needles pushed behind her eyes. “It was only then that I realized the depth of your resemblance to her. And I decided I wouldn’t give either of you that last triumph over me. You wouldn’t see me humiliated and heartbroken, and she wouldn’t see me running off with my tail between my legs. Your mother raised you to use everyone in your power games—mine raised me to never relinquish equal ground.”
Time stretched after she’d said her last word.
It seemed an eternity later when he finally spoke. “So everything you said, every word that has been echoing in my mind ever since, was just you maintaining said equal ground.”
Her nod was terse. She was giving him validation in retrospect. Any denigrating thing she’d said had just been a desperate attempt to walk out of that battlefield in one piece.
She didn’t care. Let him have his triumph.
“What about the things you said before that day, Roxanne?”
He wanted more. A full admission. He might as well have it.
“That I loved you? I meant it, wholeheartedly.” She looked away, unable to bear the terrible loss mushrooming inside her all over again. “Not that I ever blamed you for that. You made it clear you had nothing to give me, were true to yourself, to your principles. As you pointed out the first night you came back, love isn’t something your species values or tolerates. If I was stupid enough to give it to you, it was unasked for, unwanted, and I had no right to complain when my heart was trodden on.”
Another heart-shredding moment of silence passed.
Then he whispered, “I didn’t initiate that bet, Roxanne.”
“I know. Jalal told me he did.”
He stiffened.
Of course. Jalal. The one thing sure to provoke a profound reaction in him. “Don’t tell me you forgot about it in minutes, too.”
Tension deflated out of him on a heavy exhalation. “I won’t tell you that. I can’t. I never forgot the bet.”
Was there no limit to the hurt this man could inflict on her?
She let out a choppy breath. “Thanks for not wasting either of our time on insincerities.”
Something bruised filled his eyes. “I remembered it constantly because I was jealous. Of Jalal. He was coming close to you in ways I was unable to. I didn’t know how to get you to talk to me, laugh with me as he did. All I had was your physical hunger. So I took all I could of it, aroused it as fiercely and frequently as I could, hoping it would be enough. It never was.”
She hadn’t expected him to bother explaining. She didn’t want him to explain. She’d long been resigned that she knew all the answers. She didn’t want him to threaten that security.
Before she could tell him to let the past lie in its grave, he went on. “At one of the functions you attended with your mother, where you avoided me per our agreement, you were so … at ease with Jalal. You both seemed so delighted with each other. And my mother—ya Ullah, my mother again—she commented on how much you had in common. My unease started to turn to dread then.” Her heart scrambled its rhythm, her eyes burning as he held them in a vise of bleakness. “One moment, I’d think it was my fault you couldn’t be that natural with me, the next I resented you for not granting me the same openness you gave Jalal. All the time I was seething with the need to bring it up. But what would I have said? I want you to like me not just love me? I need you to crave my company and companionship, outside of bed? What if all I managed was make you realize I didn’t appeal to you in any way but sexually?”
Her heart lurched to another level of agitation. She’d never suspected he could have felt anything like this …
“Then I found out you were faltering in your studies. The fact that I didn’t learn about it from you made me so … angry. I considered only what that meant to me, said about us, rather than how the problem itself impacted you.”
That’s more like it.
Her teeth ground together. “Another example of what made you the icon for self-absorbed sons of bitches everywhere.”
He continued to stare at her with that still, searing intensity. “Jalal believed it was due to my … disruptive influence. I didn’t know how to stop being disruptive without giving you up, or at least moving back to Zohayd and seeing you sporadically. I thought if he was right, you’d eventually come to the same conclusion. And if you did, you would be forced to make a choice between your progress and me. I feared it wouldn’t be me you’d choose. I knew it shouldn’t be. That’s why I kept putting off bringing it up.”
Everything froze inside her as if to stop the influx of new information that threatened to pulverize her long-held beliefs.
“It’s also why I remembered the damn bet every single second I was with you. Not because I was afraid of losing to Jalal. Because I was afraid of losing you.”
The stillness inside her trembled on the verge of shattering.
But wait—wait! Her view of him, of the past, was too well entrenched. It couldn’t be changed with a few words …
But were they only words? Or reality? She’d already conceded Haidar hadn’t been guilty of feeling nothing in Rashid’s case, but feeling too much to be able to show it.
Had he been the same with her?
What if this was his problem across the board? Not that he’d inherited his mother’s heartlessness and twisted, obsessive affection for the two people she considered extensions of herself, but only simulated it by his inability to expose his heart?
It would still make any involvement with him impossible, but it would rewrite his character, their whole history.
But … he was exposing his heart now, had been communicating with her, as she’d never thought he could. What if he’d matured into overcoming his emotional limitations?
As if reading her mind, he said, “Not that never sharing my fears or insecurities with you did any good. I lost you anyway.”
If this was the truth, then what she’d said to him, how she’d walked out on him, must have pulverized his pride, his heart. As she’d thought he’d done hers.
Could she— Dared she believe?
But what else could she do? There was no reason he’d have said any of that if it weren’t true.
Pain crashed over her.
God … what she’d cost them both.
Dejection receded, leaving his face blank. “I had it all planned from that first time I—pardon my presumption—claimed you. I intended us to be together while I worked to establish my success, while you did yours. The logistics of being in Azmahar when my base of operations was ideally Zohayd, of keeping our intimacies secret while being under the microscope of fame and notoriety, drove me to distraction. But I knew we needed to deepen our bond, protect it from intrusions, before we faced what the world would throw at us. With my mother, and your mother’s position, with my mixed bag of problems, I knew it would be a lot.”
