The Baby Swap That Bound Them, page 15
For his part Bashir wasn’t the most gracious of hosts either.
He grumbled plenty during dinner, glowered at his food for more than half of the time, and generally brooded his way through to dessert which was served in the family room. Yusra skipped on the crème caramel dessert she’d made for their dinner party. Usually, the dessert would remind her of home, her mother’s baking and the wonderful warmth guests could bring with them, but all she felt was a coldness driving into her skin, through her bones and into her bloodstream. Her brain felt frozen; her heart along with it.
Together she and Bashir must have made for a miserable duo.
Lucky for them, his friends were good people. An affable couple, Otis and Evgenia carried the conversation all on their own at times, regaling them with tales of how they’d met through an arranged marriage by their powerfully wealthy families. They hadn’t felt love for each other at first, but rather admiration for their passions—Otis in hotel management, and Evgenia as an interior designer.
It wasn’t unlike her and Bashir.
A marriage of convenience arranged by them to solve the issue of the baby swap wasn’t very different than an arranged marriage, was it?
And Otis and Evgenia grew to love each other.
Yusra stared at the older couple with hope whenever they looked to each other, their love glowing undoubtedly in their eyes.
But unlike Otis and Evgenia who had been open to love, she and Bashir never were.
It was why they’d ultimately married.
And it’s why I’m unhappy. She startlingly accepted the epiphanic thought. I love Bashir.
What a foolish thing to do. Falling for a man who, although her husband, was the last person she should love. Now what was she going to do?
* * *
Knowing what he had to do and doing it were not only two very separate things, but one was harder than the other, and Bashir discovered that personally when he found himself pacing the length of his bedroom. He needed to see and speak with Yusra, but he couldn’t bring himself to go to his wife. His extremely lovely wife who he was realizing he wasn’t treating right.
I don’t deserve her.
But that wasn’t his only problem.
He liked her. Immensely. So much, in fact, it struck him that somewhere between meeting her and kissing her he had fallen in love with Yusra. And no matter how good that love made him feel, it was transient. Like life, love was fleeting. He loved her today, but what if tomorrow stole that love from him? Even today didn’t promise a guarantee.
Bashir regarded the old photos of his family strewn on his bed, some faded and yellowed and others as clear as the day the photos were taken. But they were all proof of his point that love wasn’t everlasting.
He’d loved his cousin, Imran, and he had thought leaving him would stop him from caring. But then his cousin died, and the heartache he was running from only caught up with him in time.
Would it be like that if I lost Yusra?
If she left him one way or another, would he ever recover from that loss?
No, the answer came to him instantly. He wouldn’t be the same. Losing her would wreck him, more now that he acknowledged that what he’d been feeling for her this whole time was love. Deep and true romantic love.
Bashir slowed to a standstill, hating that he had to do what came next. But he couldn’t hide out in his room all night. After a tense dinner only saved by Otis and Evgenia’s cheerful humor, he’d shown his old friends to their guest room before retiring to his own bedroom. Of course it was then he had recognized that he and Yusra shouldn’t sleep apart for the short duration of their houseguests’ stay. What would Otis and Evgenia think if they learned of their marriage of convenience? Knowing them as he did, they’d ask questions of him, and pry in that annoyingly loving way of theirs. And that wasn’t something Bashir wished to handle on top of everything else on his to-do list.
But it was a good excuse to go to Yusra. From there he would nudge them toward what he needed to tell her.
Striding to his door, Bashir flung it open and stopped in his tracks.
Yusra stood in his path, her hand in the air, knuckles ready to rap on his door, and a warm-looking woolen blanket curled to her chest. She lowered her hand slowly, looking shy all of a sudden, almost queasily so as she shuffled her feet.
He stepped aside with a silent invitation.
Once she was in his bedroom, he closed the door.
“I thought I should be here with you. I didn’t want your guests to wonder why we were sleeping in separate rooms.” She turned to face him, her shyness still mingling with obvious discomfort. He didn’t like to see her like that, hated that he was likely the cause. Bashir surmised he had to be after the way their day had gone.
Now that he knew he loved her, it was through that lens that he looked at her.
But he had to shatter that lens. That was his goal.
Because I can’t love her.
The risk to him was too great.
“I was just about to go say the same thing to you,” he said.
She hugged her blanket closer. “So, are we both taking the bed? I could sleep on the sofa.” She pointed to the love seat across from the king-size four-poster bed and before an electric fireplace. Between the two of them, the sofa would be a better fit for her than him, but Bashir wouldn’t have it.
“No, you have the bed.”
“Are you sure?” She glanced cursorily at it. “It’s big enough to fit us comfortably. I wouldn’t mind...”
You will after what I have to say.
Bashir shook his head. “The bed is yours, Yusra. I’ll be fine wherever I sleep.” He could fix a makeshift mattress out of extra blankets if he needed to, but he wouldn’t have her sleeping roughly on his watch.
Nodding, she quietly went to place her blanket atop his bed, and right after, she appeared distracted suddenly. He saw why when she picked up the photos he’d forgotten he had left out in the open.
“Is this your family?” she asked.
Too late to prevent her from seeing them, he supposed it was a smooth enough segue to what he had to tell her.
“Yes, that’s them.”
The photo she held was one he’d committed to memory. It was his only picture of his family. Everything else having been washed away with the flash flood that killed them. If it weren’t for his aunt finding the photo in an album, he wouldn’t have been able to recall the faces of his parents, grandparents and siblings.
“It’s all that I have left of them. It was our last Eid together as a family.”
“And this one?” She held up a photo of his aunt and uncle.
“My aunt and uncle. They took me in after my family died and I had no one else to care for me.”
There was only one photo that remained after that. Bashir tensed his muscles in preparation for when Yusra lifted up that photo to him. He’d thought he was ready, but he wasn’t, and so it showed in his gravelly voice.
“That’s me...and my cousin Imran.” In one of the last photos with Imran before Bashir had run away from the only other family he had. And he wasn’t counting Yusra and their boys, even though he should because if this conversation went south, he might lose them too. Forcing that despairing thought away, he said, “Imran was my favorite of all my cousins. We were close. Almost like brothers.”
“Imran. Is he the one the villas and suites you showed me today are named after?”
Clever of her to connect those dots. But he’d seen her working it out the instant Otis had let drop about the resort villas having a namesake.
“That’s correct. I dedicated it to him.” But that had been before Imran died. Now the name held even more significance to Bashir.
“You look happy,” she said and stared at the photo of his smiling self. In that photo, he had his arm looped around his cousin, and even though Imran had been older by a few years, Bashir had been a few inches taller and so comically his cousin stretched to get his arm around Bashir’s shoulders.
Like the other photos, he’d gazed at that picture of him and Imran so many times, he had every detail trapped in his mind.
“We were happy,” he finally said, his fists at his sides, jaws clenched achingly tight. That was it. He couldn’t put it off any longer. And he wouldn’t find a better window of opportunity when she looked up and her eyebrows bunched together.
“What’s the matter?” she whispered.
“There’s a reason I was looking at those photos, and a reason I’m telling you about my cousin.” An awful beat of silence, and then, he said, “He was AJ’s father.”
“AJ’s father...” she murmured, shook her head in disbelief and looked at the photo in her hand before her eyes snapped up to him once more. “If he’s AJ’s father, that means... You lied.”
“I never lied. I just didn’t tell you about Imran.”
“Why?” she cried, controlling her voice so that it never rose above a harsh whisper. She dropped the photo and marched over to him. “Why not just trust me and tell the truth? What happened to us communicating openly?”
“I didn’t think it was a big deal,” he lied.
“How can you say that when he’s AJ’s father!”
“I am AJ’s father.”
“That’s not what I meant and you know that, so don’t twist my words, Bashir. Don’t you dare,” she hissed warningly, her finger stabbing the air between them, and though she didn’t touch him, he felt her angry jab all the same. Right over his wildly thumping heart. Prompting him to rub his chest.
“You’re making this a bigger deal than it truly is.” It was an incendiary comment. He knew it, and that was why he said it.
And sure enough Yusra froze up and stared at him, openmouthed, her eyes full of confusion like she didn’t even recognize who he was.
Bashir wanted this. Her fury and his.
For the majority of their relationship, everything had gone so perfectly, it always felt like the other shoe would drop at any moment. Now that it had with his omission of truth, reality could set in. And if he was extra lucky it would diminish his love for her.
But it wasn’t meant to be.
Because right before him her anger eroded, and in a shocking twist, she asked with a tremble to her chin, “Why are you doing this?”
“Telling you the truth, you mean,” he said gruffly.
“Being an ass, I mean.”
Her colorful language was another surprise. And with each one, he was losing grip on his plan to kill his love for her.
“Okay, I get it,” she said on a shaky sigh, her head bowing, but her brokenhearted voice rising up. “Maybe you didn’t trust me enough to know how I would react. And I never said you weren’t AJ’s father. Both Zaire and AJ are lucky to have you in their lives. I see that. And I’m not negating what you mean to our children. But you continued to lie about your cousin. Which means you still don’t trust me. You can’t imagine how much that hurts—”
She broke off, sniffled loudly and spun away from him.
Though not quick enough for him to miss the wetness on her cheeks.
She’s crying because of me.
At that Bashir bit the inside of his cheek so hard he tasted blood, and with it an incessant pain where he purposefully wounded himself to feel anything else besides a guilt so vast it could rival the span of the sea near their home. But it did him no good.
With each tremble of her shoulders and soft sob from her, Bashir felt the worst of the worst.
She hid her wet eyes, her back to him as she spoke tearfully. “I guess now’s a poor time to tell you that I love you.” Then she turned around and swiped at her face, what little good it did her.
More tears rained down, replacing what she wiped clear and dripping off the chin she proudly thrust higher. “Did you hear what I said?”
“Clearly,” he gritted.
“And?” she challenged.
He knew what she was after. A reciprocation of love from him. And he would have given it to her if he wasn’t who he was, and if his past had been any different than what it ended up being.
But it isn’t.
“And I don’t feel the same.”
She dropped her head, her sniffles making a comeback.
“I can’t love you, or anyone else for that matter. Yusra, I didn’t run away to Europe because I wanted a better life. I ran away from the only other family I’d known because I was scared to love them and lose them just like I had my first family. And I left Imran behind because I thought I was doing the best thing for me, but I lost him anyways, and it still hurt like hell. I won’t do it all over again.”
He hoped that was enough to open her eyes on choosing her love wisely when it came to him. He was no good for her.
But Yusra lifted her head and gazed so forlornly at him that it nearly had him buckling under the pressure of having hurt her. “My ex-husband never shared his thoughts or feelings, and he left me out of his life. I’ve lived like that once already. And like you, I won’t do it all over again. Because right now I don’t have faith in you, and that... That’s just as important as love is to me.
“I love you, Bashir, and that’s why I can’t do this.”
She turned then, walked to the en suite and locked herself inside.
Bashir chased her to the closed door, where he raised his hand to knock and call her back out. But he stopped himself and forced his feet to go the opposite direction. Away from the bathroom Yusra claimed as refuge from him, away from his bedroom where he prayed she slept well after their fight and away from his home with her and their sons.
If there was ever a time for him to return to his ship, now was it.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
YUSRA COUNTED THOSE first days that passed by the growing collection of finished artworks piling up in her bedroom. She obsessively created art. Not stopping even when she ran out of space. Simply, she used spare rooms all over the villa to store her pieces.
By the end of that first week without her husband, she finally found a dedicated workspace in Bashir’s study. And since the owner of this palatial villa wasn’t home, she did what she pleased.
Serves him right.
Yusra painted a hard, bold stroke over the new canvas, her broken heart guiding this latest piece. She used darker colors and the overall mood was ghastlier when she completed it hours later. Black, red and green swirled together in a chilling eddy and best captured the three emotions that had been her default for a week now. Outrage, envy, and worst of all, a desolation that wouldn’t quit.
She was angry because he’d left her when they should have been trying to work it out together.
Envious that he clearly wasn’t as affected as she was. How else could he continue to work on his precious nonprofit like everything was normal?
But the sadness with no end was the worst of all three.
Even after she’d cried all the tears humanly possible, she couldn’t dislodge the lump in her throat or rub the itchiness from her eyes whenever she recalled her last moment with Bashir. She sobbed herself to sleep and stared off into space whenever she wasn’t doing her art or caring for AJ and Zaire.
Without the boys she’d have probably curled up in bed all day, and with only her misery as her constant companion.
But they gave her a reason to get up and get on with her life. And if Bashir could act as though nothing transformative happened in their relationship, then so could she.
And he did eventually call, asking her how she and the boys were faring in that irritatingly calm, even tone of his: the very same tone he’d once used to tell her about the baby swap that had changed their lives. She let him speak with their children, but it was only ever that. She ripped a page out of his book and channeled a dispassionate version of herself.
That was how the next month passed. In this state of disconnect between her emotions and thoughts and her body. She cared for AJ and Zaire, worked on the several graphic design projects her clients expected from her by their deadlines and created the art she’d been yearning to make for years now.
Yusra didn’t think she’d ever want to feel again.
Then at the end of the fifth week, she realized two things. One, Bashir’s nonprofit, Project Halcyone, would be opening its door in a short while, and secondly, she had cut herself off from her emotions but her love for her husband hadn’t gone anywhere.
She still loved him.
More than that...
I miss him.
And just as she was accepting that fact, a gift arrived with Bashir’s aide Nadim.
After making his delivery in person, Nadim left, no doubt returning to his employer who cowardly hid out on his ship, and Yusra carried Bashir’s mystery gift box away from where their curious toddlers could tear into it and break whatever was inside. She opened the box a while later when she found the time to be alone.
She gasped as soon as she saw what it was.
Paintbrushes. And not just any paintbrushes, but an entire set of Winsor & Newton Series 7 Kolinksy Sable Brushes. The whole set had to have cost hundreds—thousands if she gave her best estimate. And, yes, it might be a drop in the bucket to Bashir, but it meant the world to her. These brushes were reserved for the serious-minded artist. And somehow, he’d thought she deserved them.
Yusra didn’t realize she was crying until pattering footsteps discovered her in the study amidst her art. Zaire came first, closely followed by AJ who was clutching their pet rabbit to his chest. Three sets of eyes peered at her. Two tiny humans and a cute, fluffy bunny. All three equally mystified.
She pulled them in for a hug, squeezing them close and laughing when Zaire touched one wet cheek, and AJ the other.
Yusra kissed their small hands.
