He narrowed his eyes. “What are you talking about? I don’t dislike you.”
She closed her eyes. “It doesn’t matter how you feel, just be honest about it. And consistent. Please. It’s fine that you only want me a little, the way any man might respond to any available woman. Don’t pander to me and act like...”
“What?” he prompted, bracing because he was afraid that he might have betrayed too much somewhere along the line. Definitely when she’d taken him in her mouth.
“I don’t know,” she said with a break in her voice. “I don’t know how you feel. That’s the issue. Sometimes you act as though you like me, but then...you don’t.”
“Of course, I like you, Galila.” He swallowed, thinking he understood the issue here. In a gentler tone, he added, “But I told you in the beginning not to expect love from me.”
“I’m not talking about love, Karim! I’m talking about basic regard. You’ve barely spoken to me since the day in your office. You act like it didn’t even happen! Then you think saying a few nice things tonight—that I’m so beautiful you can’t stand to look at me—and think that makes me want to...” She waved at the bed, then her arm dropped in defeat.
His heart skewed in his chest. “That’s not the way I meant it, Galila.”
“The worst part is, I still want to have sex with you. But be honest about how it will be afterward. If you’re only going to ignore me until the next time an urge strikes, then don’t arrange rose petals and candles and act like you want me to feel something tonight. Don’t act like this is a special moment for either one of us. Not when you’re only going to pretend I don’t exist afterward.”
He pinched the bridge of his nose. This was special. It was her first time. Did she think he didn’t have some nerves about that? The responsibility to make it special?
“I wanted you to relax.”
“Well, I can’t.” She shook off whatever melancholy was in her expression and reached to remove her earrings. “Let’s just get it done so you can lock yourself back in your room.”
“Get it done?” he repeated as a sick knot tightened in his gut. “I want our lovemaking to be a pleasure for you, Galila. Not a chore.”
“I’m not like you! When we...do things, I feel it. Emotionally.” She pressed her curled hand between her breasts. “And you’re manipulating me with that. Maybe not on purpose. Maybe you don’t even realize how badly you’re knocking my feelings around, but you are. I can’t do that for a night, Karim, let alone a lifetime. I accept that this is an arranged marriage, not one based on love. But don’t act like you care and then prove that you don’t. I can’t bear that. Not again.”
If she had plunged a knife into his lung, she wouldn’t have winded him this badly. Her accusations were bad enough, but suddenly he was wondering if she had given her heart to another and been rejected. And if she had, why was he taking that far worse than he would have if she’d had other lovers physically?
“Who else did that to you?” He needed to know.
“It doesn’t matter,” she muttered, turning away to work bangles off her wrists.
“It’s affecting our marriage. Our relationship.” What the hell did he care about such things? She was handing him a free pass to make love to her and withhold any investment of deeper feelings. He ought to rejoice. Instead, he was aggrieved by the idea of her coming to their marriage bed withholding anything from him, especially the genuine excitement and delight she had seemed to take in their congress before.
Running a hand over his head, he demanded, “Who?”
She sighed and stayed silent a long time, while her jewelry went into a dish with soft clinks.
“In light of what we’ve learned about my mother recently,” she began in a subdued voice, “I understand better why she was so ambivalent with my brothers. Why she pushed them away. She had given away a child she wanted to keep. That has to break something in you. Maybe that’s even why she eventually pushed me away, but it wasn’t always like that. For years...”
Her shoulders slumped under an invisible weight.
“None of this really matters, Karim,” she said faintly.
His ardor was well and truly doused. Short of an invasion that required him to protect his country, he could not imagine anything more important to him than what she was telling him right now.
“Continue,” he commanded.
“It makes me sound very pathetic. As superficial as you think I am.” She kept her back to him and spoke to her feet. “When I was a child, I felt very special. It was obvious to me that I was the one Mother loved. Father worshipped her and she gave him nothing. The boys learned to live without affection from her, but she adored me. She brushed my hair and dressed me so we looked alike. She took me everywhere with her and was always so proud and happy when people said I was pretty and looked like her.”
“That makes you sound more like a pet than her child.”
“I was. A living doll, maybe. If only I had stayed that way.”
“What way? Young?”
“Preadolescent, yes. Once I started to become a woman, it stopped.”
“What did?”
“Her love.”
She clutched her elbows in clawlike fingers, manicured nails threatening to cut into the skin of her bare arms. He moved across to touch her, drawing her attention to it so she would stop hurting herself.
She gave a little shiver and flashed a distressed glance up to him, then stepped away, averting her face.
“How do you know she stopped loving you? What happened?”
“Instead of saying, You’re so beautiful, she would say, ‘Your perfume has soured.’ Instead of saying, I love how your smile is exactly like mine, she would say, ‘Your laugh is too high-pitched. That lipstick is not your color.’”
“Did you do something to anger her?”
“If I did, she never said outright what it was.” Her tone grew bitter.
“Then why do you think—? Ah. You told me before that she didn’t want to be called Grandmother,” he recalled.
“She said those exact words one time when my father was telling me over a family dinner that I ought to marry.”
“So she was jealous of your youth.”
“Maybe even that my life was ahead of me. I’ve been thinking about her all day today, thinking she would have died rather than attend my wedding. She hated it when I was the center of attention and would always say, ‘You’re acting like Malak.’ She really did hate him and wasn’t afraid to show it.”
Galila had never acknowledged that out loud, but it felt weirdly good to do so. Like lancing a wound so it could begin to heal.
“And now you have no opportunity to ask her about it. I do understand that frustration, you know.”
She sent him a helpless look, one palm coming up.
“You see? You’re doing it again. Making it seem like we have something in common, that you care what I might have been through. What happens in ten minutes, though? In an hour? In the morning? Will my feelings become inconsequential again?”
He looked away from her, uncomfortable as he viewed his behavior in a fresh light. He had been protecting himself—his whole country, he could argue—since Zyria had been impacted when his father threw his life away over a broken heart. But he hadn’t seen that in protecting himself, he had been injuring her.
“Is it me, Karim?” she asked in a voice thick with dread. “I had nearly convinced myself that my mother’s hurtful behavior was her own issue, but if you’re doing the same thing, then there must be a flaw in me.” Her voice cracked as she pointed at her breastbone. “Something that makes me impossible to love. What is it?”
* * *
Galila stood in a vice of agony while her husband stood unmoving, as a man made from marble. She didn’t even think he breathed. Was he trying to spare her? Because he was alleviating none of her fears with that stoic expression.
Finally, he blinked and muttered, “There’s nothing wrong with you. That’s absurd.”
“There you go. I’m absurd!” She felt exactly as she had in those first dark years when her mother had begun to pull away. “I know I’m a ridiculous person. My brothers told me all the time that I shouldn’t be so needy and want to feel loved. I know that with some people, like you, there’s no getting into their good graces, even when you once were loved by them. But I don’t understand how I lose it. Is it things that I say? Am I supposed to stand in silence and allow myself to be admired? But why would anyone want to look at me? I’m not beautiful enough. My neck is too long and I have my mother’s thighs. Is it because my nose is too pointy? Help me understand, Karim! I can’t fix it if I don’t know what the problem is.”
“There is no problem,” he said so firmly she could only take it as a knife in the heart because he clearly wasn’t going to tell her.
She threw up her hands in defeat. “Fine. Let’s just—” She waved at the bed, but tears came into her eyes. She didn’t know if she could go through with it. All she could do was stand there, crushed by anguish, fighting not to break down.