Another Shot at Forever, page 12
“I can do that,” Zaynab offered.
But he shook his head and lied, “It will be a lot quicker if I do it.”
She gave him a look that said she didn’t believe that for one bit. The truth was that he needed to atone for his mistake, and it would be easier for them both if she would let him have his way. Expecting Zaynab to argue, he was surprised when she simply slid her injured hand closer to him and waited patiently.
Though she was compliant, sitting through his swabbing the salve onto a cotton bud and massaging it lightly over the red imprints of his fingers on her, she asked, “I understand the ice pack, but isn’t the ointment a little excessive?”
“The ice will keep the swelling from spreading, and the ointment with any inflammation.”
“It’s a bruise. I’ve had plenty and they usually mend themselves,” she said before smiling and cocking her head to the side. “More importantly, where did you learn to be such a good nurse?”
“You’ll have to thank Anisa. She was running around all the time and hurting herself as a kid.” He rested her hand down on the towel and ice pack, capping the ointment and tossing the used cotton bud in the dustbin.
“Bumps, cuts, scrapes and loads of bruises. She even broke her arm once, and since I couldn’t repair the fracture myself, we had to make a hospital trip.”
Zaynab laughed. “Sounds like a typical enough childhood.”
He supposed it was, but after losing their mother and father so suddenly and violently, Ara hadn’t wanted Anisa to leave him too. Although as her older brother he’d always been fiercely protective of her, when half their family was gone overnight, his overprotectiveness of Anisa had only intensified multiple times over. When she was younger she hadn’t minded it as much, clinging to him more in the absence of their parents. But as she grew older, Anisa would rebuff his helicoptering, until she finally told him she was moving abroad for her postsecondary studies and career.
“I might have cared for her a little too much,” he admitted gruffly.
“You were her older brother. From what I’ve heard Salma tell me, it comes with the territory.”
Ara wished he could take Zaynab’s comfort, but he said, “I didn’t approve of her leaving to study and work abroad, and so in my anger, I stopped talking to her and we didn’t speak for four years.”
Four long years that he’d wasted being angry with her. That was time he could never get back, but that he was trying to repair, starting by helping her with her upcoming wedding.
“I’m sure she’s only happy that you’re speaking again.” Zaynab echoed what he hoped: that Anisa didn’t hold a grudge against him for how childishly he’d acted.
Talking about his sister was reminding him of his parents and the nightmare he’d just had of them. If he closed his eyes and listened carefully, he swore the explosions of bombs reverberated in his mind, the screams for help from the injured, his mother’s wails and his father’s cries for help all mingling together into blaring white noise—
“Ara?” Zaynab was leaning forward, her fingertips touching his over the cool marble counter. “You looked deep in thought there.”
He frowned when she pulled her touch away, relying on the calm she brought him. Grateful that she stopped the nightmare from pushing into his reality, and clinging onto the distraction she presented, he asked, “Why are you awake so late anyway?”
“Well, first, I needed to go to the washroom,” she said while a shyness tinged her smile, “and then I was too hungry to go back to sleep.”
Realizing that he could help her there, Ara headed for the fridge. “Let me fix you something.”
“No need! I was craving pickles again.”
Standing before the open fridge doors, he smiled despite the dark mood still clinging to him. He grabbed the pickles she requested and two plates and forks.
He wasn’t smiling though when, spearing a pickle, Zaynab glanced at him and wondered, “So, what were you dreaming about? It sounded terrifying.”
“It was,” he agreed.
“Maybe you’d feel better if you talked about it.”
Ara highly doubted that it would do him any good, and he was opening his mouth to tell her that, only Zaynab then said, “In your sleep, you called to your mother and father. That’s why I thought, perhaps, you would want to talk about it.”
Hearing that he’d been crying out for them poured ice through his veins. He didn’t know what made him colder, that Zaynab knew it was his parents he’d dreamed of, or that he was opening his mouth to explain.
“I was dreaming of them.”
“Does that happen often?”
Shaking his head, his thoughts all jumbled, he answered, “No. Not anymore. But, at first, yes.” Sighing, he tried again and with the hope he sounded more articulate. “The dreams were worse right after their deaths.”
“Have you tried talking to someone?”
She meant a therapist. As much as there were things he loved about Somalia and Somaliland, the progress toward mental health was still slow going there, the stigma and superstition far stronger around it than in the UK.
“No, I haven’t seen a professional. Though I imagine it could help, I’ve mostly outgrown the terrors.”
Zaynab’s frown told him she thought otherwise, but she wisely didn’t push the subject, not when he was barely getting through their conversation.
“My work in Mogadishu must have me thinking of them more lately. They always wanted to expand their business there.
“Truthfully,” he rasped, “I don’t know why I’m dreaming of them.”
Sometimes he wondered if it was because he would soon be a parent himself. A part of him did worry that he wouldn’t know what to do when it came time for him to hold his and Zaynab’s baby in his arms. That he wouldn’t be able to protect his family this time either, and that, just as he hadn’t been there to save his mother and father from their cold-hearted killers and lost them forever, he’d lose Zaynab and their child too.
She didn’t know that his parents had been murdered.
Ara had kept that fact hidden from not just Zaynab, but most people. It was an ugly but crucial detail that was left out of all of the media reports. A boating accident was the tragic story spun for the public, and he’d been happy to go along with it if it kept people from interfering with his grief.
But now, and most illogically, he wanted to tell her of all people.
So, he did.
“When I dream of them, they’re always crying out to me, begging me to help them just before they sink under the ocean and drown.” Ara’s breaths sawed out faster, his heart pounding against his sternum. “But just now, in this dream, they were trapped under a building rocked by an explosion.” It wasn’t unlike what had happened to him in Mogadishu. If he hadn’t been found by a group of volunteers searching the smoking rubble of the hotel that had been targeted, Ara accepted that he would’ve died that day.
He didn’t know why his dream had diverged this one time. His only theory was that his brain had merged the two tragedies together, and in doing so, amplified the terror of both and tortured him.
“Like I said, I don’t know why exactly it’s happening now. But then again, I could be having the dreams because they were killed.” He said it so casually, forcibly detaching himself from the powerful emotions violently churning inside of him. They wouldn’t sink him under, not with the way Zaynab’s eyes widened and she slid off her stool and approached him slowly.
Ara could see what she wanted to ask, so he said, “I didn’t say anything because most people don’t know it’s the truth. And because their killers are long gone and will likely never be punished for their crime.”
“Ara, I’m... I can’t even...”
“It’s fine,” he said stiffly, excusing her from struggling to find words and turning away from the pity he worried was coming. He expected the awkward quiet that came with his confession.
What he wasn’t ready for was Zaynab’s arms to slip around his middle.
She hugged him from the side, her cheek pressed up against his shoulder and her eyes closed, a sniffle drifting up to his ears. It wasn’t long after that he felt her tears wetting the T-shirt he’d tossed on before coming down to the kitchen with her.
He was stunned, and not only because of her embrace but that she was crying for him.
Tears that he hadn’t allowed himself to cry.
And now with her soft, breathy sobs the only sound between them, Ara felt a strange heat burning his eyes and clawing at his throat. It would be a first, as he hadn’t even cried when he’d laid his parents to rest. No, even then he had to hold strong for his sister and their family’s business.
But he knew that if he let go of the part that held him from leaning into the warm support she offered, and if he hugged Zaynab back, that Ara would do what he’d always fought against doing...
I’ll fall apart, he thought with gritted teeth and tears filling up his eyes fast, knowing that he wouldn’t be able to stop if that ever happened.
Afraid of the feelings she’d unlocked in him, Ara pulled away from her and cleared his throat of the hoarseness clogging it, his gaze purposefully avoiding hers.
“If you’re done eating, you should head back upstairs and try to sleep... For the baby.” He added the last part, hoping that she didn’t think he was trying to control her.
When she didn’t respond, he hazarded a glance at her and regretted it instantly. She was gazing at him with redness tinging her eyes, her lashes darkly wet from her tears and her chin trembling as though she was fighting to hold back a fresh display of waterworks on his behalf. Wildly, none of it robbed her of her beauty.
And all that observation made him want to do was bundle her up in his arms and hold her for as long as they both needed.
“You should come up and sleep too,” she implored.
She was right. He should try and sleep, but with everything he’d experienced—the nightmare of his parents, bruising Zaynab accidentally, then revealing to her that his mother and father were murdered and making her cry—Ara didn’t think he’d be resting peacefully anytime soon.
“Maybe,” he said noncommittally, “but I’ll be in my office until then, if you require me.”
He sensed her lingering, hopeful look fixed on him for a while, but eventually Zaynab gave up. And it was only when she was slowly walking away from him that Ara looked longingly after her.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
ZAYNAB LIKED TO think of herself as being quite patient.
At least she had a lot of patience, but the next few days following her and Ara’s late-night tête-à-tête featuring her craving for pickles and his nightmares had shown her that she couldn’t wait around for him to make the first move. Not unless she wasn’t willing for the awkward silence between them to ever get better again and go back to the way it was before it began feeling like he was drifting away from her intentionally.
And she had the sense it was purposeful. Like Ara was erecting the same unclimbable barriers at the start of their marriage, when they were first living with each other. Laying those bricks down, piece by piece, and concealing the secret parts of himself that he’d been showing her slowly but steadily since they’d moved back in together.
It was those hidden parts to him that she recognized had been the reason she’d fallen for him in the first place.
His honest thoughts and feelings, and his unbridled passion; all of it back behind those tall, thorny walls around him. That haunted her the most. All that progress... Only for him to return to the way he was. To the man that she’d wanted to divorce.
Zaynab had mulled over it for several days now. She’d already been quietly worrying about his work schedule creeping into the time that he used to spend with her. But she hadn’t said anything, figuring that he wouldn’t be preoccupied with his business affairs forever. And she knew that his work was important to him, and she wanted to support him because of it. If that meant that she stood by quietly and kept her unease to herself, then so be it.
But she questioned whether staying quiet was the right choice, or if she’d only been ignoring the warning signs dropping like breadcrumbs and pointing toward the frustrating changes in Ara. Now Zaynab was staring longingly outside his office door, her hand poised to knock but her courage wavering on her at the very last moment.
She was still undecided whether to go in when the double doors suddenly swung open, forcing her to startle back and stare wide-eyed at Ara as he stepped aside with a silent invitation for her to enter.
This wasn’t the first time she had entered his workspace. Naturally well-lit by an array of long, narrow picture windows, anyone walking in would immediately be drawn to the focal point of the space: a massive L-shaped executive desk that oozed luxury with its gleaming dark-stained wood surface, supple leather inlaid desktop and modesty panel, and exquisite craftsmanship that gave the desk its illusion of floating from where she stood at the office’s entrance. The other furnishings were two high back leather accent armchairs, a glass coffee table and a credenza doubling as a coffee station.
The only difference in his office was that Ara wasn’t alone.
A young black man was standing in the corner with a tablet grasped in his hands and a smile directed at her.
He looked familiar, though she couldn’t place him in her memory right then, and she was more curious how Ara had known she was outside.
“How did you know I was...” She trailed off, seeing exactly how he’d known that she was skulking outside his office doors.
Framed by built-in shelves, a large flat screen showcased several tinier monitors, twelve in total, and she immediately recognized they were locations through the house from the kitchen to the staircase, the front hall, and dining and sitting rooms and right outside their front and back property.
Ara had told her about the security measures, and though he’d pointed out the hidden cameras, it had never occurred to her to ask him to see the feeds.
But she now knew how he had detected her presence and known to open his office doors for her.
And at the same time it struck Zaynab that he must have seen her standing outside nervously.
Before she could slink off in embarrassment, Ara asked, “Is there something you needed, Zaynab?” and, with a jolt, reminded her why she had come seeking him in the first place.
“I thought we could have lunch together?” Zaynab eyed the familiar man whose face she still couldn’t place, adding softly, “Unless you’re busy.”
“We were just about to take a break,” the smiling man chimed in.
Ara’s scowl said otherwise, but he nodded and his features appeared to soften the longer he regarded her.
“Let’s reconvene in an hour or so.” Ara inclined his head at the man before he turned the full power of his gaze on her. “Did you have anyplace in mind for our lunch?”
* * *
“Who was that man back in your office?” Zaynab asked as soon as the server left them with their lunch orders.
They were seated out in the open at her request, and though the security risk would’ve been lower inside the café, Ara had to admit that she was right about it being too beautiful a day to waste sitting indoors. That and there was a calming effect to watching people go about their lives on the popular, shop-lined street. Couple the pleasantly balmy spring weather with the rare sunshine beaming overhead, and it only seemed to lure more people than usual outdoors.
“Daniel. He works for the security company I’ve hired.”
“I knew he looked familiar! And Daniel works for your sister’s fiancé, Nasser, right?”
“That’s correct.” He’d been working with Daniel for a while now, and as the head of his security team Daniel had earned Ara’s trust in shaping the safety measures around his business and also around the home and life he shared with Zaynab. But these days, he barely saw and spoke to her.
It was torturous to yearn so desperately to be with her, but to also know that it was safer for him to avoid her.
Because he was starting to give away too many of his secrets to her. Telling her about the real cause of his parents’ deaths had made that obvious to him.
It’s safer for her too.
He’d physically harmed her by bruising her during one of his night terrors. Then made her cry when she had learned about his parents’ murder. And, if all that wasn’t enough, Ara couldn’t allow himself to forget that their divorce was still very real and possibly on the horizon as her delivery date quickly approached.
In a couple months, their six-month arrangement to live under one roof would come to an end. Zaynab would have to decide, once and for all, if a divorce was what she desired.
And though a part of him still wanted her to choose to stay with him, a new feeling began to stir inside of him, driving in deeper the wedge that had appeared between them over these past weeks, and this emergent emotion was pushing him toward letting her go.
Freeing her from any obligation to him.
Though he hadn’t been willing to listen, it was as she said once: they never needed to be married to co-parent. I just wasn’t ready to let her leave yet, he quietly admitted, if only to himself.
The sullen mood at their table was at odds with the bright, sunshine-filled day.
Head bowed and eyes glued to her plate, Zaynab was eating, but her heart didn’t seem into it.
Feeling like a monster, he opened his mouth to apologize for his far from stellar company and was interrupted by his phone lighting up. He had set it on mute, but he left it facing up on the table by his plate, in case anything came up that required his urgent response. And seeing his little sister’s name flash on his phone screen activated his brotherly worry for her.
“Anisa, what’s the matter?”
