He saw now that love was not pain. Love was the very thing that kept a man rooted. No matter how fiercely he focused on his goal, if he felt nothing in his heart, there was no compass to guide him. No true north that would ensure his direction was true.
It was love that would see him making the compassionate choices. Love that would help him believe when everything was dark.
It was love that had helped him believe already when life was dark, even though he had been too blind to see it. The love of his parents.
Olivia had told him. She had told him that he was not what Malik had made him. Had insisted that he had been strong already, or he would have perished. She had been right. It was everything his parents had made him. Their strength. Their love.
Love was not the weakness. Love was the strength. Love was everything.
Olivia had shown him that, and he had told her to leave. He had been afraid. He had been holding on too tightly, but had no control. It was the fear. Fear of pain. That was what all of this had been. Him running. Him fleeing the kind of pain he had been subjected to in his past.
And now she was gone. Now was too late.
She was on a plane, back to Alansund.
She should run from him. She had been denied her entire life. Perhaps there was nothing more her parents could have done. Her sister had always been ill; she had said so. Whether or not they could have done better by her, they should have. Simply because she was Olivia. And she deserved the best of everything.
She most certainly deserved a man who wasn’t shattered inside. Most certainly deserved a man who chose to love her the first time she asked.
Not a man with scars both inside and out. Not a man who had wounded her, told her to leave. Not the man who could scarcely imagine coming after her because he had never been away from his country, never been on a plane.
She was his queen. The queen he wanted ruling beside him. The queen of his heart.
Her kiss had changed him back from stone. Had demolished the walls inside him.
She had given him a new goal. Love. And with it, facets to his existence. More than simple survival. More than breathing.
He had no idea what he brought to her. No idea what he had done to deserve the feelings she claimed to have for him.
But if she would have him, he would claim her.
It didn’t matter how impossible it seemed to leave. Didn’t matter how far he had to go to find her. He was more when he was with her. He was the ruler he needed to be. He was a man.
And that meant whatever it took, he would see it done.
* * *
Olivia had never felt such pain. This truly was losing a part of herself. A grief so strange, so open-ended, she didn’t know what to do with it. It wasn’t like losing someone to death. There was no reclaiming someone who was gone. But Tarek was still walking around on this earth, and she could not have him. Could not be with him.
She had never loved like this before, either. With all of herself. Unreservedly. She had made herself vulnerable, and she was paying for it. Yet again she was paying for demanding more.
But she wouldn’t go back, either.
She realized now that though it was Emily who’d been sick all of her life, Olivia had allowed herself to be crippled inside. To shut her emotions, her desires, away so she wouldn’t suffer more rejection.
But now she had.
And she felt more alive than ever. She had been so afraid of loving with all of herself. Because it would leave her vulnerable. Leave her exposed. Marcus’s loss had only seemed to confirm that. But as badly as it had hurt, she could only be thankful at the time that she hadn’t given him her whole heart. Because she’d been afraid long before that loss.
She hadn’t taken any medication for the flight back. She’d been too lost in her sadness over Tarek to feel any anxiety. More than that, she wasn’t afraid to show it if she did. That was half of why she’d taken the pills. Because she was more afraid of showing her fear than of not being able to cope with it.
She didn’t care now. She supposed that was one thing.
She felt battered, broken. But strong. Because she had endured now, hadn’t she? Had faced down her deepest fear, returned alone, back to this palace, useless. No place for her.
But she didn’t care. Didn’t care that she wasn’t useful. Didn’t care if she was underfoot. Didn’t care to make herself indispensable so that someone might deign to care that she was around.
She loved Tarek. No matter what he did. No matter what he said to her, no matter how useful he was.
Didn’t she deserve the same?
She felt she did.
Too bad most of her wanted to get back on a plane and beg Tarek to take her back, whether he ever loved her or not. There was a very large part of her that felt pride was overrated in this situation.
It isn’t about pride. Pride is nothing. It’s about wanting to live.
She knew what life was without love. She’d spent her entire life closed off to it. Desperately wanting it, and denying herself because she was so afraid that others would hold it back from her. Now that she had truly felt it, she didn’t want to go back. She couldn’t.
There was a sharp knock on her bedroom door, and she peeled herself off her bed, smoothing her hands over her hair. “Yes?”
“My queen.” She heard her lady’s maid Eloise on the other side of the door. “There is a man here to see you. He says...he says he’s your husband.”
Her heart stopped, everything in her freezing.
“That’s impossible,” she said.
That was when Tarek chose to stride into the room. It had been only two days since she’d seen him. But she felt very much—and she knew it was desperately corny—as if he was an oasis in the middle of her emotional desert. The first sight of water and shade she’d had in a long crawl across burning sand.
He was so tall, impossibly strong and broad. His face so beautiful. The sharp, defining angles, those lips that could be both soft and commanding depending on how he chose to wield them.
He was a powerful enemy to those who opposed him, wonderful with the sword, she was certain. But as far as she was concerned, his body and all that he could make her feel with it was his most powerful weapon.
“I did not tell you that you could come in yet,” Eloise said, clearly full of pique.
“I did not ask. I am the Sheikh of Tahar, and I am Sheikha Olivia al-Khalij’s husband. It is my right to see her. More than that, it is my due.”
Olivia shivered, her new title, her new last name, somehow erotic and intensely affecting on his lips. “It’s okay, Eloise. Leave us.”
Eloise
