But Asher flipped the lock. She felt Asher push her behind him before he swung open the door.
It was surreal, seeing her father’s, uncles’ and Zarif’s tense faces illuminated by the entryway lights.
“Baba, what are you doing here?” Laila asked in a strangled voice, peering around Asher’s wide shoulders. Her father’s gaze jumped from Laila to Rudy and Jimmy standing behind them. It landed on Asher. His jaw clenched tight.
“You ask me what I’m doing at this place in the middle of the night, when I thought my daughter was sleeping soundly in her bed?” her father asked bitterly. Laila cringed at the wild hurt she saw in his eyes. “I didn’t believe it was true, until this minute. Not even when Zarif woke me up and told me that he’d followed Zara to some bar, and the man she’d been with claimed that you’d been sneaking out at night, as well. Coming here.” He pointed aggressively at Asher. “To be with this one. But here I find you. Step aside,” he ordered Asher.
“Mr. Barek, if you could just calm down, this isn’t—”
But Baba stepped across the threshold aggressively, reaching around Asher for Laila. Asher moved to block him. Zarif lunged, grabbing Asher’s shirt and jerking him in the opposite direction of Laila. Asher slammed into the door frame and bounced off it. Laila’s dad’s hand closed around her upper arm.
“Baba—Asher . . . no!” She shouted the last because Zarif shoved Asher again, then stepped into him, blocking him from Laila. When Asher started to move toward Laila again, her cousin restrained him. Rudy stepped between them, pushing back on Zarif.
“Get off him,” Rudy seethed.
“Let’s go, Laila,” her father said, pulling on her arm and urging her through the opened door. Her uncle Reda reached for her. Both of them pulled her down the steps, one of them on each side. For a second, she couldn’t see what was happening behind her. She heard scuffling and cursing, and then the sound of a thump and a grunt of pain. She twisted her chin over her shoulder.
“Asher,” she screamed. She strained in her father’s and Reda’s grip, desperate to go back. Rudy held his hand over his eye and was wincing in pain. Asher’s face looked tight with anger and helplessness.
“Just go, Laila,” Asher yelled. “Just go with them, for now.”
“What do you mean, for now, you son of a bitch?” Zarif shouted. He grabbed Asher’s shirt and drew back his fist.
“No, Zarif,” her uncle Taha shouted.
“Zarif, don’t—”
“Laila, stop it,” her father said angrily, because she was straining in their hold now, trying to get back to Asher. It was like she was seeing the whole catastrophe in slow motion, like a dream she couldn’t wake up from. Zarif’s punch landed on Asher’s jaw. Asher’s chin swung around, but his feet remained planted firmly on the ground. He turned back slowly. Laila called his name in rising anguish, seeing the glint of fury in his eyes as he focused on Zarif. Zarif threw another punch, but this time, Asher grabbed her cousin’s fist, halting him in midair.
His other fist sank into Zarif’s abdomen.
“No,” she shouted hoarsely. Helplessness hit her in a drowning wave
. She caught the horrible, fleeting image of her uncle Taha bending over a slumped Zarif. Her cousin seemed too hurt or stunned to stand on his own.
Then her dad and Reda were hustling her toward the car. Even though it felt like she was flailing underwater, she strained to see over her shoulder. She thought she saw Jimmy and Rudy pulling Asher inside the house.
She fell more than sat in the dim backseat, and her father was coming down next to her.
“You shouldn’t have done that, Baba,” she exclaimed bitterly. “You shouldn’t have come here and hurt Asher. You don’t even know him!”
Her breath caught when she took in her father’s rigid profile. He sat very still. He looked like her father, whom she loved dearly, but bizarrely like a stranger too.
“He wasn’t the only one who has been hurt by this, Laila,” her father said without looking at her.
Her mouth snapped shut. It dawned on her with dread that he was right.
And the hurt was just beginning.
Chapter Seventeen
The next morning, the sun was overcast with dull gray clouds. Her father pulled his car into the turnabout in front of the beach house, braked and twisted his wrist in the ignition. For a moment, he and Laila just sat there with the silence billowing around them. She saw movement and turned to see one of the front doors opening. Asher stepped out onto the front steps. She’d called him a half hour ago and told him they were coming. He wore jeans, a button-down ivory shirt and a tense expression.
“I think I should go in with you,” her father said.
“I’ll be fine, Baba,” she said, her tone weary. Her throat hurt. Her eyes felt dry. It hurt even to blink.
There had been a lot of yelling—from both her parents and herself upon her return last night. There had been no rest for any of them. There’d been a lot of tears too, and then the tears had dried up. Then Mamma Sophia had fallen as she’d tried to get out of bed, and they’d had to take her to the emergency room. It had been a night straight out of a nightmare. Laila’s insides felt abraded . . . scraped raw.