“Dalal.”
The playfulness evaporated instantly. “Please don’t say that name to me,” he muttered, dragging the blanket over his head like a child avoiding bad dreams.
I rolled my eyes and slipped under the covers with him, the sheets cocooning us in our own little bubble. Our faces weremilometers apart, his lashes brushing the fabric, his mouth stubbornly set.
“Did you love her?” I asked.
“No.” The word came out too quick to be rehearsed.
“I know you don’t love hernow,” I said. “But you were married. You really felt nothing for her?”
He sighed. “I knew her since we were kids. She was...familiar. We were friendly, that’s all.” He paused, staring at the blanket like he could rewrite the past into something gentler. “We got married so quickly after Keenan died, I barely had time to process it. One day I was grieving my brother, and the next, I was someone’s husband.” His voice cracked slightly. “I didn’t hate her—not at first. Not until I found out what she’d done. But I wasn’t in love with her either. I didn’t even understand what that word meant until I met you.” He turned his head toward me, eyes raw and unguarded. “The feeling was so new, so alive, I spent half the time wondering if there was something wrong with me. But that’s only because I didn’t know whatrightfelt like.”
My chest stuttered, his honesty hitting me in places I hadn’t realized were still tender. I reached out, my fingers tracing the space until they found his hand.
“When she told me she lost the baby,” he continued roughly, “I...I blamed myself. The same way I did when Keenan died. I thought maybe I hadn’t cared enough, or maybe she could feel that I wasn’tinlove with her—and that somehow, that absence had seeped into everything.” He rubbed a hand over his face, exhaling a shaky breath. “It wasn’t indifference. I tried, in the only ways I knew how. But the guilt was unbearable. I kept thinking if I’d just been more—more present, more feeling, more everything—it wouldn’t have happened. And then finding out it was all a lie...there isn’t even a word for that. It wasn’t relief, oreven anger. It was something deeper. Like mourning a ghost you didn’t know you’d invented.”
He scooted lower until he was eye-level with my belly. His palm found its place there, warm and certain, before planting a fierce kiss against my skin.
“I’m so sorry, Khalifa.” I swallowed hard. “What she did to you was...terrible. I don’t know how you—”
My voice buckled. Just snapped clean in the middle. And then I was crying—out of nowhere, like my eyes had been waiting for the signal to leak.
“Hey, hey,” he said quickly, sitting up, cupping my cheeks so he could see my face. “What did I say about crying over me?”
“I’m not cryingoveryou,” I sniffed. It came out defensive, ugly, glass-throated. “I’m cryingforyou.”
“Same difference,” he chuckled, thumbs sweeping under my eyes. Then his mouth followed—pressing softly into my cheek, my chin, the corner of my eye, catching tears as they fell, kissing them away like he could undo them one by one. His lips moved slowly, steadily, patiently, until the sobs came less like a storm and more like a tide pulling back.
“Whatever.” I wiped my nose with the back of my hand, secretly mortified that I’d already cried three times in the last twenty-four hours. “I’m hormonal. I can cry if I want to cry.”
“That’s true.”
“I slapped her, you know.”
He stilled. “Youwhat?”
“Yeah,” I said quickly. “I didn’t mean to. She just kept talking—defending herself—and I just—” I offered a helpless gesture. “There was this snapping sound, and suddenly my palm was burning, and I realized I’d...hit her. Not my brightest moment.”
He stared at me for half a second before exploding into this loud, messy,gloriouslaughter—wild, unrestrained, like his chest couldn’t contain it. My body shook with him, and maybeI was laughing too, but that felt ordinary compared to his, unremarkable, instinctive, like breathing. And as he laughed, I wondered if I would ever get used to the sheer abandon of it, the way joy seemed to pour out of him so easily now, so freely. My heart wanted to keep expanding, even though it was probably impossible to hold any more of him in its chambers.
I didn’t think I evercouldget used to it.
I hoped I never would.
“I wish I could’ve seen that,” he said between gasps, still grinning. “I bet you looked incredible doing it—tall, fierce, and beautifully powerful.”
“I think it was less fierce heroine and more emotionally unhinged woman.”
“Ahotemotionally unhinged woman.”
“I always look hot.”
“Mmm,” he hummed appreciatively. “Yes, you do.” His mouth curved against my temple as he pulled me against him, my face tucked into the space beneath his jaw. “For what it’s worth,” he murmured into my hair, “how I felt after what she did—it’s nothing compared to how I’ve felt the last few months. Wondering, and agonizing, and not knowing if I was ever going to see you again.” His arm tightened around me. “You filled my lungs so completely, I forgot what it felt like to breathe without you.”
A knife-twisting pain hit my gut. “I’m sorry.”
But he shook his head. “No. You have nothing to apologize for.” His voice broke—barely, but enough. “I deserved it. I deserve worse. Butthis—having you, holding you, loving you—healed every single part of me.”
