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CHAPTER SEVEN
PUSHINGOPENTHEWINDOWS, Delphi took a step back from the punch of heat. It felt as if the air was on fire. She had woken late, and it had taken her a moment or two to orientate herself, then another longer moment to process everything that had happened in the hours following the party. Coming here to the mountains, fighting with Omar again, that twisted nightmare involving Khalid and her parents, and then, finally, talking to him about the miscarriage.
Raising an arm to shield her face, she breathed out shakily. It was a conversation she had never expected to have with him. Like so many other conversations in her life, she had let the weight of it carry it down to the depths of her mind. Only somehow, last night, it had come bubbling up to the surface.
Her face trembled in the sunlight. She hadn’t cried since those few terrible hours when she’d realised she was losing their baby—but then she wasn’t a crier. She never had been. She had learned early on that tears had no power to change the things you didn’t like.
But last night she had cried—sobbed, in fact, in Omar’s arms. For her parents. Her marriage. The baby she would never hold. For the failures of her life. For the failure she was.
Only after she had stopped crying things had changed.
The pain had still been there, but distant, softer, so that it no longer hurt to swallow or breathe—almost as if some of the jagged edges inside her had been rubbed smooth.
And it wasn’t just about her talking.
Omar had listened.
Instead of pushing her for answers, or boxing her in like before, he had given her space, let her set the pace. It had still been hard for her to get the words out, but for the first time in their relationship she hadn’t felt like an item on his agenda to be ticked off, or a challenge to be overcome and conquered.
He had treated her in a different way, and because he’d been different—quieter, less intense—things had taken a different path and she had finally managed to open up to him. Not just about the dates and the places. She had shared her feelings. And it had been painful and exhausting and terrifying to relive those hours, but somehow not to have done so would have been a worse option, and that was a first too.
And after all the talk and the tears she had slept deeply.
But not dreamlessly.
She glanced back into the room at the armchair. Last night, in her dreams, Omar had slept in that chair, his muscular body contorted into the velvet upholstery, her dress hugged tight in his arms. And when not keeping watch on her he had slipped into bed beside her, pulling her against him, their bodies blurring as her hands had splayed over his shoulders, his hands parting her thighs, his tongue dipping inside her with tortuous precision—
All dreams.
Only it was hard to remember that when she could almost feel of him holding her against him as if nothing had ever gone wrong between them. Feel them both moving as one, to touch, to kiss, to pull closer, kiss deeper. His mouth, her mouth, his hands, her fingers...all seeking the same goal with the same urgency.
And it didn’t matter that it was nonsense for it to have still been like that between them. In her dream she had felt him lose control, heard that sharp intake of breath when he’d tipped her into his lap against the hard ridge of his erection. And her body had responded instantly, instinctively. Softening and flowing towards him. The barriers she had created between them melting like winter ice in spring sunshine.
Only as much as it had felt right, it had been wrong. Because there had been loss and loneliness and sadness mixed in with the lust. Not that she had noticed or cared. She’d been racing towards the edge of the abyss...
It had been Omar who had pulled back from the brink—pulled them both back from the brink. She should be grateful for that. And part of her was.
She glanced down at the ‘wedding ring’ Omar had given her in the car on the way to the party.
Why, then, did she feel as if her heart was breaking all over again?
At some point while she’d slept her suitcase had been delivered to her room, and she dressed in the dress she had been wearing in Idaho and a pair of flat sandals. It felt strange, putting it back on.
She glanced down at the fluttering fabric as she left the bedroom. Was it really only three days since she’d been at that Fourth of July barbecue?
Now, that was the kind of simple yes/no question she could answer.
The other question—the one about her heart—required not just thought but a mental agility that was a stretch for her right now. She knew she had hurt Omar, and even though he had hurt her, by continually failing to put her first, she cared that he was hurt. And she knew he cared that she was hurt too.
‘You’re not alone, Delphi. I’m right here, and I’m not going anywhere.’
It would be so easy to believe Omar meant what he’d said, to let his words catch fire inside her. But she knew that it was the kind of thing people said in the moment before they had sex. The kind of thing estranged couples said before make-up sex.
Except they hadn’t had sex.
Her footsteps faltered. Was this the right way?
Arriving last night, it had been dark, and she had been too furious to take in her surroundings, but none of this felt familiar. She walked a little bit further and then stopped, pressing her hand against the wall to steady herself. There was a door only half open, but thanks to the beautiful, antique cot she could see she knew that she was looking at a nursery.
