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“Yes.” Jeanne rests her hand on mine and leans a little closer, as if she’s going to tell me a secret I need to know. “You need to think about what you’re doing before you do something you’ll regret for the rest of your life. I owe it to you to make sure I tell you that.”
“It’s safer for her to—”
“No. Stop. When I say think, I mean think with your heart. Not details and all the reasons your mind will give you, so you lose her forever. I want you to think, Malik. I know I messed up and parts of you will never trust me again, but please, trust me with this.” She releases my arm, nods, and leaves.
I stand there, staring at the path she just left behind, her words circling my mind, filling every corner.
Think with my heart?
Gwen awoke it and gave me purpose.
Think with my heart…
What if I already know what my heart wants?
I never stopped wanting Gwen. I just wanted to do the right thing, but I feel more wrong than I’ve ever felt for being without her.
* * *
The next day, I’m trying to get my head to align with my heart.
I’m sitting on the boardwalk by the boat with my legs hanging in the water.
Zakh should be by any moment now with the dreaded divorce papers.
If I sign them like I planned to, I’ll be sticking to my guns and setting her free, but that selfish seed has taken root inside me again, and I’ve started thinking of ways around this.
When I hear footsteps, I look down the path and see Zakh approaching me. There’s a manilla envelope in his hand.
He lifts his chin to acknowledge me, and when he reaches, he sits on the ground, joining me.
“I thought you’d be in your office. Jeanne said you were out here,” he states.
“I was thinking.”
“Thinking? Did those thoughts have anything to do with this?” He holds up the envelope and gives it to me.
“Yeah.” I take it and pull the divorce decree. Just seeing those words with my name and Gwen’s twists my insides.
“Are you going to tell me what those thoughts were?” He hardens his gaze. “You kind of look like a man who’s about to sell his soul to the devil.”
“I think I already sold him my soul. This is so fucking hard, Zakh. It’s so damn hard. I feel like I’m about to fuck things up again, or more than I have.”
“Because you’re allowing fear to rule you. That will never feel right.”
“You saw what happened to her. You were there, and if you hadn’t been, fuck knows what would have happened. The whole damn thing happened because of me.”
“That is the sequence of events that transpired when things went wrong,” he points out. “You talk about putting her in danger, but you forget all the good things. You forgot she was in danger when you met her. If she didn’t know you, what the hell would she have done then?”
Only God knows what Conrad would have done to her because Gwen wouldn’t have been able to pay her debt. She wouldn’t have gone to the police either. If she had, Conrad is the kind of guy who would have killed someone she loved from the bars of his prison just to teach her a lesson.
I did help her, at a time when I didn’t have confirmation of who she was. But that doesn’t make things right.
“We live dangerous lives. Yes, she was in danger, but this isn’t her world. I can’t lose her again like that.”
“I’m not saying you’re completely wrong. I just think with all the things that can happen to us in life, you can’t base your decision on that alone.”
“Isn’t it enough?”
