To Touch a Sheikh (Pride of Zohayd 3)

And he asked himself. If he abided by her terms, and her hurt and disillusion waned until she was free of him, was there a possibility he’d have the same remission? Would he revert to the encased-in-ice being he’d been content to be?

The answer was unequivocal.

Never.

She was embedded into his being, had become its vital spark.

It would have been funny to contemplate how far he’d fallen if it wasn’t agonizing to be deprived of the freefall of her love, the gravity-defying power of her belief.

That brought him back to the terms she wanted him to state.

He wouldn’t make any. For the first time ever, he would let someone else—her—have all the power.

He rose on legs that felt weaker than when he’d been at death’s door. He stood before her, struggled not to sway with the force of letting go. “If you want to leave after the ceremony, Maram, leave. You never have to return.”

So this was Amjad’s final knife turn.

Apparently Maram had been hoping he’d prove she wasn’t less than nothing to him after all.

But as long as he had—preferably long-distance—rights to his heir, she could go and never come back for all he cared.

Her tormentor was continuing. “You don’t have to come back to have me near. I’ll follow you wherever you go, if you want me to, be there for you and the baby as long as you’ll have me.”

She blinked, and her heart stuttered. Before his fervent words could douse her blaze of misery, mistrust fanned it once again.

“And that’s my cue to say I don’t want you to, and that I won’t have you, so you can pin letting me go on me, and come out the winner, riding the higher moral ground to boot. Ingenious.”

He huffed bleakly. “And I thought I was into extremes of black or white. Congratulations. You’ve just surpassed me.”

“If all you’re going to contribute to this discussion are empty offers and cryptic remarks, I assume you agree to my terms. Guess it doesn’t matter to you, as long as you have your royal and personal tag on the baby you don’t want too near.”

Silence. For a long moment. Then he spoke, his voice the darkest she’d heard it. “You always prove I can never predict anything you’ll say or do. Before or after your turnabout. The contrast never ceases to…jar me. Before, no matter what I did, you were ready with the best possible explanation, loving me more for it. After, you switched to demonizing everything I say or do. But even in your blackest doubts, you must realize even I can’t be that bad.”

He had a look of such…defeat, her heart, quivering with disbelief as it was, lurched in its inability to suffer his pain.

She struggled not to give in to its demands. “Maybe. And maybe you’re worse. That’s the problem with doubt, Amjad. It’s open to just about anything.”

“And there’s no chance of doubting your doubt? Of ever giving me its benefit again?”

“Every time I try, I remember you always had huge things to gain by manipulating me, things you are securing one after the other, with me as the piece you have to maneuver to secure them. A throne, a sibling rivalry with a half brother from an abhorred stepmother and now an heir.”

He winced at every enumeration. She felt his spasms transmit to her own heart.

It finally hurt enough to make her stop.

Was she taking her doubts too far?

But letting go of despair was as difficult as giving up hope. Despair provided a refuge of no expectations and accustomed pain. Letting it go meant relinquishing its shield and possibly sustaining more devastating injuries.

But the temptation to believe again was becoming brutal. She’d always felt he was a part of her. Now a part of him was growing inside her, and she felt that he was integrated into her being more than ever.

But it was also because of that part that she was even more afraid of believing again. She couldn’t gamble with her emotional and psychological survival now that a new life would depend on her.

She struggled to continue. “After what happened, I feel I will never know why you do and say what you…” Suddenly, she reached her limit. Air tore through her lungs, left them on a lament. “Oh, God, Amjad, I want to trust you again. I’m dying because I can’t see my way back to you.”

Grief lashed out of him, enveloped her, had tears welling from her soul. He reached out trembling hands to cup her face, wiping their flow, soothing the dread of surrender.

“You stuck with me through the worst, took my worst and never gave up, got me out of the maze of alienation I was lost in. You pulled me out only to stumble into it yourself. You believed in me so deeply, so completely, when the blow to your faith came, it penetrated you with the same depth and totality.”

His hands dropped away from her face, fisted at his side. “You were right. I was frozen. And you thawed me. Melted me. I thought I was content in my suspended animation until you dragged my eyes open to my wasteland of a soul, of an existence. Then you yanked me out of it all, forced me to see and experience and live through our…togetherness. I can’t be alone again, Maram.”

His voice broke. His eyes filled.

And the shackles holding her back broke, the heart that had emptied of belief, her lifeblood, filled again.

A tear, something she’d never thought she’d ever see, slid from the eclipsed jewel of his left eye. “But I also can’t ask to be with you again either, not when I don’t deserve it yet. But I will, Maram. Like you once told me I would, I will prove to you that I am worthy of your trust, again and forever.”

He turned then, walked away. Every step dragged her heart farther from her body.

And she wailed, “Amjad…don’t go.”

He turned back to her with suffering as terrible as hers muddying his eyes, running down his face.

She flew to him, threw herself at him, weeping, quaking apart. “I can’t be without you anymore. I—I believe you…”

He held her away with hands that shook. “No, you don’t. And you’re right. You have no reason to trust me, not the absolute kind of trust you need to thrive. Not yet.”

“It was my own insecurities that kept fanning the doubts. I take it all back.”

“Don’t. Every word you lashed me with could have been the truth. It’s up to me to prove beyond doubt they aren’t. You gave me incontrovertible proof. I can’t live with giving you less.”

“You don’t have to give me more proof. I do believe you.”