“Oh, I am.”
“But why?”
“There are many reasons that make this necessary.”
“You’ve kidna
pped me!” The plane began to bump more fiercely as it crossed through the thick layer of cloud over the capital of Pilati.
“You’re being over-dramatic. You offered to come to Dashan with me.”
“You know that offer expired the minute you walked away.”
He nodded brusquely. “What other option did I have? To leave you in Las Vegas, flirting with my brother?”
“I was not flirting with him.”
He shrugged. “It looked like it to me.”
“Then you looked at it wrong.”
“It is not the only reason.”
Olivia bit down on her lip. She wouldn’t cry. She wouldn’t let him see her weakness. “Good. Given that it’s a pretty shitty reason, I’d like to think you could do better.”
“How is this, then?” He muttered, leaning forward in his chair, so that his face was starkly close to her. His eyes ran from her eyes to her mouth, and there they lingered, tracing the full pinkness of her cupids bow lips. “Leaving you was the biggest mistake I have ever made. I have regretted it every day since. I want you here, in Dashan, with me, and I think you want that too.”
His words made no sense. “So you’ve kidnapped me to make me some kind of sex slave?” She chattered through shivering teeth.
“Well … I wouldn’t call you that.”
Her mind reeled. “You’re delusional.”
“You were very happy with me before, habibi. You will be again.”
“No.” Her eyes flashed with pain. “I don’t know why you’re being like this, but I know you, Zamir. I know this isn’t really you. You don’t want me like this.”
“No,” he agreed softly. His word was a dangerous oath. “I don’t.”
“What we had before … you ended it. And you can’t just un-end it.”
“I can try,” he responded seriously.
“But you can’t.” She looked away from him. “I’m not the same girl who came to work for you.”
And in profile, her face was gaunt. Her delicate cheekbones were highlighted by the weight she had lost.
“Maybe not.”
The plane dipped lower and lower, and Olivia kept her eyes focussed on the view beyond her window. It was dark in Dashan, though early in the evening, she would have guessed. She was too proud to ask for the time, and when the pilot began to speak, it was in Zamir’s language. She gathered, though, from the way the plane was now moving swiftly closer towards the ground that he was announcing the fact that landing was imminent.
Indeed, moments later, while Olivia sat in an almost numb fog of confusion, the plane touched down with a degree of smoothness onto the tarmac. Olivia barely noticed. She was in knots. For weeks she had told herself she would do almost anything to see Zamir again. She had dreamed of him by night and longed for him by day; she’d put paid to any idea she had of being a strong independent woman by wishing, more than anything in the world, that he would come back into Vegas and carry her off into the sunset.
But not like this.
Never like this.
“Come.” He stood and held a hand out to Olivia. She resolutely ignored it.