Still, the thought of living in a Dahaar that didn’t have him in it was a reality she had never imagined. “Ayaan won’t just let you wander back into the desert. It seems more feasible that Ayaan, King Malik and Queen Fatima will—” he grimaced at the mention of his mother, and she willed herself to continue “—will let you leave if you show an interest in one of the worldwide business ventures that Dahaar invests in.
“You cannot cut them out of your life completely, Azeez. Nor are you capable of wiling away your life doing nothing. That, of all the things in the world, will kill you.”
He didn’t question her assumption. “I can try.”
She didn’t qualify that with a response. “I asked Ayaan a few questions, pretty much lied and said it would give me something to talk about with you.”
“I’ve forgotten how meticulous you are when you set your mind to something.”
“Your options are the investment house in New York, the race course in Abu Dhabi and, of course, your all-time favorite, Monaco.” The last words stuck in her throat like thorns, refusing to come out.
She had developed the most violent and irrational hatred toward that place every time she had looked at the paper and read about his exploits in the year before the terrorist attack. His words that first morning had only intensified it.
A challenge glimmered in his eyes. “Is there something you would like to say, Nikhat?”
The question simmered in the air between them, like an explosive in the middle of a peaceful desert. And the slightest hint of demand from her could detonate it and crumble her carefully constructed life.
She shook her head, clinging to ignorant sanity.
Walking by his side, she adjusted her stride to match his slow one.
“I saw that—” she breathed in a deep gulp as his forearm grazed hers “—I noticed that you’re not completely out of shape, but you’re also obviously in pain.”
He laughed, but there was no real joy in the sound. “Don’t tell Ayaan. When he captured me in the desert, he knocked me off my feet and I landed on my bad hip violently. Fighting him cost me—”
“And yet you did it.”
He continued as though she hadn’t interrupted him. “Also, the longer—”
“The longer you sit around, drinking and throwing bottles at imaginary figures, the worse the pain gets.”
“Yes. But it was too much fun, Nikhat.”
She shook her head, even as a smile rose to her lips. That roguishness—it was incredible to see that still inside him. “I figure the logical step is to get you to move as much as possible every day. I inquired about a hydro-pool, but the hammam should do quite well for our purposes. The steam will loosen the hip joint before we do a little exercise every day. Do you know who I can contact about requesting some medical records about your bullet wound?”
“There are none.”
Her mental gears checked through the list of things she had to do so rapidly that it took her a few seconds to understand. “But then who—”
“Once they realized I would be of no more use to them, the terrorist group left me in the desert to die and moved on with Ayaan, as far as I can figure. He was still valuable to them.” His voice was so low, so weighed down with whatever he felt, that it raised goose bumps on her skin. “I had already lost a lot of blood. The Mijab found me, and patched up my hip the best they could. Luckily for me, I was unconscious for most of it.”
Shock removed the filter from her words. “But the Mijab are not even the most advanced tribe. It’s a miracle you’re still standing.”
Instant regret raked through her.
Because it wasn’t a miracle. She had never believed in them.
Even having gone through everything he had, even weighed down by the bitterest self-loathing he seemed to be under, Azeez Al Sharif was too much a force of life to just wither away and die. The fact that he was still standing was a testament to the man’s sheer willpower and nothing else.
“I like to think of it as my penance, rather.”
“Penance?”
“Death would have been—it still is—too easy a punishment.” His tone was matter-of-fact, as if there was no doubt about what he said. “Living my life is the harder one.”
Her throat felt raw, her entire body felt raw at the quiet resignation of his words, at the emptiness in them. “Why should you have to serve penance at all? Why didn’t you come back when you recovered a little?”
This was the thing that hurt and confused Ayaan the most. And her, too. The very fact that Azeez Al Sharif had chosen to stay away from Dahaar, his family, it shook the very foundations of every truth she knew.