hair falling forward, tears crowding thickly in her throat.
She hurt. She hurt so much, felt the misery and pain threaten to drown her in a tide of feeling, and she didn’t want it.
After all this time, after all she’d already experienced, it was happening again—she was hurting again—and there was nothing she could do to stop it.
It wasn’t fair, it wasn’t right; she’d been trying to protect her heart, to keep this from happening.
And yet it had. She was still, would always be, the little girl with her nose pressed against the window, waiting, hoping…
A helpless cry emerged from her, an animal sound of pain, and her arms stole around her body. She rocked silently for a minute, shaking with the effort of holding back the tears.
They came anyway, or started to, until the realisation of her own powerlessness—and of Khaled’s power over her—caused rage to replace the sorrow and hurt.
And then she heard the sound of a key turning in the door, and footsteps in the foyer.
Lucy rose from the bed, the anger and hurt propelling her across the room, her hands clenched into fists at her sides. She stopped in the doorway and stared in disbelief at a weary, rumpled Khaled. He dropped the keys on the hall table and looked up.
The rage took over.
‘So, you decided to come back.’ She shook with the force of the emotion coursing through her; her voice trembled. ‘Did you forget something?’ She glanced around the room, saw a discarded newspaper and picked it up. ‘This, perhaps?’ She threw it at him, and watched in satisfaction as it hit him hard in the chest.
Khaled caught the paper, clenching it in one fist. His eyebrows drew together in a frown. ‘Lucy…?’
‘Where are you going?’ she demanded, hearing the furious screech of her voice and not caring. ‘Running back to Biryal? Or somewhere else? God knows, it only took you a few weeks!’ She felt the tears start and didn’t bother blinking them back. ‘I knew you’d leave me, Khaled. I told you I couldn’t trust you, and I was right. Did playing happy families get old for you? Did we start to bore you?’ Khaled’s face was blank, wiped of all expression except for a coldness in his eyes that enraged her all the more. ‘Did we?’ she demanded, her voice breaking, and she could barely see him through the haze of tears.
‘I suppose it seems obvious to you,’ Khaled said coolly. He crossed the room, shrugging out of his jacket, his back to her, tense and powerful. ‘As everything always does.’
‘An empty cupboard and no note does seem rather obvious,’ Lucy replied scornfully.
Khaled laughed, an abrupt, jagged sound. ‘Judged and condemned.’
‘How can I not?’ Lucy demanded, her voice hitching. ‘You’re not even denying it!’
‘Why should I?’ Khaled turned around, anger and something else in his eyes—despair, Lucy realised with numbing surprise. It was in his voice too; she heard its broken edge, felt it. ‘Perhaps I should,’ he continued with a hard shrug, ‘But I can’t. I can’t live my life justifying myself to you, Lucy. Proving to you what kind of man I am.’
‘I don’t know what kind of man you are!’ Lucy’s voice felt raw, as if it scraped her throat. She pressed her fists to her eyes and they came away wet.
‘And that’s the problem, isn’t it? How can we live together, love together, when you don’t trust me?’
‘Love?’ Lucy repeated, the word filled with disbelief, yet still edged with hope.
‘Yes.’ Khaled stood in front of her, his arms held loosely at his sides, his shoulders thrown back proudly. There was honesty on his face, bleak and true. ‘I love you, Lucy. Don’t you know that? I’ve always loved you. I hid from it, denied it, to protect myself. I told myself I was protecting you; I didn’t want you to be saddled with a cripple—’
‘You’re not a cripple.’
‘No, but I’d let my whole identity—my entire being—be defined by rugby. By my popularity and status.’ His mouth twisted in sardonic self-acknowledgement. ‘I had nothing before that, you see. When it was taken away, I felt I had nothing once again. Was nothing…and could be nothing to you.’
‘Khaled…’
‘I’m not the man you fell in love with four years ago,’ Khaled told her starkly. ‘I’ve changed. I suppose I was trying to show you I hadn’t changed in Dubai, and at that wretched party, but the fact is I’m not the sports star or the playboy any more. I can’t be that man.’
‘I don’t want you to be that man,’ Lucy whispered. ‘I never did.’
‘Don’t you?’ Khaled smiled bleakly. ‘You say you don’t, perhaps, but you don’t love me now, and you loved me then, even if you deny it. I know you did.’
He spoke so starkly, accepting the statement as truth, that Lucy felt sorrow and shame roil within her. ‘I did love you then,’ she admitted in a whisper. ‘But…’
‘You are afraid I’ll let you down,’ Khaled stated matter of factly. ‘You can’t trust me. I see this, Lucy. I feel it every day, every time you look at me, speak to me. The only time I don’t is when you touch me, and even then—’
‘No, don’t.’ She blinked back more tears; she felt like a leaky tap. ‘Don’t, Khaled.’
‘But it is the truth, is it not? I know what fear feels like, Lucy. I’ve been afraid too. When I was told of my diagnosis, I felt fear crawl straight inside me. I didn’t know what kind of man I was, what kind of man I could be without rugby and all of its trappings. I didn’t know if there would be anything left for you or anyone to love. There never was before.’
‘You mean your father,’ Lucy whispered, her heart aching, and Khaled shrugged.
‘He had no use for me, it is true. He never has.’ His eyes met hers, burning with intensity, with honesty. ‘Then I was afraid of the future, of what it could hold for me—could there be anything good? Yet when you came back into my life I began to hope, and hope is dangerous. The more you feel it, the more you want it.’
‘I know,’ Lucy admitted, her voice raw.
‘Yet, every time I began to hope, it was dashed again. You didn’t love me, you were so determined to tell me—not the man I’ve become.’
‘But that is the man I love,’ Lucy cried. ‘More than who you were before, Khaled. You are strong, and good, and honest—’ Her voice cracked, and then broke. ‘I was afraid you hadn’t changed.’
Khaled laughed, a sound holding no humour, only sorrow. ‘I’m afraid that I’ve changed too much, and you are afraid that I have not changed enough. So much fear.’
‘There’s no fear in love,’ Lucy whispered and he smiled sadly.
‘No. Perhaps not.’
‘Khaled…’ She took a breath, felt it fill her lungs. ‘Where were you? Where were you going?’
