The Sheikh's Forbidden Virgin(30)

The silence was endless, mortifying. Kalila held his gaze and waited; she had nothing more to lose, and that was almost a good feeling. A strong one.

‘No,’ Aarif finally said, softly. ‘You are not wrong.’

The rush of sweet relief made her dizzy, and she had to reach out to grab the back of a chair to steady herself, give her the strength to continue. ‘Then that’s not something to take lightly, Aarif. That’s not something people find every day, or even ever. And yet you’re about to throw it away, without even talking to your brother—’

‘Don’t you realise,’ Aarif cut her off, anguish tearing his voice, ‘how impossible your request is? If I tell Zakari I love you, Kalila, he is put in an impossible position. It is worse than what you or I must tell him already, which is that I stole your innocence.’

‘It wasn’t stealing—’

‘It was! Whether you think it or not, I was the one who should have turned away that night, I was the one who should have known to stop. But I couldn’t.’ There was such a hopeless despair in Aarif’s voice that Kalila wanted to weep. ‘God help me, I couldn’t. I wanted you, I needed you, and I pushed everything else aside.’ His eyes held hers with bleak honesty as he finished quietly, ‘I found something in your arms I’ve never had anywhere else, and I shall not find it again.’

‘It doesn’t have to be this way—’

‘Our choices have been made for us. ‘It is written’, is it not?’ He smiled, but there was no humour or happiness in the gesture, only despair. ‘Kalila, take comfort if you can in knowing I love you. But you are better off with Zakari—I destroy everything I go near. At least with him you will be queen.’

‘I don’t want to be queen!’ Her voice echoed through the room, but Kalila was too furious to care. ‘I want you. Aarif, you cannot live your life as a punishment for what happened before. Zafir is dead, but it is not your fault—’

‘Don’t.’ The word was quiet, lethal. Kalila knew she was treading on treacherous ground, yet this was at the heart of the matter, the poisonous root, and it had to be plucked. There was no future, no healing or happiness, until this terrible memory was made whole.

‘It wasn’t your fault he died,’ she said quietly. ‘You were responsible for him, it is true, but you didn’t kidnap him. You didn’t give yourself a bullet wound, you didn’t do any of the things that led to his death. You must let it go.’

Aarif was silent, yet Kalila could feel the energy—the anger—pulsating from him, through the room. ‘You think I don’t know that?’ he finally asked. ‘You think I don’t remind myself of it every day? Do you think my parents, my brothers and sisters, have not told me the same many times before?’ His voice was pitched low, yet it throbbed with a desperate intensity. ‘Do you think it matters?’

‘It should—’ Kalila whispered, and he shook his head, the motion savage.

‘Do you know what I dream of? That nightmare you once rescued me from? I dream of Zafir. He is calling for me, me, not Kaliq, not anyone else. He’s begging me, pleading. “Save me,” he says. “Save me, Aarif.”’ His voice broke on his own name before he hardened his tone once more. ‘He looked to me to rescue him. I hear him in my dreams, and his voice grows fainter and fainter, and then I am underwater, and I can hear nothing at all. I can do nothing. I am like a dead man.’

Kalila blinked back yet more tears. She was tired of crying, tired of being sad. She wanted happiness; she wanted it for herself and for Aarif. ‘And you live life like a dead man, Aarif, waiting for your judgment. You refuse any joy, any life or love or happiness, and that is not right. No one wants that for you.’ He shrugged, unmoved, and Kalila felt a sudden, clean surge of fury that even now, after so much time, so many tears, he was still implacable. Determined to mire himself in his façade of duty, live a shell of a life that no one wanted for him.

‘You know what I think?’ she demanded in a raw whisper. ‘I think you wear your sense of duty like a shackle. Chains that bind you, keep you from trying. It’s safe, isn’t it? It keeps you from risking—anything. I think you’ve become so used to being numb that you’re afraid to live again. To love. And that isn’t the action of an honourable man. It’s the action of a coward.’

Aarif’s breath came out in a hiss, and Kalila wondered if she’d gone too far. She hoped she had. It was the only way to reach him now, to pull him back into the living.

‘You don’t know anything about it,’ Aarif snarled. ‘You’re willing to throw over everything you’ve promised simply because you want to grasp a little happiness for yourself! That, Princess, is the act of a selfish woman.’

‘Maybe so,’ Kalila replied steadily, ‘but I told you before, I will still marry Zakari if he wishes it. Unlike you, Aarif, I am not willing to prostrate myself on this altar of self-sacrifice for no reason. Needless martyrdom does not appeal to me.’

He shook his head, turning away from her, cutting off the argument. Hopelessness crashed over her. Was this it, then? Her last appeal, that desperate gamble, for nothing?

The minutes ticked by in silence and finally, from a fog of despair, Kalila forced herself to speak. ‘If you cannot see the sense in what I am saying, there is nothing to be done.’ The words were stiff, and hardly conveyed the ache of loss that left her feeling no more than a hollow shell. ‘But at least allow me what you promised, that I shall tell Zakari.’ Aarif gave a jerky nod, his back still to her. ‘I will tell Zakari that I am not…innocent,’ Kalila continued, amazed at how steady her voice sounded. She felt ready to break apart. ‘But I will not tell him that you were my lover. I’ll say it was someone from university, a long time ago—’

‘A lie?’ Aarif interjected, whirling around, his voice incredulous and cold.

‘Sometimes a lie serves better than the truth,’ Kalila returned, her head held high. ‘What purpose would it serve to tell Zakari about us, except perhaps to allow you to feel punished by your damnable duty?’ Aarif jerked as if she’d hit him, but Kalila ploughed on. ‘It certainly doesn’t do him any favours, Aarif, or me, or my marriage to him. It doesn’t help the stability of your family, or your country. All it does is make you feel like you’ve sacrificed something else, something that balances these scales that haunt you. But you’ll never make up for what happened all those years ago, you will never make it right. You can only forgive yourself, and allow yourself to be forgiven by others, and you refuse to do that.’

‘You don’t—’

‘Know?’ Kalila finished. ‘But I do know, and I understand you better than perhaps you want me to. I thought you loved honour, but now I wonder if it is just a shield, a mask. A way to protect yourself because it’s easier. I thought you loved me, but if you really did you’d be willing to take a risk.’

‘I can’t—’ Aarif burst out, and there was such trembling anguish in his voice that Kalila stilled, her self-righteous anger trickling coldly away. ‘Kalila, I can’t. I cannot betray my brother—my family, myself—further. And I can’t believe you would love me if I did.’

‘No,’ Kalila said slowly, ‘I wouldn’t, if that’s what it was. But it’s not betrayal, Aarif. It’s honesty.’

He shook his head, and there was such despair in that movement that Kalila’s heart ached. Yet she knew she couldn’t rescue him; you couldn’t rescue anyone. She’d wanted to be rescued from her marriage to Zakari, but she knew now it wasn’t possible. You could only forge one destiny, one identity, and that was your own.

She took a step closer to him, and then another, until they were only a whisper, a breath apart. Standing on her tiptoes, she traced his cheek, his scar, with her fingers. ‘I love you,’ she whispered.

Aarif made a choking sound and then, suddenly, she was gathered in his arms, and he was kissing her with a hungry intensity as if he planned to never let her go, even as they both knew it would be the last time they touched.

His hands tangled in her hair and he drew her to him, her body pressed against every intimate contour of his, and yet still he wanted to be closer, kissing her as he did with an urgency and passion that left Kalila breathless and yet wanting more.

She returned the kiss, imbued it with all the love and hope and sorrow she felt, and when it felt as if it could go on for ever she was the one who stepped away, before Aarif could thrust her from him as she knew he would make himself do.

‘Goodbye,’ she whispered, her voice cracking on the word, and then she fled back into the hallway and the darkness.





CHAPTER TEN


AARIF was awake to see the morning dawn. He’d been awake most of the night, until at least in the grey half-light before sunrise when he’d fallen into an uneasy sleep, and once more the old nightmare had returned.

‘Aarif…Aarif…help me…’

Aarif thrashed among his twisted sheets, Zafir’s voice haunting him as it always did, an endless, unfulfilled supplication.