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She scratched her forehead under her hat. “Stuff like chores, since their time was taken up with my sister and her appointments. I gave up my clubs outside of school because there was too much going on at home and so they didn’t really have time to be running around after me.”

I had to concentrate to stop my jaw from falling open. Her parents pressured her, at age nine, to stop being a child and take on adult responsibilities, plus they encouraged her to give up her hobbies, and she was justifying it? “What did you give up?”

“Erm . . . dancing, swimming, Brownies . . . netball . . .”

“And . . . what did you do instead?”

She shrugged. “Stuff round the house. Read stories to Aisha.”

I rubbed at the pain that had suddenly developed in my chest. “Did you miss not having your own interests?”

“Well, yeah. But I wanted to help with my sister. It was only right to compromise.”

I shifted a little closer, lowering my mug. “But you were just a kid. A kid who deserved a childhood.”

She blinked. “Well, looking after Aisha did inspire me to become a nurse. Of course, I needed to make sure I wasn’t away from home in the long run. I wanted to be around to help out and keep an eye on everyone.”

I eyed the earnest expression on her face, the overwhelming need to protect her rising up inside me. I wanted to go back in time and fight for nine-​year-​old Nisa with my bare fists. “I see. And then you met Drew?”

She nodded, though her eyes dulled at the mention of his name. A bit like the way he’d tried to dull her personality when they’d been together, from what I could gather. Who tries to tame the beauty of a force of nature? But I suppose getting with someone like Drew had been inevitable, when Nisa had been trained from the age of nine to sacrifice everything she wanted, everything she was, for someone else.

“You know,” she said, her voice quiet. It didn’t suit her. Her voice was made to be full of light and life. “What you said yesterday, at my place. About Drew thinking he was always right and expecting me to acquiesce to his opinions.”

I winced, regret curling in my chest. “I didn’t mean to upset you. I’m aware that I sometimes speak from the heart without thinking how it might sound.”

She shook her head. “I think . . . you were right.” She paused, as if anticipating being struck by lightning for such blasphemous opinions. “Rona and Aisha have said similar kinds of things recently. But I just put it down to them having my back, you know? After he left me. Because they love me. But then you said it, and we aren’t even friends.” I almost flinched at that. “And you don’t even like me . . .” That time I openly flinched. “Or, at least,” she continued, slowly, as if thinking things through, “you didn’t used to.” She lifted her gaze to catch mine, hope in her eyes. I took her hand, my heart softening, and gave her fingers a squeeze to indicate that of course I liked her.

She smiled. “When you said it, as an objective bystander, I figured it might be true.” She sighed. “I just thought that it was the right thing to do, you know? To compromise. That’s what people in relationships do.”

I shifted closer, so that our arms were touching, and took full grasp of her hand. “It’s not a compromise if one person gives up everything while the other doesn’t budge an inch, Nisa.”

Her cheeks were rosy with the cold, her eyes bright and clear. “I really wanted a baby with him. And before we got married, he’d said he did too. Then when it got to the point that he’d said we’d try, he put it off. Then he kept on putting it off, saying that he wasn’t ready to compromise his lifestyle. He was still saying that when he left. And then . . .”

“He got someone else pregnant pretty much straightaway,” I finished for her, connecting all the painful dots with a grimace.

Her eyes were shimmering with unshed tears and it made me want to crush something with my bare hands. I set my mug on the blanket, lifting my hand to brush her cheek. Even if Drew had legitimately changed his mind about wanting kids and hadn’t just been stringing her along, he should have been honest with her sooner. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay,” she said. “I think now that it was for the best, seeing as the relationship was clearly pretty doomed.”

The corner of my mouth tugged up in the hint of a rueful smile at her lighthearted tone, but I didn’t remove my hand from hers.

Nisa kept her eyes on mine for a few seconds, biting her lip before dropping them to my mouth, her voice quiet and uncharacteristically cautious. “I wouldn’t mind seeing more.”

I frowned. “Pardon?”

“When I was in the tent before, I said something and you asked me what I said. And I said, ‘Nothing.’ It wasn’t nothing.” She lifted her gaze back to mine, lightning hitting me in the chest. “What I said was, ‘I wouldn’t mind seeing more.’ ”

For a moment I couldn’t parse her meaning. Then I thought back to what I had said to her just prior to that, when I wasn’t wearing any clothes and merely had a towel clutched to my nether regions. Keep your head in there if you don’t want to see any more.

Electricity arced between us, and my eyes sank down to her mouth, drawn as if we possessed opposing magnetic forces. Her lips were pink and plump, soft and pillowy. “I see.” My voice was so low it was almost a rumble.

Her throat bobbed, and I was struck with the urge to bite it again. I barely resisted, instead meeting her eyes. She was vulnerable, and there was no way I would do anything to take advantage of her. Not unless it was something she wanted. Something she explicitly asked for. “And what wouldn’t you mind now? Or better yet”—​my voice was lower now, rough and scratchy—“tell me what you would really like.”

She sank her teeth into her lip and I curled my free hand into a fist, tension suffusing my jaw. Suddenly I was acutely and achingly aware of every point of contact between us. Her slender hand inside mine. My knee pushing against hers. Then she fisted her hand in the material covering my chest and pulled me closer, and my heart pounded so hard I thought it might give out.

She held that position, eyeing me with sudden curiosity. “Aren’t you going to kiss me?”

I swallowed hard, restraint on a knife’s edge. “I really fucking want to, Nisa. But I need you to ask me. I don’t want to do anything you aren’t sure about, not when you’re feeling vulnerable.”