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“Not a lie. I think, at the time, I don’t know. But Sarah? After last night, don’t you see? Everything’s changed for us. Everything.”
Her heart trembled in her chest. She stared across the room at him, and then she shook her head. “Nothing’s changed. You’re still the man who left me. Who deserted me…”
“And you’re still the woman who got pregnant to another man three seconds later,” he said darkly.
Tears swam on Sarah’s eyes. Lexi isn’t mine. The words were right there; how easy it would have been to tell him the truth. But why? Why give this man her confidence when he was so undeserving of it?
She jutted her chin defiantly. “Right. So we both have reasons to walk away this time.” She grabbed the dress up, and was midway through stepping into it when he stalked across the room and brought his mouth down on hers.
“No. Don’t go.”
She pulled away, a sob ripping out of her.
“I’m not ready for you to leave. Please.”
“So when you are ready, it’ll be time for you to go back to Kalastan? Leaving me here, again?”
He compressed his lips into a flat line of disapproval.
“This isn’t a relationship, Syed,” she said with stoic determination. “And we’re not a couple. There is no hope for us. No future. Why prolong the inevitable?”
He stared at her as though she’d started speaking Swahili. If she hadn’t known what he wanted from her, she would have actually believed he’d been blind-sided by her statements. But he’d been brutally honest with her, this time around.
He wanted sex.
One night of it.
And he’d got that.
“I’m glad we had last night,” she said honestly. “I don’t have to wonder any more.” And she walked around him, skirting the lounge and scooping up her bag with one hand.
“To wonder what?” He demanded, moving towards her.
“I don’t know.” She felt a sob in her throat and dug her nails into her palms. She wasn’t going to cry. “I wondered if you were really as great as I’d thought. I wondered if I’d fallen in love with a man or a lie. Now I know.”
“Nothing about us was a lie.”
She made a snort of derision. “Of course it was. Surely you see that?”
She spun on her heel, her stride long as she stalked stalked towards the door.
“Wait.” A single word that rang with authority.
And she did as he said. Perhaps it was his air of command, or a secret hope that he’d say something worth waiting for.
She spun slowly, her heart in her throat. Only to see him scrawling something on the kitchen bench.
He walked towards her with a slow purpose, his hand extending when he was near enough to touch her, paper folded in his grip. A phone number? His address in Kalastan? A way forward? A future?
She took it with a frown and unfurled it.
And sickness filled her.
“A cheque.”
“Take it,” he said thickly. If she wasn’t going to let him back into her life, he could at least make her life better.
Her eyes were watery as they dropped to read the amount. “Two hundred thousand dollars?”
