A small, broken laugh caught in my throat. I sank into my chair—my soon-to-be-replaced, possibly haunted chair—and stared at the wreckage of my life’s neatest room, realizing that no matter how many things I smashed, the one thing I wanted to destroy most was still beating in my chest.
Khalifa appeared like bad weather, ducking into my office. Kevin lunged, hand on his arm. “Hey, you really don’t want to go in there.”
He didn’t listen. He stepped over soil and shards, over the mound of a broken succulent and a blanket of paper petals, and took in the carnage as if each shattered piece named a violation. His mouth opened once, closed again, and then his eyes went straight to me.
I stood because my legs wouldn’t let me stay sitting. “First, you assaulted my phone to death, and now you came to harass me at work?”
“Harass is a stretch—” he started.
“Spoken from somebody whoneedsa stretch,” I shot back.
He drew in an uneven breath. “Lillian—”
“It’sDoctorto you. God, you think you can just waltz in here and fold the truth into nice and neat origami, and try to hand it over as an explanation? I don’t want your excuses, Khalifa. Get the hell out of my office.”
“Not until we talk. Youalwaysdo this. You form a story in your head before you hear people out.”
My jaw dropped, heat building under my ribs like a pressurized tank. “Are you actually trying to place some blame onme? I’m going to kill you.”
Kevin didn’t wait to hear whether that was a threat or a promise. He grabbed Khalifa by the elbow like he was hauling a particularly stubborn patient out of an operating theatre. “Seriously, dude, just leave. I’ve known Dr. T a lot longer than you have, and she isn’t joking. Go home. Let her breathe. You two can work this out later when no one has to clean up any human remains—metaphorical or otherwise.”
Khalifa looked at me, at the shards clinging to my shoes, at the way my knuckles were white around the edge of my desk. Hisface didn’t hold any armor, only remorse and something close to pain.
He nodded once. “I’m going,” he said. “Please, Lillian. I’m not placing any blame on you, but it’s also not what you think. Hear me out before you decide anything, okay?”
I watched him go wordlessly, watched Kevin shepherd him into the elevator, watched the doors close like a punctuation mark I couldn’t rewrite. I sank back into the shambles of my office and counted the scraps.
A groan clawed its way out of my throat as the door creaked open again. “Kevin,” I said without looking up, forehead pressed against the heel of my palm, “I swear on every remaining piece of furniture in this room, I really don’t want to talk to—”
“I’m not Kevin,” a smooth voice interrupted. “Whoever that is.”
Chapter Thirty-Nine
MY HEAD SNAPPED UP.
Dalal stood in the doorway like she belonged in glossy magazine lighting—her hair perfect, her blouse untouched by sweat or disgrace, her expression a mirror polished to reflect only what hurt most.
For a moment, I just stared at her. My brain needed time to process that this was real, that the woman who’d detonated my entire life during breakfast had sauntered into my office like she was here for a consultation.
It was hard not to notice how she was the opposite of me in every conceivable way. Soft, where I was hard. Effortless, where I was exhausting. Khalifa said their marriage had been arranged, but that didn’t mean he hadn’t eventually developed feelings for her. Did he love her? Hold her hand? Cook for her? Share a bed with her? Touch her? Kiss her?
I wanted to scream, or cry, or do something equally unflattering, but Dalal didn’t look like she ever screamed or cried. She looked like the kind of woman who floated through life without ever smudging her lipstick, and suddenly, I was acutely humiliated by the mess I’d made of myself, by how easily I’d let her shake me. Now she knew who I was, knew that Khalifa’s second wife was an emotional whack job with a bad poker face and a worse temper.
The thoughts hit like sucker punches. I shoved them out of my mind and forced my tone indifferent.
“Oh,” I said finally. “The homewrecker herself. Come to check if the destruction is up to code?”
Her lips curved, not quite a smile, more like the ghost of superiority. “Technically, I’m the home.You’rethe wrecker.”
I laughed. It wasn’t a pretty laugh—it was the type that tasted like blood and old shame. “That’s good. Did you practice that one on the drive over? Or does condescension just come naturally to you?”
She walked further into the office, heels crunching on broken ceramic. “You really made a mess in here.”
“Yeah,” I replied, pushing a shattered photo frame into the trash with my shoe. “It’s funny what betrayal does for your interior design inspiration.”
Dalal tilted her head. “You’re angry.”
“Wow, add ‘observant’ to your list of redeeming qualities.”
