‘Would you like a drink?’
She made a groaning noise of impatience. ‘Amir, tell me...’
He nodded. He understood. He crossed to her, but didn’t touch her. She could sense the care he took with that, keeping himself far enough away that there was no risk of their fingers brushing by mistake.
‘I came to New York because it was the easiest way to see you.’
She frowned.
‘Your brother would not send you back to Ishkana.’
She swallowed.
‘You invited me?’
‘No. But after he lied about your marriage to Paris, I read between the lines. You told him about us.’
Her jaw dropped. ‘He what?’
‘He told me you were to be married. At first I believed it to be true.’
She shook her head. ‘He was wrong to do that. I never agreed. I would never agree.’
‘I know.’ His tone was gentle, calming. But she didn’t feel calm. Frustration slammed through her.
‘You told him about us, and he doesn’t approve.’
She ground her teeth together. ‘Whether he does or doesn’t is beside the point. Malik has nothing to do with us.’
He studied her for several long seconds.
‘He’s your brother,’ Amir said quietly.
‘Yes. But I’m a big girl and this is my life. I make my own decisions.’
‘I wanted to see you,’ Malik said quietly. ‘But arranging a visit to Taquul and coinciding our schedules proved difficult. Particularly without alerting anyone to the purpose of my visit.’
‘Yes, I understand that.’ She frowned.
‘When I heard you were coming to New York, I followed.’
I followed. Such sweet words; she couldn’t let them go to her head.
‘Why?’
His smile was a ghost on his face. His eyes traced a line from the corner of her eye to the edge of her lips and she felt almost as though he were touching her. She trembled.
‘Before you left Ishkana, I should have explained everything better. Only I didn’t understand myself then. I couldn’t see why I acted as I did. It took losing you, missing you, hearing that you were to marry someone else and knowing myself to be at the lowest ebb of my life only to pass through sheer euphoria at the discovery that you were not married. It took all these things for me to understand myself. I couldn’t explain to you that night, because I didn’t know.’
She swayed a little, her knees unsteady.
‘I didn’t ever decide to push you away. I never consciously made that decision, but it’s what I’ve been doing all my life, or since my parents died at least. I have many people that consider me a friend yet I do not rely on anyone. Not because I don’t trust them but because I don’t trust life.’ His smile was hollow. ‘I lost my parents and I have been permanently bracing to experience that grief all over again. Until I met you, I shielded myself the only way I knew how—I made sure I never cared about anyone enough to truly feel their absence.’
Her stomach felt as though it had dropped right to the ground outside. Sadness welled up inside her. ‘That sounds very lonely.’
‘Loneliness is not the worst thing.’ He brushed her sympathy aside. ‘But you made it impossible to not care. I tried so hard not to love you, and yet you became a part of me.’ He stopped talking abruptly, the words surprising both of them. ‘Losing you would have been almost the worst thing that could happen to me—feeling that pain again would have been crippling. But so much worse if it were my fault. When you told me you wanted to stay with me, as my wife, I wanted to hold you so close and never let you go—but what if? What if something happened to you, and all because of my selfishness?’
Her heart was splintering apart for him.