“You cannot go,” he said, and lifted his lips to her forehead, pressing a kiss there, feeling her warmth that was all a courtesy of the machines she was hooked up to. “You cannot leave me. You cannot leave them. Sophia, don’t go.”
Sophia had always been a fighter, and even with her body in a coma she heard his words, they called to her, and later that same day something flickered to life, shifting in her body.
She blinked her eyes open and it was like waking from the strangest, most disconcerting dream. Everything within her body felt different. She was sore and heavy.
And she was alone.
Her eyes flew wider. Her head screamed in complaint. She pushed up, looking around. Nothing made sense. But the twins – she threw the blanket off and stared at her stomach. It wasn’t flat, but it was closer to it, and when she pressed a hand to her stomach, she knew there was no one there.
“Oh my God,” it made no sense. She looked around the room again and her eyes landed on Malik in a black armchair, his eyes shut. Her heart twisted. She skated her eyes past him, and now she saw the hospital equipment and realised she was hooked up to a thousand machines. She collapsed back against the pillows, and perhaps this motion roused Malik because he was by her side instantly.
Staring at her as though he couldn’t believe it really was her, as though she were some kind of demon or ghost, staring at her as though she were a miracle.
“Where—,” her voice came out as a very dry whisper. She swallowed; it was an agony.
He reached for a plastic cup on her bedside and held it to her lips. Her eyes met his when she drank, but she couldn’t hold his gaze. It hurt too much. Everything hurt.
“Twins,” she croaked, afterwards.
He nodded. “They’re fine. Two girls.” He reached across her again and pressed a button. His expression was so grim, she was certain he was lying to her.
“Tell me, Malik. Tell me what’s happened.” It hurt to speak.
He shook his head, pressing a hand to hers, so her pulse throbbed in her body, distributing her blood. “You had complications. HELLP syndrome, and an irregularity in your heart. You passed out, and the doctor put you into a coma while your body healed…”
Blurs came back to her. Memories of being wheeled into an operating theatre, patchy and as if through a very long period of time. She shook her head. It was like a dream. She couldn’t speak those words. Her throat was raw. “The babies,” she said instead.
If she didn’t know Malik as well as she did, she’d have said he was surfing some strong emotional currents of his own. His expression was carefully guarded, but his eyes showed feelings that were overwhelming in their intensity. “I promise you, Sharafaha, they are fine.” And perhaps because he’d realised she couldn’t speak easily, he continued, “Two beautiful girls, one so like you it takes my breath away, and the other like Addan.” He squeezed her hand, and right as the door pushed open, he said, “They were born on his birthday, you know.”
More memories. The pomegranates and rosemary. Her tiredness. Exhaustion. Grief.
She swallowed, turning towards the doctor.
“Your highness,” he nodded, his smile reassuring. “You’re awake.” He spent a few minutes checking her vitals, and then turned to Malik. “Her progress is excellent. We’ll keep her here for a few more days, to monitor for any complications, and then her highness will be discharged. However, she’ll need monitoring at the palace, too –,”
“You can suggest someone?”
“I’m happy to attend,” the doctor nodded brusquely. “And to arrange nursing staff.”
Sophia cleared her throat. It still hurt. “I want to see them.”
Malik nodded. “Of course.” He looked to the doctor. “You’ll arrange for our daughters to be brought?”
“At once.” The doctor turned to Sophia once more, smiling. “I am glad to see you awake.”
Sophia managed a weak smile of her own, and once alone with Malik again, she felt the butterflies ramming her insides. The enormity of what was about to happen settled about her shoulders.
But it was more than just seeing her twins. It was everything that came next. She was a mother. They were parents. A family.
A hollow feeling settled inside of her, because they were nothing of the sort and never would be. Children didn’t change a thing – not in terms of how Malik felt for her. Grief – the same grief that had gnawed at her throughout her pregnancy – clouded her mind.
She blinked, focussing on a bright white light switch across the room.
“I thought you would never wake up,” he said, moving to the side of the bed, his arms crossed as he looked at her with an intensity that she felt, even when not lifting her eyes to his.
“How long?”
“A week.” The word was tortured. “Seven days, seven nights – it might as well have been a lifetime.”
She swallowed. There was so much she wanted to say, but her throat wasn’t up to it.
“Drink.”
He nodded, bringing the cup back to her lips. She sipped it, and it helped, immensely. When the doctor returned, he held some tablets in his hand. “Painkillers.” He watched as she swallowed them and, seconds later, the twins were wheeled in, each in their own little crib. She held her breath then. A nurse propped her up with pillows, and put more on either side, before bringing one of the children to her. She stared at her daughter and her heart exploded.
She felt – everything. Nothing mattered beyond this perfection.
The second twin was brought and placed into the other arm, so Sophia had both her children in her lap. She stared at them for a long time, noting every detail, silently communicating with them. They had lived inside of her and she had given them life.
Gratitude exploded within Sophia – gratitude that she was here, with them, that the pregnancy complications hadn’t robbed her of this. She dropped her head forward, placing a kiss on each forehead. Her arms hurt and her head grew heavy but she refused to say as much.
Malik noticed though. He leaned closer, so only she could hear. “You are tired. We will put the twins here, in their cribs, so you can watch them as you fall asleep.”
Her heart squeezed, because it was exactly what she needed. She had already missed too much of their little lives – she didn’t want to miss another breath.
She woke several hours later, much stronger and well-feeling, and immediately looked for her children. One slept in the crib, the other was on Malik’s lap, a bottle in his competent, large hands. The sight of her husband feeding their daughter tied her up in knots. She swallowed for a different reason now – her throat was no longer lined with razor blades but filling with the taste of salty tears.
Sensing her movement, Malik lifted his head, pinning her with his gaze. Their eyes locked, neither able to pull away, and grief threatened to return to Sophia despite the perfection of the two people they’d created.
“This one is always hungry,” he said with a smile, a slow smile that set fire to her soul. “She has my brother’s eyes and my appetite.”
The sob surprised Sophia. She lifted her hands to her eyes, pushing against them, turning her face away at the same time. Malik stood, she heard him, even when she wasn’t looking at him. He came to her bed and perched on its edge, still holding their daughter in his hands.
“I had no idea if you would come back to me, Sophia,” he said, the words gravelled. “I have spent this week imagining what I would say to you if this happened, and now that you’re before me, awake, I find the words won’t come out.”
She kept her face averted.
“I imagined apologising to you, but not being able to find the right way – what could I say that would sufficient for what I had done?”
Her throat hurt again. She squeezed her eyes shut; hot tears burned against her eyelids.
“Every time I thought I knew what I would say to you, I closed my eyes and remembered your pain, remembered the generosity of your heart that had you trying
so hard to make me see… to make me understand… and the way I failed you, because I refused to even listen.”
She bit back another sob, her heart was trembling. “You were honest with me,” she said, after a moment, when she could trust her voice to speak.
“I do not think I was even honest with myself, Sharafaha.”
He lifted a hand, brushing her hair behind her ear.
“All I cared about was pushing you away. We had to sleep together, for the sake of an heir, to validate this marriage, but that was all. I was determined. And I clung to that even when you begged me to open my eyes and see the truth.”
“Malik,” she bit down on her lip, her eyes finally lifting to his. She felt like she was being drowned. “You made me open my eyes, to see your truth, and I get it. I understand. You will never be able to separate guilt towards Addan from our marriage, and I’m not going to try to make you. We have the twins, we have your heirs. It is enough.”
He was quiet for a moment. “And is this enough for you?”
Her eyes dropped to the baby in his arms, and a small smile shifted on her pale face. “These children will become my world. This will be enough.”
He made a guttural, groaning noise and shook his head. “Not for me, and not I think for you, either. Sophia, you came to Abu Faya and nothing has ever been the same since. From the first moment I saw you and Addan together, I hated you. I told myself it was your Americanness, then that I was jealous – Addan had been my closest friend until you, and then, everything was ‘Sophia this’, ‘Sophia that’.”
“I didn’t mean to displace you,” she said, reluctantly, because there was nothing good that could come from discussing the past.
He leaned closer to her, and she held her breath, her heart telling her to be strong, to fight this, to fight the temptation to sink into him.
“You took my breath away, from the first moment I saw you. But it was at your seventeenth birthday when I realised what I felt wasn’t jealousy of you, for your friendship with Addan.”
Her eyes closed as she remembered that night – his palpable anger. “I was so jealous of Addan. He announced your betrothal and I wanted to lift you up and take you away, to hide you all for me. I wanted you all for myself, Sophia.”
She shook her head – it wasn’t true. There was no way that made sense. “You hated me.”
“Yes. I hated you. I hated you because of how you made me feel. Addan and I had been so close, but knowing you would marry him, I began to hate him, too. To feel such envy that it sickened me. He was my brother and I found myself wishing our place in the order of succession had been reversed. I found myself wishing my father had thought you would be a suitable bride for me. When Addan died…”
“Don’t.” She shook her head. “You didn’t will that.”
“Didn’t I?” He glared at her and she felt the cold despair in his heart. “I didn’t care for his throne or rule, but I wanted you in a way that appalled me. I told myself the only way to atone for how I had envied him and coveted you was to ensure our relationship was never more than sex. He had held your heart, and taking that from him was too low. It was too much to hope you might love me, as you had him. I had to content myself with your body.”
His words were striking against her sides. She heard them but wanted to roll them up and throw them back at him. She wanted… she felt stronger now, fight filling her.
“I told you again and again that what I had with Addan was different.”
“Yes. And I was so glad for that. Glad that you were so much happier with him. Glad that he was the man you had chosen to marry. Remembering that I was your consolation husband almost stopped me from wanting more from you.”
“I gave you more,” she said with impatient disbelief. “I gave you everything.”
“Yes,” he admitted, his nod a jerk of his head. Their daughter had drunk all of her bottle. He lifted her over his shoulder, burping her gently, and then passed the little one to Sophia. She cradled their daughter, her heart twisting inside her chest. “You gave me everything, and it only made me more determined. The more you tried to convince me we could be friends, the more I insisted we wouldn’t be. When you told me you loved me, I wanted to die, Sophia, for how much I craved those words. He was my brother.” The last sentence was anguished. “And you were his fiancé. He loved you, so much. He loved you and to hear you say you love me… I was so angry.”
“I remember.” She swallowed.
“But I wasn’t angry with you. I was furious with this life – with fate – with the fact you’d been chosen for him, and acquiesced so readily to those wishes. I was furious that you and I hadn’t simply met, two people, unencumbered by any of this. I was so angry that what my heart wanted felt impossible to attain.”
She dropped her head forward, her eyes filling with tears once more.
“I told you, this is different. You cannot compare what Addan and I were to one another to what you and I… to what we… had.” She finished softly, because it all felt so different. She didn’t doubt her own heart – love was not so fickle. Having fallen for Malik, she knew she would always love him like this. But the connection she’d imagined had been eroded by his months of coldness and rejection, so that even now, hearing his explanation, her feelings remained shielded deep within her.
“At seventeen, I told myself things would change. You were still so young. You had no concept of what you’d agreed to – maybe you would change your mind, or your mother would refuse to let you go ahead with this. I went away, yet every time I came back, you were happier and more adored, and I realised you would never be mine. Wanting you and seeing you with him was torture. I taught myself to hate you, to hate your wedding, to disapprove of it in every way, to stop myself from acting on these feelings.”
His eyes bore into hers. “You do not know how often I dreamed of that – you beneath me, calling my name. I hated my own brother, Sophia, because of how much I wanted you.” He stood up then, pacing away from her, his back ramrod straight.
“When he died, and your betrothal passed to me, I wanted to push you away because I have no doubt I willed this.”
“Stop it,” she snapped then, and the daughter in her lap startled. She lowered her voice with great effort. “What happened to Addan was a terrible accident.”
He whirled around. “And if he’d lived, you would have married him. And I would have spent my lifetime wanting my brother’s wife. Do you not see how there was gladness inside of me?”
She shook her head angrily and then, sympathy exploded. “You say you hated your brother, but I see the actions of a man who sacrificed what he wanted, again and again, out of respect for his brother.”
A muscle jerked in Malik’s jaw.
“I see a man who chose to respect his brother’s wishes even when it brought him pain. You didn’t fail Addan, Malik.”
“I could not be in the same room as the two of you.”
“He never suspected why,” she promised. “He went to his grave with no idea you felt any of this. But I know, because he was my best friend and we talked about anything and everything,” she saw her husband stiffen and hated paining him. “That he adored you and admired you in every way.”
His eyes were haunted. “It … means so much to me.” His eyes swept shut for a moment. “I could not bear him to have known how I longed for you…”
“Believe me, he didn’t,” she promised. “He was saddened that we didn’t get on. He had no idea there was anything behind that.”
“I couldn’t be with you, Sophia. I couldn’t be in the same room as you without wanting to kiss you, to touch you, to make you laugh.”
“Damn you.” The curse growled from deep within her chest. She straightened, so she could gently place their daughter in her crib, and then she stood, gingerly, the scar from her surgery still tender. She walked to him with care, and he watched her. “Damn you for not saying anything.” She lifted her hands then, cupping his cheeks. “And for not telling me
any of this sooner. I have been in agony; you have made me miserable. And now? You’re telling me this is why you pushed me away?”
He groaned, cupping her cheeks. “He was my brother and I … have taken so much from him. It is not ‘nothing’.”
“No, but it is separate from us.” She spoke quietly, as though it were simple.
“You were so close to marrying him…”
“You don’t know that. Neither of us knows that. Addan and I, as close as we were, there was no chemistry between us. We hadn’t really even kissed, Malik.” Her teeth dug into her lower lip, as she tried to put words to how she’d felt. “When my dad died, I lost my whole family. Everything changed. And your dad and Addan replaced them, they made me feel whole again. I had a new family, who adored me, and welcomed me.”
“Except for me.”
“Yes, except for you,” she said with a quiet nod. “And I was too young to look at the damage I was doing and to care. I was just a child, Malik.”
“I know that.” He cleared his throat. “You told me, that at Addan’s birthday, his last birthday, you realised you desired me.”
Her eyes lifted to his, the memory so clear in her mind. “I had never felt anything like it. Lust tore me apart. I wanted you. You, Malik. Even then.”
He moved closer, his face so near hers. “And it just made me furious, because I thought about you that night. You have no idea how close I came to stealing you away, to taking you into the desert, away from all of this, to telling you how I felt and hoping against hope you might feel the same.”
“But you didn’t.”
“No. You gave me no reason to hope. You were so cold to me.” He padded his thumb over her cheek. “So when Addan died, it was easy to see your grief, to know what you had lost. We were to marry, and your body would be mine. I had no business wanting any other part of you. Even when it was offered.”
Billionaire Brides: An Anthology Page 18