I was so tired of being the only emotionally unstable mess in thisanti-relationship of ours. The only one whose feelings refused to stay politely contained.
I sighed, turning toward him. “Why can’t you just admit that you’re sad, Khalifa? Your mom is dying. Anyone would be affected by that.”
“Because it’s a stupid thing to have to admit,” he said. “Of course I’m sad that my mother is dying.”
I blinked, completely thrown for a loop. Anemotion? From Mr. Repressed Feelings and Historical Factshimself? The words were so startlingly sincere I almost forgot to reply. Then the embarrassment wriggled in—because, well, he had a point.
Still, pride was a hard habit to kill. I crossed my arms and grumbled, “It’s notthatstupid.”
He scoffed, looking down at the apple slice between his fingers. “You think I don’t understand what it’s like to have a parent who makes you feel unworthy of existing? Well, Ido. My father.”
I froze, a chip halfway to my mouth.
“Congrats, Lillian,” he said bitterly. “You were right. I havedaddy issues.” He shoved the apple slice into his mouth, chewing like the motion alone could keep him from unraveling. “My mom was the only one who was ever proud, who saw how hard I worked, how much Itried. She was warmth, and light, and love when everything else was cold.” His voice cracked, almost imperceptibly. “And now she’s going to die, and when she does, she’s taking all of that with her. All that’ll be left is my father’s disdain, disappointment, and his voice screaming that I’ll never be good enough.”
He glanced at me then, and there it was—the grief he’d been hiding behind sarcasm and stubbornness and that ridiculously composed silence.
A sour taste crept across the back of my mouth as I grasped for something to say. The words tangled in my throat, heavy and useless, feeling the ache of it all—his sorrow, my understanding, the dizzying, unfamiliar pull of wanting to reach for his hand and not knowing if I had the right to.
Because even though I didn’t know much about Khalifa, I stillknewhim. I knew he carried a past that scraped raw at the edges, that he had secrets he’d buried so deep they might never see daylight again. I knew his walls were thick enough to outlast a lifetime of chipping, and that his doubt in the world ran bone-deep. And I knew I wasn’t the magical exception, The One Who Could Heal Him just because I wanted to.
“I’m sorry he treated you that way, Khalifa,” I said finally. “But everything she made you feel doesn’t die with her. People like that...they leave fingerprints. On the way you love, the way you think, the way you exist in the world. Everything she was—every ounce of warmth, every proud word, every kindness—it doesn’t vanish when she does. It lives in the way you remember her. It lives inyou.”
He stared down at the half-empty bag of apple slices, as if they suddenly required his undivided attention.
I almost took it back. The words, the softness, the tremble betraying that I cared more than I should’ve. But then he exhaled a long breath and met my gaze.
“She’d like that,” he said, his tone caught somewhere between disbelief and longing. “The idea that she’d live on through me.”
“She already does. Love lingers, even when everything else goes quiet.”
His eyes flickered with a fleeting tenderness. And just as quickly, it was gone. He turned back to the window, the reflection of city lights faint and far below.
But I could still feel it—the air between us, charged and fragile, too weighted to touch and too alive to ignore. He was already retreating into himself, and some desperate part of me wanted to stop it. To reach out, grab fistfuls of him, and keep him there. To hold onto whatever small, unspoken thing had just cracked through the surface before he buried it again.
We were almost there now—seconds from touchdown—when the plane jolted hard enough to knock the wind right out of me. The overhead bins rattled, a baby cried somewhere behind us, and before my brain could catch up, his hand found mine, curling tight, anchoring himself to something safer than gravity, tome. For a moment, I couldn’t breathe. Not from fear, not from the dip of the plane, but from that touch—unexpected, uninvited, and utterly undoing me.
I stared down at our hands like they were foreign things, like they belonged to two people who weren’t supposed to know each other this way—his fingers clutching mine, my pulse a wild drum beneath his thumb—and just when I thought maybe he wouldn’t let go, the plane leveled out, the tremor stilled, the world steadied, and so did he.
His hand slipped from mine as quickly as it had taken hold. No glance, no apology, just the subtle pull of distance sliding back into place.
He kept his eyes on the seat in front of him. “You okay?”
It took me a second to find my voice, my heart still galloping somewhere in my throat. “Yeah,” I whispered.
And it was such a small word, one syllable, soft enough to disappear under the whir of the engine—but it was a lie. Nothing about me felt okay anymore, and I wasn’t sure if it ever would.
Chapter Eighteen
WE LANDED IN BEIRUTjust as the afternoon sun was softening into gold, the city spread out beneath us like a memory I didn’t have but somehow felt connected to.
Amina was waiting by the terminal, her smile immediate when she saw Khalifa. He grabbed her into a hug so tight it looked like he might never let go, and for one pathetic, fleeting second, a flicker of jealousy sparked in my chest, an almost shameful heat that made me step back. I hated myself a little for it, for how my breath caught, for how I couldn’t help but wonder what it would feel like to be held like that, to have his arms lock around me as if the rest of the world could wait. I pushed it down, forcing myself to exhale through it.
When they pulled apart, I stepped forward. My hug to her was shorter, more measured, but sincere. “I’m so sorry, Amina. I wish I were seeing you under better circumstances.”
She just nodded, and we started toward the parking lot, our steps echoing on the pavement.
At the car, Khalifa strode to the driver’s side. “Keys?”
