Her arms around her waist, she swayed where she stood, the pain in her eyes shredding him. But he had to hold fast for her sake.
“You have conquered so many obstacles, overcome so much for so long to become the man you are today, to become the prince that Dahaar needs. Can you not fight this last demon, Ayaan, for the woman who loves you with every breath in her body, with every—”
Ayaan placed a finger across her lips, but not before her words blasted through him with the force of an explosion. His stomach tightened, his throat seized up. Time seemed to have frozen at that minute. Looking into her beautiful, giving eyes, he wondered how he could have been so blind.
The love and acceptance there knuckled him in the gut.
She pulled his hand off her mouth, her slender shoulders trembling. “Truth, remember? The truth doesn’t change because we don’t want to hear it. I am in love with you. And whatever you face, we will fight—”
“I cannot fight it, Zohra. It is stronger than me.”
She pummeled his chest, her slender shoulders shaking with the force of her anger. “It is not that you cannot fight it, Ayaan. It is that you don’t want to fight it.”
“You think I want to forever be a man haunted by his past—”
“Yes, you do.” Her words echoed around them, bounced off the walls, ringing with her belief. “You have judged yourself, found yourself guilty and you accepted this as your punishment. Not once in the time I have known you have you railed against it, not once have you resented it. You resent the fact that you cannot beat it but not the why of it. You cannot take a chance on us because God forbid you find happiness while your siblings are dead, right?
“And if you cannot see that, if you want to live the rest of your life stifled under that guilt, then you are right. You are not capable of loving me, nor do you deserve my love.”
Ayaan stood there, unmoving, unblinking as Zohra wiped her tears and left his suite, left his life. The same way as she had entered it—shifting the very foundation of everything he stood on.
She was in love with him.
That incredibly amazing, wonderfully strong woman loved him. Even with his heart splintering inside him, Ayaan felt the high of her words in a dizzying whirl.
Of everything she had said, he knew one thing was for sure.
He was already in love with Zohra.
He was not surprised by the realization, or shocked. He simply, irrevocably, undeniably was. Maybe if he hadn’t fallen in love with her, they could have had a life together. A life free of any emotional complications, a life free of passion, a life dictated by duty and mutual respect.
But it was the life-altering, heartbreaking love that flowed in his veins for her that made him question everything he was and he was not, that wished he was a better man for her.
He sank to the sofa behind him, his shaking knees refusing to hold him up. The scent of her was etched into him, it surrounded him, intensifying the hollow ache in his gut. He had thought he had known the worst in his life. But he had been wrong.
Nothing could be worse than the aching void in his gut. He would never look into Zohra’s eyes, never see her laugh, never feel her touch again.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
THE DEAFENING QUIET of the desert snarled inside Ayaan’s mind, scratching its fingers up and down his spine. He forced himself to picture Zohra, laughing at him, challenging him, loving him. The fear didn’t recede but the thought of Zohra diluted it enough for him to not fall back into its pit.
He could have left this matter to his security team but something he couldn’t shake had lodged in his mind. Something about this man niggled at him.
It had taken Imran a month to unearth all the hidden sources of the recent terrorist intelligence and of course, it had been traced back to the same man who had fed them information the first two times.
Which meant he had intentionally covered his tracks. And Ayaan had instantly known something was wrong. It had taken his team another two weeks to find his whereabouts, two weeks of hell, in which Ayaan missed Zohra with an ache that had become a constant companion.
The whisper of harsh breathing, the sounds of footsteps, which he wouldn’t have heard on the gravel road except for the fact that the man’s stride was out of step, fell on his ears and Ayaan leaped from his crouching position behind the tent.
He couldn’t have taken a breath before a blow came at him, grazing his jaw. Shaking off the jolt of pain up his jaw, Ayaan returned a blow, and pushed the man to the ground. The man’s leg shot out from under him, and Ayaan tackled him to the ground, his heart leaping into his throat.
Moonlight flickered over features that were as familiar as his own. A deathly chill fell over Ayaan as he collapsed to the desert floor, his muscles quivering with shock.