Chapter 19 #3
My breath catches at the endearment he greets her with. My Arabic isn’t great, but between the one semester I took in college and the Kuwaiti soap operas with terrible subtitles I grew up watching with my grandmother, I know a little bit. I certainly know this one.
Hayati. My life.
You just gave me something to live for.
I have to clear my throat to shock myself into breathing again, trying to push away Zaid’s words echoing in my head.
‘You want her to call you baba?’ I ask him, trying to distract myself from whatever’s squeezing my heart and screaming at me to make this man more than just my baby’s father.
Zaid nods as he looks up at me. ‘It’s what I called my dad as a kid.’
‘I did too.’
The mention of our fathers brings a heaviness into the room.
His is gone and mine is . . . gone in his own way.
The man I knew disappeared the day Mom died and I’ve only gotten flashes of him since.
Right now, he’s not much more than a specter across the paddock, and I don’t know if I’ll ever truly get him back.
As if he knows what I’m thinking, Zaid gently asks, ‘Have you spoken to him lately?’
I shake my head. ‘I’ve called a few times but he hasn’t answered.’
It hurts, no matter how much I don’t want to admit it. I know things haven’t been good between us and I know he’s disappointed in me, but it doesn’t negate the fact that I want my dad in my life. And I want him to be in his granddaughter’s life too, hopefully in the ways he couldn’t be for me.
‘When did things change between you two?’ Zaid asks, propping himself up on his forearm, though his other hand remains protectively on my bump. ‘After everything with me?’
‘That didn’t help things,’ I confess. ‘But it started after my mom died. He took her death hard.’ I pause to breathe, to prepare myself to recount it, because even two decades later it’s still difficult to talk about.
‘It was sudden – an aneurysm when they were driving home from an IndyCar race. I think he blamed himself for not being able to save her, even though there was nothing he could do. He just . . . had to focus on himself for a while after that. So he sent me to boarding school and followed his dream of being an engineer in F1.’
‘Wait, wait.’ Zaid frowns and searches my face. ‘He just left you?’
‘I mean . . .’ I shrug at the blunt phrasing, but there’s really only one answer. ‘Yeah, he did.’
‘How old were you when she died? Fourteen?’ When I nod, his frown turns indignant. ‘You were a child. He had a kid to take care of and he left you.’
‘He wouldn’t have been a very good parent to me if he’d stayed,’ I admit quietly. ‘It was probably for the best.’
I’ve been told before that I’m making excuses for him, and sure, maybe I am. But those excuses are for me, so I can move on from the worst parts of my life and not dwell on what could have been.
I’ve sewn myself back together so many times over the years that it feels like second nature. I pick myself up and dust myself off and keep going because what other choice do I have? If I simply stop moving, if I stop to let myself truly recover, I fear I might never get up again.
But Zaid looks at me like he can see every scar I’ve done my best to cover up. Like he wants to undo every self-inflicted stitch and heal them properly.
‘You deserved better, Ava.’
‘I know.’ Years of therapy and space to understand allow me to mostly believe those words. ‘But every time my dad looks at me, I think he sees her, and then he remembers what he’s lost. That has to be tough.’
Losing a mother is hard, yes, I can’t deny that.
But I can’t imagine the pain of losing the love of your life, the person you thought you’d grow old with, your soulmate.
Maybe it’s why I haven’t been able to settle down with anyone – there’s a deep-seated fear of experiencing that loss for myself.
But, honestly, I don’t believe it’s strong enough to stop me from loving the right person.
I want romantic love. I want to give love.
I just hadn’t found the person I felt like I could pour all of that into, and I wasn’t going to wait on them to waltz into my life if it meant delaying my chance to embrace motherhood.
But lying here with Zaid, with his broad palm on my belly, I think I’ve found someone to overcome any lingering fear for, no matter how much comes along with him.
When his hand lifts from my bump, I immediately miss the warmth of his touch, but I don’t go without it for long. He sits up and brushes his fingers across my cheek, sweeping away the hair that’s found its way in front of my eyes.
‘You’re always so worried about everyone else,’ he says quietly, his gaze holding mine. ‘But you never let anyone worry about you.’
‘Because they don’t need to. I’m okay.’
‘Even if you are,’ he gently concedes, ‘you deserve to be taken care of too. And I promise to be the one to do it.’
‘Zaid, you don’t—’
‘That’s not up for debate.’
He dips closer to me, lips finding my forehead to drop a lingering kiss there before he lies back and tucks me against him. I go willingly, nose resting in the crook of his neck, soothed by his steady heartbeat under my palm.
‘Let me take care of you,’ he murmurs against my hair, his touch smoothing over my belly again. ‘Both of you.’