He went still. Finally, quietly, “Wouldn’t you do the same if you could?”
I chewed on the inside of my cheek, thinking. “No. That would just give her the satisfaction of winning.”
“Didn’t she already win, though? You’re married, Lillian.”
Even in their simplicity, the words burned more than I wanted to admit. I swallowed, staring at the ceiling again, wondering if maybe we were both just running from ghosts that would always find us, no matter how far we went.
“She hasn’t called me since the wedding,” I blurted, surprising myself with how small my voice sounded in the dark. “I went from living under her microscope, every move analyzed, every outfit questioned, to...nothing. Like I don’t exist. Like I never existed.”
Silence pressed heavily between us. Khalifa shifted, the mattress dipping, and for a second I thought maybe he’d fallen back asleep.
“Isn’t that what you wanted?” he asked eventually. “Freedom?”
The word clanged against me like it didn’t belong.Freedom. That’s what I’d been chasing, wasn’t it? To breathe without her sighing in disapproval, to eat a meal without commentary, to wear something without a raised brow, to not have every decision—every failure in her eyes—archived and used against me when she was in the mood to be cruel.
And yet, it turned out that when silence replaced scrutiny, it didn’t feel like victory. It felt like exile. I wanted distance, but not this kind. I wanted to escape, but not vanish. And maybe that was her genius all along: she had me in her grip whether she was calling to criticize me or ignoring me entirely. She was still the axis around which my thoughts spun, the gravitational pull I couldn’t resist.
“I thought I wanted freedom,” I admitted. “But it’s like she wins either way. If she’s judging me, she’s in my head. If she’s ignoring me, she’s still in my head. I keep wondering if she’sproud, if she misses me, or if she’s already turned my room into a gym for my brothers.”
My laugh was soft, self-deprecating, and a little broken around the margins, carrying all the pieces of carefully hidden hurt.
But Khalifa didn’t reply.
I cleared my throat, instantly regretting spilling my guts all over the spotless room. My voice caught as I continued, faster than I meant to, as if speed could keep me from feeling exposed.
“I don’t expect you to understand, or to have a response,” I said defensively, then lowering into exhaustion. “You’ll never know what it’s like to be a girl born into a family that only wanted boys. To grow up in a house that was never your home, where every pristine corner, every white wall, seems to whisper that you’re not welcome. That you’llneverbe welcome.”
The confession hung in the air, and my chest tightened with the weight of it. I swung my legs off the bed, moving toward my own room, trying to slip away before my vulnerability could make him pity or mock me.
I almost had the door closed when his voice stopped me.
“You’re not unwelcome here, Lillian.”
I froze, hand hovering over the knob, my back stiff against the wood. The words weren’t loud, weren’t dramatic—they didn’t need to be. They settled inside me like sunlight spilling through a crack in a curtain, illuminating the shadows that had been following me for ages.
My throat constricted, and all I could do was go back to my room instead of answering. The lock clicked behind me, and we never spoke of it again.
Weeks went by. Life filled the gaps with work, with routines, with the hum of everyday living. Until one day I got back from the hospital late, exhausted, bones aching, and found my dinner still on the table, Khalifa already asleep on the couch. Exceptwhen I tiptoed past the table and set my bag down, I heard the faint rustle of fabric, the subtle shift of weight. Not the peaceful movements of a man asleep, no, the telltale signs of someone fake-napping. Someone who’d waited up for me and only pretended to sleep once he knew I was home.
I bit back a smile and padded into my room, but the room wasn’t mine anymore—not the one I remembered. The hot magenta walls I’d always thought I wanted, the ones that had felt like a stubborn reminder of unfinished childhood battles, were gone. In their place, vibrant yellows, deep oranges, and blazing reds stretched across every wall—a sunset blooming, spilling warmth where there had once been nothing but fatigue and missed moments. I stood there, stunned. Somehow, color-blind Khalifa, who couldn’t tell chestnut from crimson, had done this. He’d turned my room into my favorite thing.
The door swung shut behind me, and I noticed a single stripe of hot magenta left on the back of the wood, a sticky note pressed against it. I leaned in, heart stuttering, and read the words, delicate in their blunt truth:
She only wins if you let her win.
And I felt it—the tug of all my old fears, all my old shame—but beneath it, something else. A quiet willfulness. The suggestion that maybe I didn’t have to carry the weight of someone else’s judgment, or let a ghost from my past dictate the terms of my life. For the first time in a long time, I let the feeling settle in my chest briefly, and I imagined letting it stay.
Later, when I went to throw something out, I found a stack of crumpled printouts in the trash—dozens of sunset diagrams he’d pulled from the internet, each one covered in handwriting that wasn’t his. Every shade had a label, and next to each label, someone had written a matching note for the paint cans hidden under the sink.Amber, can with the square sticker;coral, theone marked with a dash;tangerine dusk, the warm-toned tin, not the harsh one.
He’d asked one of the employees to help him match every name to every can like someone feeling their way through the dark. He’d taught himself the right colors, every hue and variation, just so he could get the sunset perfect for me without being able to truly see it.
Chapter Eleven
THE HOSPITAL NURSERYalways smelled faintly like powder and possibility. It was too bright, too soft, too everything—and I loved it.
Sarah and I stood shoulder to shoulder, noses pressed against the glass, coffee cups in hand, eyes scanning the rows of bundled-up new lives.
“That one,” she said, tapping the window. “The one with the full head of hair and the death glare. Future CEO. Probably of a pharmaceutical company. The kind that swears they’re ethical, but you just know they’re not.”
