrinkling her brow. After a beat, she nodded. “That would be okay.”
Kareem brightened. “And then we take a picture of me so I can show my friends.”
“Yes, it’ll make a great photo op,” his mother said dryly. Her phone beeped a reminder and like a Pavlovian response, she glanced at her watch. Sadia had always worn a watch when they were young, but he’d never remembered her looking at it quite this much. Then again, she did have a lot more to juggle now. “Okay, Kareem, come on. We have to get you ready for dinner.” She spoke to Jackson. “Family dinner at my parents’ house.”
Jackson swallowed all of his questions about Sadia and her parents, as well as the lurch in the stomach at the reminder of his own parent. He didn’t want to think about Tani. Not now. He nodded.
“Nooooo. I don’t wanna go.”
“We have to.” Sadia nudged her son and grabbed the vacuum. He almost offered to carry it, but something told him Sadia was used to juggling a number of things.
“I don’t wannnnnnaaaaa.”
Wow. Apparently, the kid was also good at stretching a two-syllable word into nineteen.
Sadia didn’t seem impressed. “Your cousins want to see you.”
She must have uttered some magic word in there, because Kareem brightened. “Oh, okay. See you later, Uncle Jackson.” The boy pivoted and ran out.
Jackson rose slowly to his feet. Sadia cocked her hip and it took a feat of strength for Jackson to keep his gaze on her face and not think about what her waist had felt like. Her butt had nestled perfectly in the cradle of his thighs, and there had been a small handful of flesh rising over her jeans waistband that had fit the cradle of his hand.
Yeah, he wouldn’t think about that.
“Is there anything you need before I leave?” she asked politely.
Perfect hostess. “No. I’m fine.”
“I didn’t think to have any food up here waiting for you, but if you want to use our kitchen, feel free.”
Oh god no, he couldn’t use her kitchen. If touching her waist and staying above her garage felt intimate, cooking at the stove in her house, for him, would be equivalent of seeing her naked.
He shook his head decisively. “I’ll figure something out for dinner.”
She hesitated, searching his face. “Text or call me if you have any questions on anything.”
Jackson nodded. He wouldn’t, but it probably made her feel better to say that.
She closed the door behind her and he sank onto the bed, linking his hands between his knees. He glanced around the tiny room. It was devoid of personality. He’d stayed in hundreds if not thousands of similar rooms over the years, some better, some worse. None of them had ever felt like home.
And neither does this. You’re here temporarily, and only because Sadia wou
ldn’t have been able to let you work for her for free.
He pulled his phone out of his pocket and pulled up his contacts. He scrolled through, pausing on Sadia’s name, then going back up to Livvy’s. His finger hovered over his sister’s name and the message icon.
Getting in touch with someone wasn’t as easy as pressing a button, though it should be.
He tossed the phone and rose to his feet. He would go back to the café and rearrange everything until it was exactly how he liked it in his kitchens, and then he’d play around with some recipes. He could hyperfocus and bury himself in the scent and touch and taste of food. Whenever he was in a new foreign place, the kitchen was his one constant, the place that universally accepted him and gave him a home. A place to help him deal with uncharted territory.
He rubbed his chest. Because while this town might be familiar, whatever he was feeling? That was definitely not.
Chapter 6
Sadia’s parents had always been eager to give their five daughters every advantage they could beg, borrow, buy, or steal for them, which had resulted in five overscheduled daughters. With Farzana having her own successful OB-GYN practice and Mohammad a professor at a medical school, the elder Ahmeds had been overscheduled too. That was why they’d insisted the family come together at least once a week for a meal. The dinners were generally formal affairs in the big dining room, the grandkids eating on a sheet spread out in the living room. Since everyone save Sadia was in the medical field—her older sisters’ husbands were both doctors as well—most of the talk was dominated by science stuff that went right over Sadia’s head.
Sadia preferred the moments after the meal, when she and her sisters cleaned up while the four grandchildren played with their grandparents.
She plunged her hands into the soapy water at the sink, letting the feminine voices rise and fall around her. Inch by inch, she could feel the stress of her life melting away as she scrubbed the pots and pans. She could forget her business debts, the things she had to do for work tomorrow, her mixed emotions for her ex-brother-in-law/chef/former best friend. Not for long, but for now.
In the early years of her marriage, Sadia had missed these dinners. She’d been too stubborn to attend without her husband.
She’d known they wouldn’t be thrilled when she and Paul had eloped, barely two months after Robert Kane had died, but she hadn’t expected her parents to react as violently as they had. Her father had stood quietly, frowning in the corner of his massive study while her mother had sobbed on the couch. Sobbed until she started screaming at Sadia, swearing that she wasn’t about to keep paying for her college education when she’d gone and done this foolish thing, throwing her life away for some boy.
Sadia had gone twenty years toeing the line with her parents, desperately trying to excel at the things that came so easily to her sisters, but she’d snapped in that moment. Secretly, she was relieved at the idea of no more school—she wasn’t good at it anyway. She’d told her parents they could either accept her husband or not, and then stormed off.
For four years, she’d only had strained contact with her parents, though she’d still seen her sisters, at least. Jia and Ayesha had cooked up schemes to stage a reconciliation, while Noor shook her head and her second-oldest sister Zara offered to refer them all to family therapy. Nothing had worked until Kareem had been born.
Sadia had held him in her arms in the hospital, and called her mother and cried. Her stoic, stubborn mother had wept too, and Farzana and Mohammad had been at the hospital that day.
Her parents, for all their faults, adored their grandchildren, and Kareem was no exception. He was doted on as much as Noor and Zara’s children.
Some people might call her parents snobs or elitists, and maybe Sadia would have done the same ten years ago, but with age came wisdom, and she could afford to be more charitable. Her parents simply had very definite ideas of what success looked like for their children and Sadia struggling to make ends meet wasn’t in that picture.
Sadia had shown up to dinner with her newborn the week after his birth, and she’d considered herself blessed to be able to reconnect with her family. Paul had been happy she was happy, but he’d refused to come, and her parents had never demanded it. Sadia figured they were a little relieved he didn’t come around to increase the tension and serve as a reminder of their estrangement. It had smarted, especially when her sister’s husbands were welcomed so warmly, but she hadn’t known how to force either of them to bridge their differences.
Kareem’s giggle floated through to the kitchen, and Sadia smiled reflexively. It was the best sound.
“I’m thinking of opening a second practice,” Zara announced, and accepted the plate Sadia handed her to dry. Sadia’s second-oldest sister was a psychiatrist with an athlete’s body, glowing skin and shiny hair. Her husband, Al, was similarly glamorous, tall and fit, an Ethiopian immigrant who had charmed everyone the second Zara had brought him home from medical school. He was on call at the hospital tonight, which was a shame. Everyone adored Al.
Noor tapped her fingernails on the counter and flipped through the magazine that someone had left on the island. At thirty-seven, Noor was the undisputed matriarch in training. She was firm and no-nonsense to the point of painful bluntness. Sadia could only aspire to be as practical as Noor was.
Her husband was an incredibly sweet pediatrician who didn’t speak much. Rohan was probably sitting with their father in the living room, a faraway look in his eyes. He was often distracted by something happening in his too-brilliant brain. “Have you had an accountant look over your finances?” Noor asked. “You don’t want to rush this.”
“The practice is doing so well,” Zara said. “I want to capture the rest of the territory before someone else comes in.”
Noor nodded. “You could do a small second practice, and funnel the larger cases to your other practice.”
“Yes, that was my plan.”
Sadia continued scrubbing the pots. She often had nothing to contribute to discussions like these, but they seemed less exclusionary in the kitchen than they did in the dining room.
“Mama, look at my nails!”
Zara glanced over at where her only daughter sat at the breakfast table and beamed at the girl’s tiny blue-green tipped fingernails. Jia was bent over the girl’s other hand. “So pretty, Amal.”
“They’re mermaids,” four-year-old Amal said seriously. She’d gotten her tight curls from her father, but otherwise, she looked just like any of the five sisters had at that age. As the only granddaughter, Amal was the recipient of much pampering.
“Mermaid tips,” Jia corrected her. She winked at Zara. “I’m trying out a new breathable nail polish this company sent me. Amal was nice enough to volunteer.”
“She’ll volunteer all day.” Zara turned back to drying the dishes. “Maybe I can bribe her to eat with nail polish,” she murmured, her voice lowered.
“It’s a phase. Don’t worry so much.” Sadia rinsed off a glass. “Kareem is so picky, but he breaks down when he’s hungry. He whines, but he eats.”
Noor looked up. She was bespectacled and plump like their mother, and with the recent gray hairs she’d acquired, was well on her way to looking like Farzana. “Noah and Jacob always eat everything, MashAllah.”
Zara smiled sweetly at Noor, though there was an edge to the expression. “Well, you never have any problems with your children, do you?”
Noor fluttered her eyelashes at her younger sister. There was barely eighteen months separating them, so they’d often been in direct competition with each other in a way Sadia had not. “Not really, no.”
Ayesha grabbed the stack of dried dishes to put away, conveniently getting in between the two eldest before a painfully polite fight broke out. “Hey, we should talk about the finishing touches for Mom and Dad’s anniversary party, yeah?”
Sadia handed the last plate to Zara, drained the water in the sink, and dried her hands. “We should. We need to finalize everythin
g.” The party was in only a couple of weeks. Sadia had taken the lead in organizing everything, because well . . . organization was one of the few things she did excel at.
She grabbed her planner from her bag, sat on one of the stools at the bar, and ignored her sisters’ groans. “Things go smoother when we write them down,” she said firmly. “You know that.”
“Are we talking about the party?” Farzana hustled into the kitchen and beamed at them. She was small and round, shorter than all her daughters.
“I thought this was supposed to be a surprise party.” Jia didn’t look up from where she was putting the final touches on Amal’s nails.
Farzana waved that away. “The details will all be a surprise for us. But I did want you to add someone to the guest list.”
Sadia waited, her pen poised on the paper.
“There’s a new resident in the group. From Egypt. He’s handsome. And single.”
Uh-oh. “That’s nice,” Sadia said slowly.
“I think you should meet him,” her mother finished gently. Gently and firmly.
Oh shit. She’d known this was going to happen soon. Her parents had started to hint about a month ago that she ought to go out and date, but she’d managed to brush it off so far. She put down her pen. “Why?”
“It’s time for you to find a nice boy. Kareem could do with having a father figure in his life.”
“He has many father figures. I’m not interested in meeting any men or women right now,” she responded. Just as firmly.
Her mother ignored the part about women. Sadia had always been open about her sexuality, and her mom had been just as open about ignoring it. It might have bugged Sadia, except she was far too used to accepting the things she couldn’t change. Especially when it came to her parents.
“You might change your mind once you meet him,” Farzana exclaimed.
“I won’t.” Her family had no idea what her emotional state was right now. How could they? She could barely wrap her mind around it. “I’m too busy now anyway,” she added, trying to find an excuse her family would accept.
