‘But even that wasn’t enough for you, was it? Because, not content with simply humiliating me in front of the entire palace, you then had to grind my love into the dirt!’
She shook her head again, one hand at her brow, the other over her mouth, and he wanted to growl and shake her. If there was a prize for affectation, a prize for acting melodramatic, pretending that she cared, she would win it hands-down. ‘I didn’t want to hurt you.’
He snorted his disbelief. ‘Like hell! You delighted in it. Because when I pleaded with you, when I begged you to halt the wedding, to tell me—to tell everyone—that it was me you loved and not Hussein, you looked me in the eye and told me and everyone else there that you had never loved me.’ His chest heaved, his breath ragged and rasping, as if the muscle that was his heart was remembering that day and the pain that had torn through it, leaving it in tattered shreds. ‘Tell me, then, that you didn’t love Hussein.’
Silence met his demands, with only the sound of their laboured breathing filling the space between them, the low rumble of the idling engines coming from the vehicles nearby. Under the shade of the palms the drivers squatted, waiting, sipping coffee and keeping their distance, knowing their business was not to interfere, even though they could certainly hear their raised voices, and even though Rafiq himself had pressed upon them the urgency of moving on.
‘Oh, Rafiq,’ she whispered, reaching out a tentative hand to him, a hand that wavered in the air before it dared land on his skin.
He scowled at it as he might regard some annoying insect, ready to slap it away.
‘Rafiq. I…I’m so sorry.’
She was sorry? She had done all that she had done and all she could find to say to him was that she was sorry? She had humiliated him, stomped all over his teenaged hopes and dreams, thrown his life into total disarray, and she was sorry?
Blood pounded in his veins, crashed loud in his ears, and when he closed his eyes it was blood-red that he saw behind his lids. ‘You’re sorry? What exactly are you sorry for? That you lost your rich husband, your entrée to the party capitals of the world? Or that you married him and missed out on landing an even bigger fish? You could have been sister-in-law to the King if you’d waited like you’d promised and married me. How would that have been? All that prestige. All that pomp and ceremony to lap up.
‘Except back then you didn’t know my brother was going to be King, did you? So you chose someone older, someone rich. You chose Hussein and a guaranteed good life. The high life. Well, I hope you’re enjoying life, Sera, because I sure am. The last thing I needed was someone like you, no better than a gold-digger in search of a dynastic marriage. If Hussein were still alive I’d shake his hand right now. He saved me from a fate worse than death. Marriage to you.’
‘No! Rafiq, don’t say that!’ Her face was crumpled now, liquid flowing freely from her eyes, coursing down her cheeks, her hands useless at stemming the tide. ‘It wasn’t like that. I…I loved you.’
His fist smashed through the air, collided with his open palm with a crash. ‘It was exactly like that! You wanted a rich husband. You got one. It was just bad luck for you that you picked the wrong one. And as for your so-called love, it proved to be as worthless as you.’
She heard a sound, a garbled cry, misery mixed with anguish, grief rent with despair, before realising it had emerged unbidden from the depths of her own agonising hopelessness.
He hated her. She knew he did. And she knew she deserved it. But she had not realised how deeply his hatred went, nor how much pain she had caused him.
In letting him go, in thinking she was setting him free by doing what she had, she might just as well have chained him to her betrayal.
But why could he not see that she was hurting as well? How could he have believed for a moment, let alone all these years, that she had never loved him? So she’d tried to be convincing in her rejection of him—she’d had to be—but didn’t he know her better than that? Couldn’t he see the lie she’d lived all these years?
Tears stung her eyes. She heard her name called behind her, but her feet kept pounding across the hot sands. She could not stay. Not like this. Not with him. Only apart could their wounds ever heal. Only apart was there a chance she might forget.
She was behind the wheel of one of the cars before anyone could stop her. The doors locked as she clutched hold of the steering wheel, feeling sick to her stomach as she looked down at the dashboard and its assortment of dials and gauges. Escape was suddenly more complicated, and she cursed Hussein for not letting her learn to drive. She’d had only two lessons before he’d discovered her secret. She squeezed her eyes shut, wishing as she’d wished a thousand times before that he’d had her beaten, instead of an innocent man, wishing that he’d hurt her rather than an innocent kitten. But hurting her had never been Hussein’s way. Not physically, anyway.