“It’s been over a week.” Longer than that, but I didn’t want to press my luck.
“I’ve narrowed it down, yes,” she hissed. “But I still have a handful to go through and a full-time job. Call me back when you’re feeling rational.”
She hung up. I sighed, then made my way across the street, through the lobby and up to the fortieth floor. I wasn’t looking forward to telling Hazel about the collaring ceremony. I wasn’t sure how she would take it. But she had come a long way with me, so I was hopeful. In time, maybe she would come to accept Zaid for who he was. After all, her sister had changed him. Love did that to you.
On hearing the door click open, she popped up from the couch. “How was it?” she asked. I braced myself. She was strangely eager. She knew who I had met.
“Fine,” I said. Then I corrected myself. “Good.” Despite how Hazel felt about him, it was good to see Zaid. I couldn’t pretend like it was anything else. I told her not to lie; she should expect the same of me.
“You know they’re getting married?” I asked. Hazel rolled her eyes and looked off to the side. “It’s not a wedding, but a collaring ceremony. It should be interesting.”
I broached it like that, an easy way to gauge how she would take it. Hazel shuddered. Apparently, a collaring was not approved, in her eyes.
“I don’t understand how she can marry someone like him,” she said. She crossed her arms. “He tortured us, you know?”
“I was part of that.”
“But you’re different.”
It wasn’t true. Had Zaid ordered me to kill the people in those cells, I would have done it. I was loyal to Zaid. He had saved my mother’s life, and my own. But on top of that, I trusted his judgment. He declared that the prisoners were people who had murdered innocents, victims with families, victims with children. And if they deserved to die, then I would do what was right. Hazel knew that.
But Zaid had been wrong about Hazel. I had been wrong about her, too.
Hazel stood and came to me. “You’re not going to the wedding, are you?”
“Collaring ceremony,” I said.
“Whatever.”
I nodded, locking eyes with her. Those aquamarine eyes skimmed over me, searching for meaning.
“Yes, you’re not going, or yes, you are?” she asked.
“I’m going.”
Her nostrils flared. “Why?”
“Because Zaid is my friend.”
“I’m your friend too, aren’t I?”
A friend? What we had was more than friendship.
“You’re more than that,” I said.
“Then don’t go,” she said. Her voice trembled, and my heart ached hearing the desperation in her voice. “If I’m more than a friend, then don’t go.”
But it wasn’t that simple. “Zaid is like a father to me.”
“You said he was a friend. Not your father.”
I shrugged. “My mom is going.”
“Yourmomapproves of Zaid?”
“He saved our lives, Hazel.”
Utter disappointment filled her, making her shoulders sag, her eyes drop. Guilt rose inside of me, knowing thatthiswas why I should have never have gotten close to Hazel. The fact that my attendance at a collaring ceremony mattered to her so much that she was near tears, was unacceptable. I should have never allowed her to depend on me like that. It was one thing to help her get back on her feet, another to promise her she could work on a shelter of her own, and that I would be by her side the entire way. I regretted it. Saying I would be there.
