Crazy Little Thing Called Love (Sun Tower #3)

33. Zinneerah

33

Zinneerah

“ I wish I had boobs.”

I sigh, tugging at the neckline of the swimsuit.

My only audience is Sahara and Dua on FaceTime, tucked in their little boxes on the screen. We’ve been on this call for an hour, which is 45 minutes longer than anyone should ever be forced to analyze their marriage, confront their emotional damage, and, most importantly, listen to me spiral into the abyss of self-loathing.

“I’ll trade you mine,” Dua says, lounging back on her bed, dangling gummy worms over her lips. “Honestly, I could do without them. Zayan loves using them as pillows, which is sweet in theory but kind of annoying in practice.” She nips the head of the red worm. “My melons are not a mattress, you know?”

“Must be nice to have something people want to lie on,” I mutter, turning to get a side view in the mirror. Bad idea. The mirror isn’t here to help me. It’s here to taunt me.

“You’re perfectly fine as you are,” Sahara chimes in, not even looking up from her laptop. She’s been cooped up in her office all day, drafting some multi-million-dollar corporate proposal Azeer forced on her.

“Perfectly flat,” I correct under my breath.

“Perfectly you,” she counters.

“Maybe I should just wear, like, a bra and panties?” I offer, cringing at the thought.

“Gross,” Dua says, wrinkling her nose.

“I don’t see what’s gross about it.” Sahara finally gives me her full attention. “Though personally, I think what you’re wearing now is much better. It’s sophisticated. It’s sleek. And I don’t say this lightly: it’s sexy.”

If Sahara Khan, with her femme-fatale cheekbones and toned abs, thinks I look sexy, then maybe this black one-piece isn’t the crime against humanity I thought it was.

But sexy people lounge on yachts in Italy and eat chocolate covered strawberries in slow motion. Sexy people have breezy little flings that they laugh about later over cocktails. Sexy people are not me.

“So, what’s the plan? Are you and Raees bhai gonna, like, hook up in the pool or something?” Dua asks, snapping me out of my insecurities. She stretches a gummy worm between her teeth like a cat with a piece of string.

I flush so hard I can feel it in my toes. “You know, we’re just gonna . . . talk.”

“In the pool?”

“Your issue?”

She shrugs, grinning. “Nothing. I just think if you’re looking this fine”—she gestures at the screen—”and Raees bhai will be all shirtless or whatever, you’re not just gonna sit there talking about your feelings? That’s some nonsense. You know, where the girl pours out her soul about her childhood trauma, and then the guy’s solution is to kiss her into oblivion. Next thing you know, you’re naked and emotionally compromised.”

I gulp. “He isn’t like that, and you know it, Dua.”

“She’s exaggerating,” Sahara says, ever the voice of reason. “But for what it’s worth, I don’t think Raees is like that. From what you’ve told us, he seems like the type who’d rather cry with you than use your tears as a prelude to anything else. He’s also sharing his feelings about his dad, right? You’ll probably end up comforting each other and sobbing in each other’s arms.”

“Sounds on brand for them,” Dua says with a shrug.

I groan, pressing the heels of my palms into my eyes. Why are they like this? Why am I like this?

Then, the little security notification pops up on my screen.

“Oh, my god, he’s here.” My voice comes out in a broken squeak. “I have to go.”

Without waiting for their replies, I hang up the call, yanking a soft cotton nightgown over the swimsuit. I run my fingers through my hair, leaving it loose because I know he likes it that way.

I glance at the mirror one last time.

It’s just a conversation. Just a harmless, emotionally vulnerable conversation with the man I married but still barely understand.

What could possibly go wrong?

When I step into the kitchen, Raees is at the counter, making himself coffee. The soft clink of the spoon against the mug is the only sound in the room.

I tap lightly on the doorframe. “Hey.”

He turns to me, and my heart stops. His eyes are swollen, framed with red, dark circles drawn beneath them like bruises from sleepless nights. His lips are pressed in a tight frown, trembling as the seconds stretch on.

“Raees . . .” His name barely makes it past my throat. “Are you okay—?”

He breaks.

A choked sound escapes him, and his shoulders collapse under the force of it. He leans back against the counter, hands flying to his face, shielding it from me, but I can see the way his body jerks with each sob.

I can feel it.

Oh, God.

Tears prick my eyes, and before I can stop them, they’re slithering down my cheeks. I take a shaky breath. “Raees.”

A whirlwind of thoughts batter my mind. Did his father do this? Did he yell at him? Call him names? Refuse to see him? Hurt him, again, in some unforgivable way?

My chest burns with anger. If his father’s behind this, I swear to God, I’ll end his life.

But I push the rage aside and force my feet to move.

One step, then another. Slowly, carefully.

I have no idea what I’m doing.

How do you console someone who’s breaking right in front of you? I think of Baba, the way he used to scoop me into his arms when I fell and scraped my knees. How Alex and Ophelia would tease me relentlessly but never once made me cry real tears. I think of my ex, how I swallowed every emotion in front of him until I forgot how to cry altogether.

Even when the sadness pressed down on me, I’d bury it deep and curl up like a fetus under my blankets.

But now . . . now the sight of my husband like this is unraveling something in me.

“Raees,” I whisper again, stepping closer. My hands hover in the air, unsure, before I gently cradle his wrists and guide them down from his face. His head dips low, as if he can’t bear for me to see him like this. “Did he hurt you?”

Raees shudders, and the movement splinters something deep inside me.

He shakes his head, slowly.

I press my hand over my chest and exhale a fragile breath of relief. Thank you, God.

“Everything . . . broke when I left.” His shoulders shake, his hands pressing hard against his eyes. “He . . . he acted like—like the father I always wanted.”

My heart shatters into a million pieces.

I swipe my own tears with the back of my hand, trying to collect myself. Somehow, I manage to climb onto the counter beside him, so we’re closer.

I reach out and take his wrist, softly tugging him forward until he’s standing between my knees, close enough that I can feel the tremor in his breathing. “Raees,” I whisper. “Let me hold you. Please, just . . . let me hold you.”

He lifts his head—wet cheeks, lips trembling, lashes heavy with tears that glitter like tiny stars. “Zinn . . .”

I don’t wait.

I wrap my arms around his neck and pull him close, drawing him into me until his face is buried in the curve of my shoulder.

His arms come up slowly, then wrap around my waist. A ragged sob tears from his chest, and then another, and another, until his whole body is shaking in my hold. His tears soak into my skin, but I don’t care.

All I care about is keeping him here. With me.

I press my fingers into his hair, stroking through the soft strands, then run my hand down his back, over and over. “I’ve got you,” I murmur, my lips brushing the curve of his ear. “I’m right here. I’m not going anywhere.”

And I don’t.

I hold him as his storm rages, as the tide rises and crashes against me.

I hold him as his breathing stumbles and staggers, as his grief breaks loose.

And slowly, like waves retreating from the shore, I hold him as the storm begins to quiet, and his breaths grow slower against my neck.

“You are my healer,” Raees murmurs against my skin. He draws a long breath and exhales slowly, and my eyes flutter shut. “All those times I was five seconds away from taking my own life, my conscience thought better against it. Like it knew . . . there was something, someone, waiting for me. Someone who’d make me believe in tomorrow again.”

I suck in a choppy breath, tipping my head back toward the ceiling as tears prick my eyes. I try to blink them away, but they come anyway.

Raees pulls back just enough to meet my gaze, his hands coming up to hold my face. His thumbs brush the tears spilling down my cheeks, and he looks at me like I’m the cure.

“Zinneerah.” My name breaks apart on his tongue. “I didn’t understand the significance of existing until I met you. After everything that’s happened to me, I didn’t think putting myself out there was worth it anymore. That I didn’t deserve to be loved the way I loved. That the fault laid within me. I believed that theory for so long, I’d started making up my own methods to prove it.” A small whimper leaves him. “But I became so alone, Zinneerah.”

A sob rises in my throat, and I bite down hard on my lip, drowning with him.

“You’re the only good thing that’s happened to me,” he chokes out, and I feel it—his pain, his love, his everything—cracking me open in ways I didn’t think I could be. But I’m not alone this time. We’re breaking together, reshaping into something worthwhile. “I promise to you, I am never going to hurt you. I am never leaving you alone by yourself.” His hands shift, tilting my face up so I’m caught in the molten glow of his golden-brown eyes. “You are my wife. Soon, you’ll be the mother of our children. The woman I will be buried beside. And I am going to find you again and again and again, in every single universe we live in. It will always. Be. You.”

His beautiful vow crashes over me, and I nod, over and over, my head bobbing so many times it makes me dizzy. But I can’t stop. Agreeing isn’t enough. I have to absorb it, imprint it into every part of me.

“Abbu said,” he whispers, “that I had become someone on my own terms.” His thumbs brush softly over my damp lashes, wiping away what remains of my tears. “But the truth is, Zinneerah, I wouldn’t have become anyone at all if it wasn’t for you. Do you hear me? I am because of you . You’re the reason I’m still here. The reason I’m someone.” He’s searching me now, his gaze moving back and forth, desperate to catch even the faintest trace of doubt or hesitation. But there’s none. There’s only him. There’s only us. And in this moment, I know there’s nowhere else I could ever be. “Do you understand that, my love?”

My love.

All I want to do is grab him. Grab his shirt, his collar, his entire soul, and kiss him until the world disappears. Until there’s no pain, no history, no one but us.

Us, us, us.

“I do,” I say, my voice catching on a smile that trembles on my lips.

His fingers brush against the side of my neck, wiping at the dampness there.

Leaning over, I grab a couple of tissues from the box on the counter. He reaches for one, but I pull back, lifting an eyebrow. “No, I’ve got this.”

His brows knit together in that sweet, boyish scrunch that melts my heart, but he doesn’t argue. He leans back against the counter, gripping its edges, and lets me tend to him.

I start with his cheeks, blotting away the streaks of tears, then carefully dab at the corners of his eyes and the dark sweep of his lashes. His skin is warm beneath the tissue, and as I swipe gently along the column of his throat, I feel his pulse beneath my fingertips.

His gaze doesn’t leave me. Not for a second. It’s so intense that it makes my hands falter. Every time our eyes meet, an electric spark buzzes through me, and I have to fight to keep my composure. But then his hand moves, index finger brushing just under my eyes, catching a tear I didn’t even realize had fallen. “Why were you crying?”

I glance down at the tissue in my hand, fiddling with the corner of it before answering. “Because you were.”

He smiles softly. “I don’t ever want to be the reason for your tears, Zinneerah.” His knuckles caress my cheek, and the warmth of his touch freezes time completely. Slowly, his hand cups my face, his thumb moving back and forth in a soothing rhythm against my skin. “I’m sorry if I dumped everything on you all at once.” His lips tilt in a self-deprecating smile that doesn’t quite reach his eyes. “You know me. I talk too much. Always have.”

I shake my head, feeling my throat hit its limit. My hands form the words in a language that feels closer to my heart . I like listening to you , I sign. Not want to say the wrong thing.

“You’re perfect,” he mutters. “As your devoted husband, I support your wrongs and rights.”

A laugh bubbles up, muffled behind my palm as I press it to my mouth.

“I really like that,” he says suddenly.

Like what?

“Your smile,” he mumbles. “I love it, actually.”

I lower the tissue still clutched in my hand, my grin growing wider, spreading until my teeth peek through. He mirrors me immediately, as though my happiness is something he can’t help but reflect. “Happy?”

“And in love,” Raees whispers.