Did she realize that meant she wasn’t kind too?
As if she read his thoughts, she glowered at him. “Don’t.”
Owen huffed a laugh.
“I see the wheels of your brain turning, Apollo,” she bit out. “You want me to escape while we are on safari.”
Oh, that. “It would be feasible. My team?—”
“Listen to me,” she snarled, rushing at him. “It is not feasible. It will not happen.”
Surprised by her venom, he held up his hands. “Hey,” he said quietly. “Listen to your voice—it’s pitched, frantic. That’s fear. Fear is driving that decision.”
“Yes,” she railed. “Yes, it is. I am afraid you will get Ummi killed. These people are capable of that.”
“Agreed,” he said gently, “but they’re also capable of killing you. A moment ago, you were afraid they wanted you to die out there.”
She swallowed hard, uncertainty filling in the gaps between her vehemence. “Do you think that’s why they’re letting me go? So I’ll die?”
What a loaded question. “It’s a legitimate concern. And I know you’re dead set against me extracting you, but that is my mission. My goal. I will not let you die, and I will not leave you here.”
With a groan, she buried her face in her hands, then scrubbed them through her hair beneath her head covering as she pivoted away. Walked to the long hedgerow.
“I’m not going to let them make the first move, not against you, Leighton.” He cringed at using her real name aloud but knew they were far from snooping ears.
“And if I forbid you from doing anything?”
He considered her for a hot second. Knew if he told her his stance on that, she’d fight him. And things would be infinitely more complicated.
“Unbelievable!” She whimpered and angled in, shaking her head. “What is wrong with you? Why can’t you understand that I want to save my ummi?”
A thought struck him then. “Why don’t you call her ‘Mom’?”
The question made her withdraw. She sighed, this time moving back and forth but not quite pacing. “It’s not an easy answer—and it’s confusing. I don’t want my mother—the one who raised me—to think my biological mother is more important. So, using the Arabic term for mother creates distinction.” Sagging against the wall, she looked at the sky. “It’s probably dumb, but it seemed better than calling her Yasmina, as if she were a friend or some other person I know. And it helps me avoid the ‘adoptive mom,’ ‘biological mom’ thing.”
“Both moms are important to you.”
“Yeah,” she said with relief.
“And you knew…where you came from?”
She nodded. “It was necessary—vital that I knew. I grew up being told my story, that I was born here in Jeddah and was secreted to America. All my life, it was this huge secret. They taught me that I must be good, must be quiet about the past or Ummi would die. My parents always said Ummi was brave, that she loved me and risked her own life to save mine.”
Now he was tracking. “So you feel you have to do the same for her.”
Wide, brown eyes pooled with unshed tears. “Yes,” she breathed, then her expression knotted as she came off the wall. “Yet…no. Never have I felt that I have to do this for her. It has only ever been that I want to.”
“You want to be the hero too.”
Leighton looked to the pebbled path. “Wow, that makes me sound so shallow.”
“Wanting to be the hero isn’t a bad thing.”
“I’m not looking for glory or to be hailed a hero,” Leighton said as she wandered the gardens. “I just…I want her safe. After what she did to ensure I was safe, I need to do that for her. Really, I want all of us safe.”
He understood then that what he had taken for granted his whole life, she had never experienced. “I legit cannot imagine what it must’ve been like to grow up keeping this dark secret. What an albatross to hang over a kid’s head.”
She stopped and looked at him, head tilted. “You aren’t hearing me—it wasn’t a burden.”
