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Chapter 32
Ana
Idrop to my knees in the grass as Asili reaches me, and he hurtles into my open arms.
“Asili, oh my god,” I gasp, tears already streaming down my face again. “You’re alright…”
“Ana,” he squeaks, and his arms clamp around my neck in a vice grip as he buries his face in my hair.
Footsteps crunch to a stop in the grass beside us. I can feel Vahadr crouching down, but I can’t yet seem to unscrunch my eyelids or lift my face from where it’s pressed down against a pointed ear.
“You said you wouldn’t leave me.” Asili’s voice is an octave higher than usual when he speaks, and it wavers through his own tears as his little arms tighten even further around me. “You said you’d never leave me on purpose. Y-you said!”
I feel like my heart is cracking right down the middle. “Oh, honey.”
“You t-told me to come here if we ever got separated and…and…” He lets out a few hiccupping sobs against my neck, and I run my hands up and down his back as I finally open my eyes. “And you’re here and you’re not allowed to go away again!” Then he pushes suddenly back from me, and he levels me with a very serious, very intense watery frown. “I f-forbid it, alright? You’re not allowed!”
I wipe his tears away with both my thumbs even as my own continue falling, and my eyes dart of their own accord back to Vahadr, whose silver brows are drawn together and up, as his eyes dart between the two of us. When I look back at Asili, I do my best to stop crying, although I don’t quite succeed.
“I’m sorry, Asili,” I whisper, shaking my head and wiping at his pale cheeks again as if that will somehow sooth us all. “I’m sorry I left the way I did. It was wrong. Can you forgive me?”
He shudders in a quick breath, and then throws himself against me once more. “Yes,” he says in a tiny voice. “But don’t go.”
I squeeze him tight and my eyes can’t help being drawn back to Vahadr, who clears his throat and lifts his hand almost hesitantly to Asili’s back, looking somewhat lost.
“Asili,” he says, his normally smooth voice wavering.
“Papa.” Asili extracts himself from me and turns to face his father with crossed arms, a raised chin, and a still splotchy face. “I love you, but you’re in big trouble.”
Vahadr’s eyebrows raise even further, and he clears his throat a second time. “Am I?”
“Yes,” Asili huffs. “I heard you talking to Uncle Kyrin. I know that you got mad at Ana and told her to go, and if you don’t apologize to her right now, I’m not going to love you anymore for a whole week.”
Vahadr opens his mouth, but then he looks down with a small shake of his head. “Is that so?”
“Yes,it’s so! I mean it! Ana’s my best friend, and if you’re mean to her, then—then you’re going to suffer the consequences!”
I curl my fingers into the thick material of my pants as I kneel in the cold, wet grass. A few fat raindrops begin to patter down around us, and for a moment nobody speaks. I wonder if maybe Asili is the most mature one out of the three of us.
“I’m sorry,” I finally manage to choke out, and Vahadr’s eyes dart instantly back to meet mine, surprised and with a flash of something else I’m not quite sure how to interpret. “I’m so sorry.”
“No, silly,” Asili says gently, and he pats my cheek in a consoling sort of way. “I meant the other way around.”
But I shake my head, unable to tear my gaze from Vahadr’s electric blue, because I am sorry, god damn it! Sorry that I didn’t just open my dumb mouth and talk while I could have, sorry that I let my own inhibitions make a mountain out of a molehill and I just…
A few more raindrops splat onto us, and Vahadr finally lifts his gaze from mine and looks skyward. “Perhaps we should head to the carrier.”
“Papa!” Asili stomps his foot and levels his father with a glare, and Vahadr smiles and touches his cheek.
Then, very slowly, he draws Asili forward into his arms, and the way his brows draw together again with such intense relief as he rests his chin over the top of his son’s head, it makes me want to look away, like I’m interrupting something private.
He stands then, with Asili still wrapped tightly in his embrace and grumbling, and walks away.
I’m left kneeling on the ground on my own, overcome with a sudden, deep chill that has nothing to do with the way the raindrops are turning into a steady drizzle around me.
I look down at my lap for a long, long moment.
So maybe Vahadr has made his mind up about me, and there’s nothing I can do about that, but he’s not the only thing I want—and I hate the way my heart stutters painfully at that thought because I do still want him, damn it, I want him so much.
