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“I took the easy path. It shames me to admit it. To face the truth was too confronting. That my brother lied to me. I wanted us to be a happy family. A family that got on. I didn’t want to be like my father – triangulating us, pitting us against each other. Brothers at war.“
“I’m sorry, Anwar. It must have been difficult.”
It was easy to see the discomfort on her face with the unhappiness of the memory, not just of his conflict with his family and yearning for love, but her painful past.
“What did any of it matter now? What was done was done. There’s no need to go over it,” Lucy said. “I should have let it go.”
Despite everything he had done to her, she was so compassionate. So kind.So loveable.
“It’s me who should be apologizing. You have nothing to be sorry for,” he said, ignoring her desire to keep the peace. He kept his eyes locked on hers. “I always knew if anyone was fraudulent, it wasn’t you. It’s just?—”
He frowned, looked hard at nothing, and tried to be honest again. And the answer was sad and bruising. “What we had during those brief months we spent together were the happiest, most joyous days of my life.”
“Anwar,” she touched his arm. He looked at the graceful hand resting on his sleeve and then recoiled as his gaze traveled to her delicate fingers.
Their marriage had been purely contractual. The only thing binding them to each other was a sheet of stiff paper and the flourish of an ink pen. He hadn’t even brought her an engagement ring. He was a brute, undeserving of her forgiveness.
“You can forget many things, but can you forget love?”
“Don’t,” she whispered, pulling her hand away.
He’d be dammed if he’d back off. Suddenly, his entire miserable failure to love and be loved was slapped in his face.
“I’m sorry, Lucy.” Those words didn’t capture the depths of his remorse. Those words he knew she longed to hear slipped from his lips in a river of need and longing. “That night, that unforgettable night, we made love?—”
“Sex, it was just sex,” Lucy said.
“I was your first.”
Her eyes were bright with anger and tears.
“Yes, you were my first,” she whispered, refusing to meet his gaze.
“You were my first, too.”
Her eyes flew wide.
“There had been others, of course,” Anwar said.
She trembled, infuriating him and shaming him. He was hurting her. Hadn’t that been why it was easier to settle for Hamad’s version of the truth
The panic came first, a chokehold that snagged air from his throat. I was afraid—afraid of what it meant. You were the first to climb into my heart and settle there.”
“So you killed everything.”
She was angry. She was right to be angry.
“I thought it was better to end things then. Better, when whatever we felt had just begun. . .” he struggled to find the right words, to make rational sense of the emotions that overtook him then as they were now. “I thought it was inevitable that it would end. And you were in real danger. I stepped aside.”
She hugged her arms over her chest in a defensive move that sliced through his heart.
“I’m so sorry. Can you forgive me?”
When Lucy was in her room, and the lights were off, Anwar walked through the garden where he could watch her window. It wasn’t so much examining the choices he made that weighed upon him but the uncertain future that awaited. Hours later, he returned alone to his bed. And when he slept, he dreamed. He dreamed of the desert and the love they had made under the stars.
CHAPTERTWENTY-TWO
Days turned into weeks, and Lucy immersed herself in the world of art and beauty as she combined her passion for painting with sourcing jaw-droppingly stunning artworks forMaerid al’ahlam: The Gallery of Dreams.
