AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Like men.”
She’d wondered about it, in her years since leaving Nazul. There hadn’t been a single man who’d turned her head in all the years since Cairo had offered her an orange. She’d been a girl then, and it was distant enough memory that she sometimes wondered if she’d imagined it.
“I like my work,” she said. “I like choosing. I like being free. I like cashmere sweatpants and evenings at home alone. I like ice cream and costume dramas and I really do not think I will make a good wife or a good sheikha.”
“You didn’t answer my question.”
“I gave you all the information you need.”
She could tell he wasn’t used to people talking to him like that. His jaw went stiff, his hands tightening on the arms of the chair he sat in. Fine. He had already kidnapped her. He had already taken her memories, her best and sweetest memories, of Nazul and turned them into something else.
She’d wept for him.
She’d loved him.
The boy.
Not the man he was now.
“Why do you need to know? You don’t care what I like. You don’t care what I want.”
“A good point.”
“Would my lack of interest in men keep you from marrying me off to your brother?”
“No. This is not about you. It’s about what Riyaz has asked for. What he feels is best for Nazul. You do not matter at all, apart from that which you symbolize.”
And like that, all the pity for him evaporated. “How dare you? How dare you speak to me like that, as if you can simply...”
“Oh, forgive me, Ariel, do you find it confronting that you have to live a life you didn’t choose? I’m not your audience.”
“Such a caustic tone is a bit basic, don’t you think?”
He arched a dark brow. “I am anything but basic,ya amar. And I think you know that.”
Ariel knew how to pretend to be fine. She knew how to pretend to be bored even when she was nervous. She had learned how to navigate the often harsh fashion industry, and that had been easy compared to recovering from what her father had done. To living with the knowledge that her freedom might have an expiration date on it. And well, Cairo was right about one thing. That information was not new. Not in the least. She had known that she would be married off to somebody from the time that she was a child. Then her father had committed that horrible act and she’d been worried the retribution would fall on her head. It was only in the small window of her life that she had allowed herself to imagine that her fate might not be fixed.
So yes. She knew how to pretend to be bored. She knew how to banter with people who actively wished her ill. She did not allow herself to be affected overly much by the opinions of others. Because she alone knew her own strength. She had to.
She would love to say that she had been close with her mother in the years since her father’s death. She’d wondered at the time if she might change when the structure of the family changed. But it was like the whole thing hadn’t been a release, more that it had dissolved everything.
His betrayal. His death.
They had never been able to be whole again after all of that.
And it was as if it was easier for her mother to go off and have her own life. They spoke on the phone. They texted. But Helene seemed much happier with distance between them, and Ariel didn’t see the point in fighting that. There were too many things to fight. And she had chosen in these years to focus on herself and her goals. Because...
Well. Because of things like this.
He was watching her. Far too closely.
“Do you think that you might be able to read my mind? And even if you could, would it matter?”
“One should always attempt to know as much is possible about the person they find themselves thirty thousand feet in the air with, don’t you think?”
“I don’t know what I think. In fact, I think I won’t know what I think for the duration. I would rather give you nothing.” And that was true. She wanted to hide all of her feelings. Her fears. Her desires. The strange, tangled up grief that she had felt for him for all these years.
She wanted to hide it all.
