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She couldn’t imagine how he’d felt at the time. Sensing the powerful bond between his best friend and sister, having every reason to believe it would end in devastation and being forced to risk his one friendship to protect his one sister. It must have been terrible, knowing that either way he’d lose something irreplaceable.
Grimacing with remembered pain, Aram placed his forearms on the table, his gaze fixed on the past. “Outrage finally overpowered Shaheen’s mortification that I could think such dishonorable things of him. His bitterness escalated as my conviction faltered, then vanished in the face of his intense affront and hurt. But there was no taking back what I’d said or threatened. Then it was too late, anyway.
“Shaheen told me he’d save me the trouble of running to his father with my demands for him to cease and desist. He’d never come near Johara again. Or me. He carried out his pledge, cutting Johara and me off, effective immediately.”
/> It was clear the injury of those lost years had never fully healed. And though Shaheen and Johara were now happily married and Aram’s friendship with Shaheen had been restored, it seemed the gaping wound where his friend had been torn out had been only partially patched. Because there was no going back to the same closeness now that Shaheen’s life was so full of Johara and their daughter while Aram had found nothing to fill the void in his own life. Except work. And according to Johara, it was nowhere near enough.
“Just when I thought Shaheen’s alienation was the worst thing that could happen to me, Mother suddenly took Johara and left Zohayd. I watched our family being torn apart and was unable to stop it. Then I found myself left alone with a devastated father who kept withdrawing into himself in spite of all my efforts. I tried to grope for my best friend’s support, hoping he’d let me close again, but he only left Zohayd, too, dashing any hope for a reconciliation.”
So she had been totally wrong about him in this instance, too. It hadn’t been not caring that had caused that breach; it had been caring too much. And it had cost him way more than she’d ever imagined.
He went on. “With all my dreams of making a home for myself in Zohayd over, I wanted to leave and tried to persuade Father to leave with me, too, but I backed off when I realized his service to the king and kingdom was what kept him going. Knowing I couldn’t leave him, I resigned myself that I’d stay in Zohayd as long as he lived.”
It must have been agonizingly ironic to get what he wanted, that permanent stay in Zohayd, but for it to be more of an exile than a home.
As if he’d heard her thoughts, he released a slow, deep breath. “It was the ultimate irony. I was getting what I’d hoped for all my life—stability in one place, just without the roots or the family, to live there in an isolation that promised to become permanent.” Isolation. There was that word again. “Then, six years after everyone left Zohayd, I took a shot at forging that family I’d once dreamed of…and you now know what happened next.”
She nodded, her throat tight. “And you ended up being forced to leave.”
He sighed deeply again. “Yeah. So much happened after that. Too much. And I’ve never stayed in one place longer than a few months since. I hadn’t wanted to. Couldn’t bear to, even. Then three years ago, Shaheen and Johara ended up getting married. I was right about the nature of their involvement.” He smiled whimsically. “I just jumped the gun by twelve years.” Another deep sigh. “Then suddenly I had my friend back, Mother reconciled with Father and my whole family was put back together—just in Zohayd, where I could no longer be.”
Swallowing what felt like a rock, she wondered if he’d elaborate on the intervening years, the “too much” he’d said with such aversion. He didn’t.
He’d done what he’d set out to do, told her the story that explained his rift with Shaheen. Anything else would be for another day. If there would be one.
From the way her heart kept twisting, it wasn’t advisable to have one. Exposure to him when she’d despised him, thought him a monster, had been bad enough. Now that she saw him as not only human but even empathetic, further exposure could have catastrophic consequences. For her.
His eyes seemed to see her again, seeming to intensify in vividness as he smiled like never before. A heartfelt smile.
“Thank you.”
Her heart fired so hard it had her sitting forward in her chair. “Wh-what for?”
The gentleness turning his beauty from breathtaking to heartbreaking deepened. “You listened. And made no judgments. I think you even…sympathized.”
She struggled to stop the pins at the back of her eyes from dissolving in an admission of how moved she was. “I did. It was such a tragic and needless waste, all those years apart. For all of you.”
His inhalation was sharp. The exhalation that followed was slow, measured. “Yes. But they’re back together now.”
They. Not we.
He didn’t seem to consider he had his family and friend back. Worse, it seemed he didn’t consider himself part of the family anymore. And though his expression was now carefully neutral, she sensed he was…desolate over the belief. What he seemed to consider an unchangeable fact of his life now.
After that, as if by unspoken agreement, they spent the rest of their time in the Palm Court talking about a dozen things that weren’t about lost years or ruined life plans.
After the rain stopped, he took her out walking, and they must have covered all of Central Park before it was dark.
She didn’t even feel the distance, the exertion or the passage of time. She saw nothing, heard and smelled and felt nothing but him. His company was that engrossing, that gratifying. The one awful thing about spending time with him was that it would come to an end.
But it didn’t. When she’d thought their impromptu outing was over, he insisted she wasn’t going home until she was a full, exhausted mass unable to do anything but fall into bed. She hadn’t even thought of resisting his unilateral plans for the rest of the evening. This time out of time would end soon enough, and she wasn’t going to terminate it prematurely. She’d have plenty of time later to regret her decision not to.
Over dinner, their conversation took a turn for the funny, then the hilarious. On several occasions, his peals of goose-bump-raising laughter incited many openmouthed and swooning stares from besotted female patrons, while she was leveled with what’s-she-doing-with-that-god glares, not to mention the times the whole restaurant seemed to be turning around to see if there was a hyena dining with them.
When he drove her back to her apartment building, he parked two blocks away—just an excuse to have another walk.
As they walked in companionable silence, she felt the impulsive urge to hook her arm in his, lean on him through the wind. It wasn’t discretion that stopped her but the fact that he hadn’t attempted even a courteous touch so far.
At her building’s entrance, he turned to her with expectation blazing in those azure eyes. “So same time tomorrow?”
