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“Farrah was devastated,” Millie agreed. “But she was able to grieve,” Millie murmured. “She had support – Arthur and me, you and Aziz. Who supported you, Zafar? Who did you allow to comfort you?”
His hand lifted, curving her cheek. “Besides you?”
Her breath shuddered on the way in. “That was just one night, sex. That’s not the kind of support I mean.”
“It was what I needed.” He moved his thumb to her lip and though she knew she should stop him, she didn’t, couldn’t.
“You had so much pressure on you. Your political obligations, a need to support Farrah and Aziz,” she tilted her head a little, dislodging his thumb. His hand fell into the water, separate from her, and she ached to replace it. “Did you ever get the space you needed to properly grieve?”
“Grief finds you, whether you make space for it or not.” His lips tightened into an approximation of a smile, but it was unconvincing. Sympathy stretched through Millie, a sympathy she didn’t want to feel. Softening towards this man in any way would be the first brick in a path towards disaster. She turned away from him on the pretence of studying the night sky. The moon was high overhead, almost full, an orb of shimmering white against inky black.
“Have you told your mother yet?”
She shook her head.
“You must do it soon, habibi. This is not a secret you can keep indefinitely.”
“Don’t call me that,” she warned. “And I know. I will. It’s just —,”
She could feel his eyes on her, raking her face, trying to understand what she wasn’t saying. Millie turned to face him and her heart jolted painfully against her ribs. There was danger here, yet she didn’t look away. “After Jack, mum was so broken. I’m all she has. She’s going to be devastated.”
His eyes narrowed infinitesimally.
“I’m going to have to lie to her.”
“About what?”
“Us.” She cleared her throat. “I’m going to have to tell her that we’re madly in love. It’s the only way she’ll accept this. If she knew the truth, it would hurt her too much. She’d be devastated all over again, to think of me in a marriage like this.” She fixed her gaze back on the sky overhead, so missed the darkening of his expression, the tightening of his features as he digested her words. “I hate the idea of lying to her,” she said quietly. “But it’s for the best.”
He put a hand on her shoulder, drawing her attention back to his face. “I want you to be happy for as long as we’re married, Millie.”
“Why?”
“You’re the mother of my child,” he reminded her.
“Ah, of course. So now I have some intrinsic value to you. That makes sense.”
“Don’t.” He pressed a finger to her lips to underscore his point. “Don’t pick a fight with me for the sake of it.”
“That’s not what I’m doing,” she responded coolly, even as his finger on her lips shot little arrows of desire through her bloodstream. “But you’ve made it plainly obvious in the past that I’m replaceable. Only this baby has given me any temporary worth – a place in your life.”
“I would wish that place to be permanent,” he reminded her with eyes that focussed on her face intently.
She rebuffed that. “I don’t.”
“I never apologised to you,” he said, moving close enough for Millie to feel hypnotised by the depths of his eyes. “The way I treated you was…wrong. I had no intention of hurting you, but I was careless and selfish, and you were hurt, nonetheless. I have lived with guilt over that for many years.” His hand moved to her cheek, and beneath the water, his body pressed closer to hers.
“It’s fine. I was a child, making childish fantasies play out in my mind. I should be grateful to you – I needed a dose in reality. You gave it to me.”
“And how did I do that?”
“By showing me how little I meant. By telling me how wrong I was.”
“I did care about you, Amelia.” The words set off a cacophony of alarm bells, as her blood began to rush loudly in her ears. “You fascinated me and I wanted to spend every moment I could with you, but I always expected you would leave again. I wrung every ounce of pleasure from your trip because I was confident it was temporary. I didn’t think I needed to spell out how I felt about a future with you because I stupidly presumed we were both on the same page.”
“We weren’t,” she whispered. “From the first time we made love, I lost myself in the hopes of a future together. You were too much for me. I don’t know if that’s your fault though, or my own. I should have seen how one-sided everything was.”
He made a noise in the back of his throat. “You are mischaracterising what we shared. It was not one-sided. I enjoyed our time together very, very much.”
