Lauren stared at her phone for a full minute before she realized he’d hung up.
And then, she cried. Big, racking sobs that had David inquire outside the door, tears that burned her nose and eyes and throat, shook her body, and hurt her head.
This wouldn’t be the end of it, she knew. Not this argument between them or the last she saw of him. Not the last of the fire he’d made her walk through from the first minute.
Zafir wouldn’t give up on this child they’d created and that wasn’t a bad thing, she told herself, as if that could cleanse away the misery that sat like a boulder on her chest.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
LIFE, OF COURSE, didn’t come to a standstill, just because you got your heart broken, Lauren realized painfully over the next month. Twenty hours after Zafir had ended their call, a real estate agent had arrived with keys for her old apartment and a very betrayed-looking Ahmed after him.
“He banished me here, after berating me and four generations of my ancestors for losing sight of you, over the phone. For letting you leave. And now I’m to guard you here, in this crowded, noisy city. He should have just killed me,” he said, despair high in his voice.
Lauren, feeling emotional and lonely and heartsick for Zafir and anyone remotely related to him, threw her arms around him. Ahmed’s thin frame froze at first, and then slowly he patted her back awkwardly. The expression in his eyes, like deer caught in headlights, made Lauren laugh in the middle of tears.
“I’m sorry, Ahmed,” she’d said and he’d nodded, understanding in his gaze.
With Ahmed’s help, Lauren settled back into her apartment. When she’d asked him where His Royal Highness thought Ahmed was supposed to stay, he’d told her an apartment had been arranged for him, on the same floor of her building.
Before she could even make a list, a delivery service stood at her door, with milk and juice and fruits and steaming hot meals. Since refusing would mean talking to Zafir again, Lauren let herself be pushed.
With Zafir arranging her life to the smallest detail, even a continent away, she felt as if she was in limbo, waiting for some slick, high-powered law firm to start custody proceedings.
A month passed while she played with the idea of going back to work, yet didn’t, a month in which she hid from Alicia, because she couldn’t bear to tell her the truth and make it even more real, a month in which she heard not a word from Zafir.
Even Ahmed, who accompanied her on her long meandering walks through the parks and streets, and compared New York to Behraat incessantly, carefully veered away from anything related to Zafir.
And the more rational and in control of herself she became, the more Lauren went over every look, every word, every touch Zafir and she had shared. Faced her cowardice in running away without even waiting for him to return, forcing him to offer an explanation over the phone.
But he wouldn’t choose her over Behraat. Ever.
Did she want him to, she wondered as winter approached and the days grew shorter and she became less and less sure of herself.
Would that be the same man she had fallen in love with if he did?
Like a toll he had to pay for being loved by her? Was that what her love was—a transaction?
* * *
On another gloomy, chilly day, which made Lauren wish for the sweltering heat of Behraat, not that she would ever admit it to Ahmed, she returned from her evening walk when she saw the sleek, armored limousine idling at the curb in front of her building.
Her pulse racing, she shied her gaze away and made it to her apartment on the first floor. She had pulled a bottle of water from the refrigerator, panic swirling through her, when there was a knock.
Bracing herself, she opened the door.
The bottle fell from her fingers and hit the floor with a swishy sound.
Rashid Al Masood stood there, the corridor shrinking several sizes by his height. That sunken, unhealthy pallor was gone and she felt more than a little awe at his commanding presence, unbalanced and off-kilter at his golden gaze, so much like Zafir’s.
“May I come in?” he said in a papery voice and Lauren, too shocked still, signaled for him to come in. He held out his hand toward a shadow that materialized into a man, took a file from him and then stepped in.
Fear beat a tattoo in her chest as Lauren’s gaze fell on the papers.
Maybe he was here to ensure the termination of their marriage? Maybe he’d already found a new, better suited, bride for Zafir? Maybe...
Stop it, Lauren.
Zafir wouldn’t do it like this. He wouldn’t send a messenger, his father of all people, to end this between them. Not after everything they had shared.
But you’ve told him that all that didn’t matter. That it was all a lie. That the one small thing he hadn’t told her minimized everything else he’d shared with her, felt for her, showed her.