She stared at him in shocked silence. He felt something move in him, but stamped it down. No. Damn her. Her pain did not, could not, matter—not anymore.
Tariq shook his head and turned back toward the door.
“Please…” she said, though it sounded more like a sob. “Where are you going?”
The look he threw back at her should have burned her alive.
“To see my son,” he bit out.
And then he strode from the room before he broke something. Before she broke him any further than she already had.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
OTHER than informing her that her presence was required only to assure him access to the child, Tariq cut her off completely. He did not speak to her on the plane, he merely sat in a thunderous silence that made Jessa ache in ways she would have thought impossible, though she would not let herself dissolve into tears as she wished. He did not speak to her in the car that took them from Leeds to York and then up the York Road toward the North Yorkshire Moors, and the small village along the way where Sharon had moved almost four years ago. Jessa could hardly stand to look at the cultivated fields that spread out on all sides, that intense British green against the cold gray skies. She could see only the coming heartbreak, the doom, the end of everything she had fought so hard to provide for the son she had loved enough to let go. She knew that no one could emerge from it unscathed, not her sister and Barry, not Tariq, not herself.
And worst of all, not Jeremy.
“I don’t know what your plan is,” Jessa said in a low voice as the car turned into the village and made its way along the high street. It was not the first time she had attempted to speak to him, but there was a desperation in her voice that had not been there before. “You cannot simply arrive at my sister’s house and make demands!”
“Watch me,” Tariq said, his voice vibrating with the same fury that had gripped him since Paris. He did not look at Jessa. He kept his brooding gaze fixed on the village that slid by outside the window, one elegant hand tapping out his agitation against the armrest.
“Tariq, this is madness!” Jessa cried. “My sister has adopted him! It is all quite legal, and cannot be undone!”
“You will not tell me what can and cannot be undone,” he bit out, turning his head to pierce her with his dark, imperious gaze. He was angrier than she’d ever seen him, and all of it so brutally cold, so bitter. “You, who would lie about something like this? Who would conceal a child from his own father? I have no interest in what you think I should or should not do!”
“I understand that you’re angry,” Jessa said, fighting to keep her voice level. He laughed slightly, in disbelief. She set her jaw and forged ahead anyway. “I understand that you think you’ve been betrayed.”
“That I think I have been betrayed?” he echoed, his eyes burning into her. He sat as far away from her as it was possible to sit in the enclosed space of the car, and yet she could feel him invading her space, taking her over, crowding her. “I would hate to see what you consider a real betrayal, Jessa, if this does not qualify.”
“This is not about you,” Jessa said as firmly as she could when she was trembling. “Don’t you see? This has nothing to do with me or you. This is about—”
“We are here,” he said dismissively, cutting her off as the car pulled up at Sharon’s front gate. Tariq did not wait for the driver to get out of the car, he simply threw open his door and climbed out.
Jessa threw herself out after him, her chest heaving as if she’d run a marathon. Tariq paused for a moment outside the gate, and she knew it was now or never. After everything she had sacrificed—including, though it made her want to weep, Tariq himself—she could not let him wreck it all. She had to try one last time.
She lunged forward and grabbed on to his arm, holding him when he might have walked through the gate.
“Release my arm,” he said almost tonelessly, though she did not mistake the menace underneath, nor the way he tensed his strong muscles beneath her hands.
“You have to listen to me!” she gasped. “You have to!”
“I have listened to you, and I have listened to you,” Tariq said coldly, his eyes black with his anger. “I have watched you weep and I have heard you talk about how much you regret what you had to do, what you did because of me. I did not realize you were still punishing me!”
“It was not because of you!” Jessa cried as the wind cut into her, chilling her. “It was because of me!” She dragged in a wild breath, all the tears she’d been fighting off surging forth, and she simply let them. “I am the one who was so deficient that you left me in the first place, and I am the one who failed so completely as a mother that I couldn’t keep my own baby! Me.”
She had his attention then. He stilled, his dark eyes intense on hers.
“But I did one thing right,” Jessa continued, fighting to keep the tears from her voice. “I made sure he was with people who loved him—who already loved him—who could give him the world. And he is happy here, Tariq, happier than I ever could have made him.”
“A child is happiest with his own parents,” Tariq said. Did she imagine that his voice was a trifle less cold? Was it possible?
Jessa stared at him, her fingers flexing into his arm, demanding that he hear her now if he heard her at all.
“He is with his parents,” she whispered fiercely.
Tariq made a noise that might have been a roar of anger, checked behind the muscle that worked in his jaw. He shook her hands off his arm. Jessa let them drop to her sides.
“He is my blood,” he snarled at her. “Mine!”
“His family is here,” Jessa continued because she had to. Because it was true. “Right here. And he has no idea that he ever had any parents but these.”
“Why am I not surprised that your sister would keep this secret as well?” Tariq demanded. “You are a family of liars!”
“He is a little boy who has only ever known these parents and this home!” Jessa cried. The wind whipped into her, racing down from the moors, and her hair danced between them like a copper flame. She shoved it back. “There’s no lie here! They are his parents by law, and in fact. He loves them, Tariq. He loves them!”
His hard mouth was set in an obstinate line. “He is not yet five years old. He will learn—”
“You lost your parents, and so did I,” Jessa interrupted, her heart pounding so hard in her head, her throat, that she thought she might faint. But she could not, so she did not. She searched his remote, angry face. “You know what it’s like to be ripped away from everything you know. You know! How could you do that to your own child?”
The door to the cottage opened, and it was as if time stopped.
“Aunt Jessa!” cried the sweet baby voice. Jessa’s heart dropped to her shoes.
“Tariq, you cannot do this!” Jessa hissed at him urgently, but she did not think he heard her. He had gone pale, and still. Slowly, he turned.
And everything ended, then and there.
My son.
Tariq stared at the boy, unable to process what he was seeing. It had been one thing to rage about a child in the abstract, and quite another to see a small, mischievouslooking little boy, still chubby of cheek and wild of hair from an earlier sleep, toddle out the front door.
Tariq was frozen into place, unable to move, as the boy scampered down the steps. Jessa threw a look over her shoulder as she moved to intercept the child, scooping him up into her arms. She murmured something Tariq couldn’t hear, which made the boy laugh and wiggle in her grasp.
The boy. Why could he not bring himself to use the child’s name? Jeremy.
Another figure appeared at the door. Jessa’s sister. She looked at the scene in front of her and blanched, telling Tariq that she knew exactly who he was. For a moment she and Tariq locked eyes, both struck still.
“Jessa,” the other woman said, keeping her voice calm for the child’s benefit though her eyes remained on Tariq, wary and scared. “What are you d
oing here? I thought you were on holiday.”
Jessa shifted and put the little boy back on the ground. “I was,” she said. She shrugged, half apology and half helplessness. “We thought we would stop by.”
She looked at Tariq then, her cinnamon eyes swimming with tears. She put out her hand and cupped the top of Jeremy’s head in her palm.
Jeremy, Tariq thought. My son’s name is Jeremy.
“How lovely,” the sister said, her voice strained. “You know how much Jeremy loves his aunt.”
Jessa stood before him, still touching the little boy, her gaze silently imploring. Tariq felt something rip apart inside of him, and the pain was so intense for a moment that he could not tell if what he felt was emotional or physical.
Jeremy shook off Jessa’s hand, his dark eyes fixed on the stranger he only just then seemed to notice standing before him. Tariq’s heart stopped in his chest as the little boy moved toward him in his lurching, jerky dance of a walk, stopping when he could peer up from beneath his thick black hair. He was close enough to touch, and yet Tariq could not move.
His eyes were the same dark green as Tariq’s. Tariq felt the impact of them like a body blow, but he did not react, he only returned the solemn, wide-eyed stare that was directed at him. Jeremy was as much Jessa’s child as his. Tariq could see her in the boy’s fairer skin, the shape of his eyes and brows, and that defiant little chin.
“Hello, Jeremy,” Tariq said, his voice thick. “I am…”
He paused, and he could feel the tension emanating from both Jessa and her sister. He could almost hear it. He glanced over and saw that Jessa’s sister had covered her mouth with her hands, her eyes wide and fearful. And then there was Jessa, who watched him with her heart in her gaze and tears making slow tracks down her cheeks. She stood with her arms at her sides, defeated, waiting for him to destroy everything she had worked so hard to protect.
She mouthed the word, Please.
“I am Tariq,” he said at last, gazing back down into eyes so like his own, because it was the only thing he could think of that was not threatening to anyone, and was also true.
Jeremy blinked.
Then he let out a giggle and turned back around, to hurtle himself toward the door of the cottage and toward the woman who stood there, still holding her hands over her mouth as if holding back a scream. He buried his face against her leg, his small arms grabbing on to her in a spontaneous hug. Then he tilted back his face, lit from within with the purest, most uncomplicated love that Tariq had ever seen.
“Hi Mommy,” Jeremy chirped, oblivious to the drama being played out around him.
Jessa’s sister smiled down at him, then looked back at Tariq, her own face stamped with the same love, though hers was fiercer, more protective. But no less pure.
Tariq felt his heart break into a thousand pieces inside his chest, and scatter like dust.
Tariq stood by the gate, his back to the cottage, while Jessa carried on a rushed conversation with her sister. She kept sneaking looks at his strong, proud back, wondering what he must be feeling rather than paying attention to Sharon. When her sister finally went inside and closed the door, she hurried down the path to his side.
He did not look at her. He kept his eyes trained on the fields across the lane, that swept to the horizon.
“Thank you,” she said, with all the feeling she’d tried to hide from Jeremy. And even from Sharon.
“I did not do anything that requires thanks,” Tariq said stiffly. Bitterly.
“You did not ruin a little boy’s life, when you could have and have been well within your rights,” Jessa said quietly. “I’ll thank you for that for the rest of my life.”
“I have no rights, as you have been at great pains to advise me.”
“I am sorry,” she said. She stepped closer to him, forcing him to look at her. His eyes seemed so sad that it made her want to weep. Without thinking, she reached out and grabbed hold of his hand. “I am so sorry.”
“So am I,” he said quietly, almost letting the wind snatch it away. He looked down at their joined hands. “More than I can say.”
She would not cry for him, not now, not when he held himself so aloof. She knew what that must mean—it was inevitable, really, after what they’d just been through. Jessa took a deep breath and forced herself to smile as she let go of him. She wanted to hold him and kiss him until the remoteness left him and he was once again alive and wild in her arms. She wanted to share the pain of leaving Jeremy behind, and make it easier, somehow, for both of them to bear. Oh, the things she wanted!
But she had always known that she could not have this man. Not for good. And she knew that he had lost something of far greater significance today than her. She could let him go just as she had let Jeremy go. It was the only way she knew how to love them both.
“You should return to Nur as you planned,” she said, proud that her voice was even, and showed none of her inner turmoil. She could let him go. She could. “Your country needs you.”
So do I! something inside of her screamed, but she bit it back, forced it down. He had never been hers to keep. She had known that from the start.
He seemed to look at her from very far away. He blinked, and some of the darkness receded, letting the green back in. Jessa felt a hard knot ease slightly inside her chest.
“And what about you?” he asked, something she couldn’t read passing across his face.
Jessa shrugged, shoving her hands into her pockets so that the fists she’d made could not betray her. “I’ll return to York, of course,” she said.
The wind surged between them, cold and fierce. Jessa met his gaze and hoped hers was calm. She could do this. And if she broke down later, when she was alone, who would have to know?
“Is this your revenge, then?” he asked, his voice soft though there was a hardness around his eyes. “You wait until I am bleeding and then you turn the knife? Is this what I deserve for what you think I did to you five years ago?”
“No!” she gasped, as stunned as if he’d hit her. Her head reeled. “We are both to blame for what happened five years ago!”
“I am the one who left,” Tariq said bitterly.
“You had no choice,” Jessa replied. “And I was the one so silly she ran away for days. I left first.” She shook her head. “And how can we regret it? We made a beautiful child, a perfect child.”
“He is happy here.” Tariq said it as if it were fact, a statement, but Jessa could see the pain and uncertainty in the dark sheen of his gaze.
“He is,” she whispered fiercely. “I promise you, he is.”
She didn’t know what to do with the ache inside of her, the agony of feeling so apart from him. She was not the desperate, deeply depressed girl she had been when she had given Jeremy up. She was stronger now, and she knew that the way she loved Tariq was not like the infatuation of her youth. It was tempered with the suffering she’d endured, the way she had come to know him now, as the man she had always imagined him to be.
It might be that she could not bear to make this sacrifice after all.
He is not for you, she told herself fiercely. Don’t make this harder than it already is!
“Come,” Tariq said. He nodded toward the car. “I cannot be here any longer.”
Jessa looked back at the cottage, so cozy and inviting against the bleakness of the autumn fields, and yet a place she would always associate with this particular mourning—the kind she imagined might fade and change but would never entirely disappear. She pulled her coat tighter around her. Then she put her arm through Tariq’s and let him walk her to the car.
Jessa sat beside him in the plush backseat, feeling his grief as keenly as her own, as sharp as the wind still ripping down from the moors. Tariq did not speak for some time, his attention focused out the window, watching as fields gave way to villages, and villages to towns, as they made their way back through the country toward the city of York. Next to him, Jessa knew that his mind and his heart were stil
l back at her sister’s cottage, held tight in Jeremy’s sticky little hands. She knew because hers were and, to some extent, always would be.
She had to hope that it would grow easier, as, indeed, in many ways it already had in the past few years. Seeing Jeremy thrive—seeing him happy and so deeply loved—healed parts of herself she had not known were broken. She hoped that someday it would do the same for Tariq.
“I do not know what family means,” Tariq said in a low voice. He turned toward her, catching her by surprise, seeming to fill the space between them. “I have never had anyone look at me the way that boy looked at your sister. His mother.” His gaze was so fierce then that it made Jessa catch her breath. “Except you. Even now, after everything I have done to you.”
Their eyes locked. He reached over and tucked a stray curl behind her ear, then took her face in his hands. The warmth of his touch sped through her veins, heating her from within.
“I have already lost a son,” he said, his voice almost too low, as if it hurt him. “I cannot lose you, Jessa. Not you, too.”
Joy eased into her then, nudging aside the grief. It was a trickle at first, and then, as he continued to look at her with his face so open, so honest, it widened until it flowed—a hard and complex kind of joy, flavored with all they had lost and all the ways they were tied together.
She reached across the space between them, over her fears and their shared grief, and slid her hand up to hold him as he held her—holding that strong, harsh face, looking deep into the promises in his dark green eyes.
“Then you won’t,” she whispered as if it were a vow.
She would let the fear go this time, instead of him.
She would love him as long as he let her.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
HE HEARD her laughter before he saw her.
Tariq strode down the wide palace corridor, past the ancient tapestries and archaeological pieces that told the story of Nur’s long history in each successive niche along the way. The floor beneath his feet was tiled, mosaics stretching before him and behind him, all in vibrant colors as befit the royal palace of a king. When he reached the wide, arched doors that opened into the palace’s interior courtyard, he paused.
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