Another Shot at Forever, page 3
The home test had told her exactly what her doctor had: that in less than nine months she’d be a mother.
“It can be overwhelming even when it’s anticipated, but especially when it’s not. Know that there are options,” her doctor told her with a meaningful look. “I have brochures explaining those details. I’ll let reception know to pass them to you once we’re done here.”
Zaynab pressed her hand to her swooping belly and croaked, “Are we not done yet?” Because she’d heard plenty enough. Now all she wanted to do was leave the doctor’s office, stop by the corner shop for ice cream and go home and pretend like none of this was happening. Like her life hadn’t been irrevocably changed in what felt like a blink of an eye.
And all for what? One ignorantly blissful moment of pleasure, that was what. Had she known the bliss was a ticking time bomb, she might have reassessed allowing the reptilian portion of her brain to have its fun.
It physically pained her to listen to the doctor’s next instructions, the sterility of the information feeling both unreal and upsettingly her new reality.
“Since you’re nearly at twelve weeks, we can begin certain genetic and blood testing. I’d also like to book you for your first ultrasound scan, if that’s all right with you?”
Zaynab bobbed her head weakly.
And that was how the rest of her doctor’s appointment went, and she left the office with brochures burrowed discreetly in her purse along with the times and dates for the next string of appointments for her prenatal care. The sun beamed warmly overhead as she stepped out into the chilly January morning, the snowfall from last night already mostly melted off the footpath except where it clung stubbornly in brown-topped patches to the curb. She couldn’t believe that a little over a week ago, she was ringing in the New Year with the resolution that this year she’d focus on self-discovery and reclaiming joy for herself.
Though she had avoided thinking about him, Ara had been half the reason she’d made the resolution. The other half was inspired by watching her mother battle her cancer diagnosis and come out the victor.
Pride for her mother shone through her as brightly as the afternoon sun washing down over the gray rows of buildings in this part of the city. She turned her face up to the warmth, saddened that it couldn’t melt the solid fear sitting heavily in her stomach the way it had the snow.
She groaned, remembering that her next chat with her mother would be interesting now that she was expecting.
And she wasn’t the only person Zaynab would have to tell.
Despite how he’d cowardly sneaked away on her after taking her to bed, Ara had the right to know he was going to be a father. As daunting as it would be to send him the news, she would have to brave through it because the alternative of not telling him wasn’t an option. But it didn’t mean that she had to do it immediately. She’d just found out and needed her own time to process and sort through her feelings before she added any of his emotions to the mix.
Later, she promised. When she had her head on straighter and the timing was right. And likely over a voice message because she couldn’t handle seeing his handsome face while she delivered the bombshell of an announcement.
She was nearly halfway to the bus stop when her phone thrummed several times in succession with incoming texts before her ringtone nagged at her. The impatient caller turned out to be her childhood friend Salma reminding her they had a standing lunch date.
“You forgot, didn’t you?” Salma clucked loudly.
Zaynab had forgotten, but she had a good reason. And she must have been quiet enough that Salma sensed it and asked more soberly, “Are you all right, love?”
“No, I’m pregnant,” she said, the sob choking out of her surprising her. Because as wildly upsetting to her world as the news of her pregnancy was, she hadn’t once felt the urge to cry until then when a familiar voice asked after her well-being.
Salma comforted her over the phone until they met face-to-face, their lunch plans at their favorite restaurant canceled for takeout at Zaynab’s flat on her well-worn but comfortable leather sofa and a sitcom playing on the TV. Much later when she’d calmed down, Zaynab followed Salma’s gaze to the open and half-packed luggage in the corner of the sitting room.
“I almost forgot about that...” Zaynab trailed off with a sigh. In a few days she was due to leave for a work-related trip to Mauritius. She’d been looking forward to the trip until this morning when her world had been upended. But as much as she’d like to call in sick, her agency wouldn’t be able to send a replacement so easily. Working as a personal support care worker was fulfilling, and her current position of two years was with a client she’d grown to care deeply for. Opaline was a sprightly octogenarian in spite of her knee replacement, double hip replacement and recent cataracts surgeries. It hadn’t stopped the elderly woman from accepting an invitation to attend a family member’s wedding in the beautiful East African islands.
She’d not only invited Zaynab, but Opaline had also seen to it that her grandnephew and attorney-in-fact, Remi, had paid for Zaynab’s ticket and accommodations as well as her meals. Remi was counting on Zaynab to care for his great-aunt during their travels. Their generosity meant a lot to her, and it was why she wouldn’t cancel on them.
“Come on. I’ll help you pack,” Salma said, her smile sympathetic. Being a nurse, her friend understood the grueling hours of the workload in their chosen fields.
It was hard carving out time for herself when it was in her nature to care for others.
Her mother when she’d been battling her cancer.
Opaline and Remi.
And now a child that would rely solely on her. She touched a trembling hand to her abdomen.
So much for my New Year’s resolution...
Later when Salma had helped her finish packing and called it a night, Zaynab sat in her flat alone. She stared at the phone gripped in her hand and the message she had hastily thumbed out before her nerves got the better of her.
I’m pregnant, and it’s yours.
The last part seemed redundant and it had churned her gut to even type it, but she didn’t want him mistaking or doubting who was responsible. Not that she believed that Ara was the type to shirk his duties, and yet he hadn’t been a real husband to her, or even much of a friend.
“You never really trusted me,” she murmured.
But that wasn’t her problem right now.
She hovered an aching thumb over her screen, rallying her courage to send the message before finally doing it. As soon as the text started a new chat with him, Zaynab shut her phone off and dropped it on the cushion beside her, knowing that whatever response it generated from him would be a worry for her tomorrow.
* * *
Ara hadn’t worried much about how his tomorrows would look, mostly because he planned so far in advance that not much took him by surprise.
Not his sister Anisa’s engagement announcement—he’d seen the attraction between her and Nasser long before they had acted on it. And not anything else related to his life, professionally or personally.
In fact, not since his parents’ deaths had he felt the groundless sensation of true, utter shock.
But Zaynab’s message was a close second.
I’m pregnant, and it’s yours.
Those five words had circled his brain—taken over dominion of every thought, and stymied most of his action for days after Ara had received her news. His distraction was poorly timed as he’d traveled from home for important business. Business that required his full and undivided attention, not that he blamed Zaynab. It wasn’t news that he would’ve wanted her to hide from him, even though she could have concealed her pregnancy and the truth of him being an expectant father.
With how Ara had treated her, he would have expected her to never contact him again.
Beyond feeling relieved that she hadn’t hidden it from him, he couldn’t specify exactly how he felt besides this hollowness. It wasn’t all that helpful that he didn’t have much time to himself to sift through his feelings about becoming a father.
Between back-to-back meetings, he barely found the time to sleep or sit for a meal.
But if his sleep deprivation and slight malnourishment was what it took to seal this latest business deal, then he would gladly suffer it.
As the owner of Africa’s largest shipping company, Titancore Transport, his shoulders carried a tremendous weight of responsibility for the thousands employed by him and his clients, but now Ara was looking to do more for his country too.
A total of three days elapsed before he finally deigned that the business proceedings were going smoothly enough and could be handled by some of his trusted executive staff. No sooner had Ara made the declaration did he begin to board a privately chartered flight for Mauritius.
Although he’d been tied up, he had looked into Zaynab’s whereabouts, not knowing if she was still in her London flat or residing with her mother in the English countryside.
It was surprising when he discovered that she was in far closer reach to him. In less than five hours his plane was touching down and taxiing toward the one passenger terminal at the Sir Seewoosagur Ramgoolam International Airport, Mauritius’s primary airport.
He had a car awaiting him on arrival. By the time the car stopped in front of the resort’s main entrance and he stepped out to be greeted by staff, he willed patience that he wasn’t wholeheartedly feeling and sought details of Zaynab’s room.
Ara clenched his jaw at the memory of falling on Zaynab like an animal. It had been over two months ago since she’d come with her divorce application, but it might as well have been yesterday with how vivid the memories playing in his mind were. And with those memories came the awakening of a familiar hunger to take her in his arms again and repeat what they’d done step by step, as though his slip in judgment hadn’t caused the situation they were now in. Instead of entertaining his powerfully magnetic attraction to her, he should’ve been ashamed of his senseless and unalterable mistake. Should have been preparing to grovel at Zaynab’s feet for burdening her. But each step that carried him closer to her eroded his shame and, in its place, a heady anticipation to reunite with her arose.
An anticipation that hadn’t existed a few days earlier. Before she’d messaged him with the announcement of her pregnancy, he’d been certain she wouldn’t contact him ever again once he had done as she desired and signed her divorce application. Their lives were different enough that they’d likely never cross paths, and if for some reason they did, Ara didn’t torture himself into hoping that she’d speak to him. That she’d forgive me. After all, it would only be fair that she treated him with the same indifference he’d shown her in their short marriage.
At least that was what he envisioned would come next. Only now that had changed...
Because of their whirlwind passion, fate had forced them together.
In a matter of a briefly worded text he’d gone from expecting never to see her again to figuring out how to keep her in his life for as long as he breathed, and the absurdity of it had Ara indulging the smile lifting his mouth.
Slashing a hand down his face a moment later, he schooled his features into neutrality as he spied her suite up ahead, the number on the door like a beacon. But as eager as he’d been to be near her again, Ara found himself shifting on restless feet as reluctance gripped him in front of her door.
He couldn’t be sure what lay on the other side, but he only hoped that she would hear him out once she opened the door.
With that he raised his hand to knock—
Only for the door to swing open, his fist breezing through midair before he drew his hand back, his scowl immediate.
The man blocking his path had at least a couple inches or three on Ara, and though his lanky limbs looked weaker in his well-tailored suit, he compensated with an unspoken air of authority that rivaled his own.
Authority that threaded his demanding tone when he asked, “Who are you?”
Before Ara could tell him that he’d taken those words right out of his mouth, a sweet voice Ara would have recognized anywhere called out, “Remi? You haven’t left yet—”
Rounding the corner of the entrance hall, Zaynab cut herself off and stopped in her tracks as Ara’s eyes locked on her.
He’d envisioned their reunion so many different ways over the course of the past few days, yet he hadn’t considered the surge of emotions seeing her would unleash in him. Desire blended with satisfaction and intrigue as Ara trailed his gaze over her. Like this stranger she’d called Remi, she was dressed as though she were heading to an event. Threaded with a bevy of sequins, the pale gray floor-length maxi dress whispered over the polished white floor tiles as she walked a couple steps toward him, the surprise that had seized her beautiful round face framed by a white lightweight hijab.
“Ara?” she whispered his name in a way that shouldn’t have stirred him below the belt but did. “What are you doing here?”
“You know him,” this Remi asked her, ignoring Ara completely now and irritating him in doing so. But what annoyed him even more was Zaynab shifting her stare to Remi and nodding.
Jealousy surged through Ara and sat over his chest like a weight as she bit her lip and gave Remi an embarrassed smile. Whoever this man was to her, he clearly mattered enough to warrant not only her shy feelings, but an explanation.
“He’s my—was my husband.”
Her deliberate use of the past tense hadn’t gone missed, and if he weren’t in their company, Ara might have clutched the spot above his heart that panged the hardest at the blow of her words. Instead, he stared hard at her and said, “We need to talk.”
Not that it mattered to Ara, but Remi’s frown flicked between them. “Would you like me to stay?”
Ara had to check the urge to grab him by the collar, heave him out of the room and slam the door closed behind him. But he refused to devolve into a beast, even though an animalistic anger pulsed through him and tensed and primed every tendon and muscle in his body.
Zaynab calmed him a bit when she shook her head. “No, that’s all right.” Then with another of her smiles, she said, “I already held you from the party long enough. Please, tell Opaline that I’m fine and I just need a little rest.”
Remi hesitated, but in the end he nodded curtly at her, leveled a glare on Ara that clearly was a parting warning and then stalked off in his highly polished leather shoes after Ara cleared out of his path.
Ara entered the resort suite and closed the door after him. As his hand released the door handle he suddenly had a flash from the past, when he’d done the same thing back in Berbera, and how their conversation in her hotel room had led to them sprawled in a sweaty tangle of limbs in her hotel bed.
Closing his eyes and balling his fists at his side, he took a moment to strengthen himself before he opened his eyes and turned to Zaynab.
She had moved back from him, her arms crossed and her wary look telling him everything she didn’t need to. She was worried by his presence, and that was the last thing he wanted to make her, and not only because she was carrying his child.
It was as if everything clicked into place right then, seeing her, knowing that she was now bound to him in a way that was above law.
He hadn’t known what to feel when she told him of her pregnancy, but now—now Ara reflected on how he’d nearly lost his life a year ago. How empty and purposeless he’d felt when he had first lost his parents sixteen years before that, how he had focused so hard to be all the family his sister needed, and how he’d poured his whole being into expanding on the business he had inherited from his mother and father. As accomplished as it might have looked on the outside, he could no longer ignore that it hadn’t filled the ever-present, ever-hungering void deep within him.
But he had his answer finally, his eyes resting on her stomach.
Their child might not have been planned by either of them, but it was exactly the purpose Ara had been waiting for. And like every true purpose, a plan needed to follow. His idea was not only self-admittedly ludicrous; there was also the added pressure and extra hurdle of getting the child’s mother on board.
And judging by the way Zaynab’s eyes began to narrow in suspicion, Ara didn’t believe for a second convincing her would be easy.
CHAPTER THREE
“YOU STILL HAVEN’T told me what you’re doing here.” Zaynab heard the nervousness trembling through her voice, despite having quietly and fervently hoped that she wouldn’t sound as weak with shock as she felt in seeing Ara again. And of all the places she wouldn’t have thought to ever see him.
Mauritius was supposed to be the place for her to reset her emotions and get a grip on her new and reeling reality of pregnancy. She knew that she would eventually have to speak to him, but she had chosen to ignore the text she’d sent him until she returned home. It would have given her the time to figure out how to handle his feelings about their new shared responsibility.
That’s assuming he even wants to be in our child’s life.
But now it was apparent that fate had another plan in store for her.
And there was no point in her hoping that he hadn’t received her text and just shown up for some other unexplained reason. She curled her fingers under her elbows and wrapped her arms around herself tighter, feeling safer under the lasering power of his hard, assessing stare. The coldly blank set to his handsome face was typical for him. She could count on one hand how many times he’d smiled around her, and none of those few times had ever been directed at her. Sometimes she wondered if the issue of their marriage—the true reason why they couldn’t make it last was because of her.
