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Where was she? America, certainly, but then what? Had she been kidnapped? Or hurt?
Fahir returned with a cell phone and Raffa snatched at it, dialing Chloe’s number. Odd that he remembered it by heart when he’d only called it a handful of times.
It rung out.
Gritting his teeth, he dialed once more, and this time, she answered.
“Chloe?” He spun around, turning his back on Fahir and prowling down the corridor to a space where he could speak privately. “Where are you?”
Silence. Anxiety overtook the surge of relief.
“I’ve thought a lot about this.” She sounded strange. Wooden. Yet somehow manic too. “Our marriage was a ridiculous idea.” Raffa felt as though he’d been punched, hard, in the gut, but he didn’t react. He stood like a statue, letting her words rain down on him, hard and abhorrent. “I thought there was some sense here, but there’s not. Everything’s too complicated.”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
She sighed heavily and it was such a familiar sound he could instantly picture her.
“We’re surrounded by love’s graveyard. Everywhere we look are the relics of other people’s broken hopes. Your parents, my parents, Elena, Goran. I can’t bring a child into the world knowing what kind of marriage we have, what kind of family it would be coming into. I’m sorry to disappoint you, but it’s better to reach this conclusion now rather than after,” her voice cracked, “conceiving a child.”
Raffa’s eyes filled with white, as though the sun had flared and filled him with the heat of its solar body. “You’re being absurd. We need to speak about this. Wherever you are, come back here. Come and tell me this face to face.”
“You need a fresh start, with someone new. Someone unconnected with your family, someone … else.”
“Chloe, I meant what I said. This is not a conversation to be had over the phone. I demand you return to the palace.” He swept his eyes shut, knowing he was saying all the wrong things. “Come back to me.” The last was a plea. A need from deep within his being.
“No.”
And then, fear was like ice in his veins, for he heard the strength in the word and knew she was slipping far away from him.
“You’re my wife.”
“No. I’m just the woman you married.”
Raffa hated her in that moment. No, he didn’t hate Chloe, he hated the words she was saying, he hated the way she was describing their marriage.
“Semantics,” he said darkly. “You are my wife, and for all I know, you have my child inside of you right now. Your place is here, in Ras el Kida…”
“I’m not pregnant.” The words were hollow, and he understood her grief then.
“Chloe, that’s fine,” he said, gruffly, wishing he’d had the foresight to discuss this with her before that moment. “So it’s taking a while to conceive. This doesn’t matter, habibte. You do not need to run away month after month. It will happen for us – and that baby will be the heir I need.”
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nbsp; Silence met his pronouncement, so he continued. “You’re upset, and I understand that. You expected we would conceive before now.” He swept his eyes shut, hating himself for being relieved when they hadn’t. Hating himself for being so selfish that he’d actually relished the prospect of another month of trying. “But it’s only been six months. Soon, Chloe, we will have success.”
Her sob was so faint he thought he’d imagined it, but no! He knew all her sounds, all her soft, gentle noises. “What is it?” He softened his own tone, taking a step closer to the window and pressing his forehead against it. “Have you changed your mind? You don’t want a child now? You’re not ready?” She was young. Too young for the responsibilities he’d thrust on her shoulders.
“It’s not…” her voice, God! It was tortured. He ached to pull her into his arms. Hearing her grief and knowing he couldn’t comfort her, it was his own form of agony. She seemed to shake herself, for when she spoke again, it was with more steel and resolution. “We’ll divorce swiftly; I want nothing from you except my freedom. That will leave you able to marry someone else and continue … with … begetting an heir,” she finished unevenly.
Raffa wanted to growl, he wanted to shout until the palace shook. He wanted to shake someone, something, punch a wall, anything! How could she possibly be thinking these things? Let alone saying them? “Do you think you are so easily replaced?”
Her sharp intake of breath was another torture. How desperate he was to hold her in his arms, to say all of the things he’d been thinking for months. To ask her the questions that had begun to fire inside of him, to stare at the stars with their timelessness and admit to the confusions that were tearing him apart.
“I think,” she said unevenly, “that you will replace me soon enough.”
Her words were like a whip lashing at the base of his spine. He blinked his eyes open, focusing on the vista below, but saw nothing of the day’s warmth.
“None of this makes sense.”
