Tears fell onto her cheeks and Naima’s gaze met hers, shining with her own. Nodding and sometimes replying with a yes or no, Nikhat hugged her sisters, her heart incredibly tight in her chest.
Between Noor’s questions about her return, and Naima’s silent speculation, Nikhat turned around, hungry for a glance of Azeez. But he was already gone from the bridge and then she heard the squeal of tires. Wiping at her cheeks, Nikhat followed her sisters inside, her heart bursting to full with gratitude and something more that terrified the life out of her.
She wanted to crumple to the floor and howl. Because she was being tested again.
A rush of self-pity drenched her and for once she had no strength to fight it with. She didn’t want any reminders of his kindness, she didn’t want to remember how magnificently glorious it felt when his gaze was on her, of how effortlessly he could reduce her whole world to himself.
She had already begun to see flashes of the man he had once been and she couldn’t fight her attraction anymore. He was magnificent, he was kind and he was honorable.
How many times was she supposed to walk away without taking anything she wanted? How many times would she have to break her own heart into tiny little pieces?
She had trained herself to find satisfaction in her work and she did. She pushed herself every day to strive harder and to set new goals. She had made a life for herself. And yet, being in Dahaar brought out a loneliness she was too exhausted to see in New York. It settled deep into her bones.
And it was because of him.
She knew that. Despite every assurance she threw at herself that this time she was prepared, that she had walked away once, she still felt herself wavering, weakening and wishing for things that never could be.
CHAPTER EIGHT
REFUSING THE INVITATION to stay another night, Azeez turned just as one of his contacts stepped into the perimeter of the encampment and nodded at him.
He had visited two different camps in the last twenty-four hours across a hundred miles, trying to locate him. Glad that Nikhat wouldn’t be lonely and wondering about him, because she would had her sisters not been there, he took his leave from the chief of the Mijab.
The older man clasped both his hands, his gaze dancing with a million questions.
“You’ll always have a place with us,” he said in an older dialect of Arabic that the bedouins had used and that his father had insisted he learn. The chief had recognized Azeez within a week of finding him in the desert, and he would always be grateful to the older man for keeping his secret.
Azeez shook his head, knowing that now he couldn’t bear to live in the desert anymore. He thanked the chief for his hospitality for the past day and joined his contact.
His heart thumped loudly in his chest as he walked a mile off the beaten path where another man, a native of Zuran was waiting for him. Fierce satisfaction fueled him. The network of contacts he had built over the years was still intact, and something almost like a thrill chased his blood.
But this time it wasn’t just the fiercely alive feeling that had kept him going for six years. This time it was coupled with the fact that he could go back to Ayaan and give him some much-needed information.
Signaling his contact to stay behind, Azeez slowly made his way to the small group gathered outside a tent. One man stood up from the group and walked inside as soon as he spied him. Checking that the pistol he had strapped to his left leg was still intact, Azeez stepped inside the tent.