‘You have no idea the trouble you will have caused for me!’ Layla roared. ‘My brother will be furious that I am with a man this late at night.’
‘Well, you should have thought of that,’ he said. ‘Did it never enter your head that I might be worried?’
It truly hadn’t, and her eyes told him the same—which only incensed him even further. ‘You, Layla, are the most selfish person I have ever met.’
‘Selfish?’ she shouted. ‘How dare you call me selfish? I bought you a snowglobe.’ She went to get it out of her bag, except Mikael was picking up his keys. ‘Where are you going?’
‘You’ve got a nerve to ask.’
‘Mikael…’
He didn’t answer. Instead he left, and she stood in the lovely suite alone.
She looked out to the dark sky and waited for him to come back.
And waited.
‘Where are you Mikael?’ she said to the streets below the hotel.
She loathed it. And she was starting to understand—because she wasn’t scared for him, she just missed him, and she didn’t like the row that had taken place. She was cross, too, for him texting Zahid—and yet she was starting to glimpse why he had.
Mikael was angry for about another twelve minutes and then he pulled his car over and sat on the edge of the road. The fear that had clutched him all day didn’t come close to the fear he felt as he looked at the clock on his dashboard and saw the time and the date: it dawned on him they were at the halfway mark before Layla returned to her family.
He sat there for a long time, because it took a very long time for him to process it. He had never known love nor loved anyone before.
He had cared for others—sometimes a little, sometimes a lot—but he had never actually known love, and now here it was.
He didn’t want to get closer to her—there was no point, because very soon she would be gone.
When she called he didn’t pounce; he did not want to feel the way he did. But he answered his phone on the third ring.
‘I know it is wrong to call you so late…’
Layla gulped and he closed his eyes, for he did not want to be moved by her distress, and yet his heart twisted as she continued.
‘But it is an emergency of my heart, Mikael. I can’t stop crying.’
CHAPTER ELEVEN
SUNRISE FOUND MIKAEL back in her bed, but wearing only hipsters this time, with Layla asleep by his side. He inhaled the traces of bergamot in her hair—it was fading.
Nothing had happened last night. Layla had been crying too much and it had taken for ever for her to go to sleep.
He didn’t love her, Mikael decided in the warm light of morning. Instead, he told himself, it was as Layla herself had once said—he was attracted to her, perhaps a bit infatuated.
His world operated much more easily when it was devoid of love.
He picked up the snowglobe she had given him as she stirred awake beside him and watched snow fall for the first time on the Opera House.