Chapter Fifteen
THE ONLY SOUND IN THE room was the faint buzz of the air conditioner and my own impending humiliation.
Kevin blinked. “I’m sorry, you mean your husband husband?”
“Yes, Kevin,” I hissed. “That husband.”
He looked confused. “That’s...good, right? For, you know, married people?”
I stared at him, my voice dropping to a whisper. “Not when it’s fake.”
“I’m sorry—what?”
“The marriage,” I said, throwing my hands up. “It’s not real. It’s an arrangement. A contract. A mutual...convenience thing.”
Kevin’s mouth opened, then closed again. “You’re joking.”
“I wish I were.” I sank into my chair, rubbing my temples. “It was supposed to be simple. Straightforward. Emotionally sterile.”
“Sterile,” he repeated. “Right. Totally normal word to use about marriage.”
I groaned. “I wasn’t supposed to feel anything. That was the deal. But now I can’t look at him without—God, I don’t even know. Without wanting to apologize, or say something real, or crawl into a hole and stay there forever.”
“Wow. So...you’re catching feelings for your fake husband.”
I pointed a finger at him. “Don’t say it like that.”
“Like what?”
“Like it’s the world’s worst reality show.”
He smirked. “What exactly happened?”
“I brought him lunch,” I muttered. “Like a pathetic, smitten idiot.”
“Lunch doesn’t sound terrible.”
“His favorite lunch,” I said, burying my face in my hands.
“From his favorite place. And he sort of smiled, Kevin—the kind that makes your stomach feel like it’s on a rollercoaster—and not in the fun way.
And then he went all alpha male and physically defended my honor against a guy who barely understood the fundamentals of calculus and has the upper-body strength of a spaghetti noodle. ”
“Okay, that’s...objectively hot.”
“Don’t make it worse.”
He let out a low whistle. “Oh, it’s already worse,” he said, shaking his head. “You’re doomed.”
“You know,” I said, looking up, “this is all his fault.”
Kevin raised an eyebrow, mid-yogurt scoop. “Your husband?”
“Yes. When we first met, he was rude, and boring, and short.”
“Five eleven isn’t short,” he protested.
“Five eleven and a half,” I corrected.
“Five eleven and a half isn’t short,” he repeated, indignant now.
“It’s shorter than me.”
He pointed his spoon at me. “Barely. And not in a way anyone would even be able to notice.”
“I notice.”
He choked on a laugh. “Fine—he was rude, and boring, and short. And now?”
I glared at him. “And now he’s still rude, and boring, and short—but he’s also secretly nice.
Which is worse, by the way. He cooks me dinner, and cleans up after me, and leaves me these stupid sticky notes—” I dug into my purse, pulling out the small mountain I’d been collecting for months, colorful squares of guilt and tenderness and confusion.
I threw them on the floor, the tiny scraps fluttering down like confetti from a parade I hadn’t agreed to attend.
“—like some deranged stationery fairy,” I finished, out of breath.
“If I had known another person was lurking behind his cold, color-blind exterior, I never would’ve married him. ”
Kevin crouched, picked one up, and read aloud in a mocking voice, “‘Eat this.’” He picked up another. “‘Lunch for work.’” His tone softened. “‘Picked up your favorite dessert on my way home.’” He glanced at me, the corners of his mouth twitching. “This is so cute.”
“It’s not cute, Kevin! It’s manipulative. It’s—it’s emotional trickery. He’s lulling me into a false sense of affection with Post-its and properly seasoned food.”
Kevin sat back on his heels, laughing now. “So, let me get this straight. You’re mad because your fake husband is too nice to you?”
“I’m mad because he’s confusing,” I said, pacing again. “He spends weeks pretending I don’t exist, refusing to tell me a single thing about him, and then he goes and does things like this, and suddenly I’m in a Wes Anderson movie about domestic yearning.”
Kevin grinned. “Domestic yearning?”
“Shut up.” I pressed my palms to my eyes. “I can’t even look at him without feeling like I’ve forgotten how to breathe. And it’s ridiculous, because this isn’t supposed to mean anything, and now I’m the dummy who wants it to be something else.”
Kevin stood, dusting off his scrubs. “Maybe it already is.”
I groaned, dropping into my chair again. “Please don’t make this a metaphor, Kevin. I’m hanging by a thread.”
He shrugged, still smiling. “A love thread.”
“Get out,” I said, pointing at the door. “And don’t you dare whisper a word of this to anyone, or I’ll fire you.”
He laughed all the way out, leaving the sticky notes scattered across the floor—tiny, colorful reminders of everything I’d spent months trying not to feel.
BY THE TIME I PULLED into the driveway, I’d rehearsed at least three different versions of normal. A breezy “hey.” A casual “how was work?” A maybe-we-didn’t-have-a-meltdown-in-your-office smile.
But all the practiced ease evaporated the second I opened the door, and a suitcase sat by the entrance. Neat, zipped, and heavy-looking, like it had already decided where it was going.
My stomach dropped so fast I thought I might be sick.
For a moment, I just stood there, keys still in hand, my brain tripping over every thought at once.
He was leaving. He was actually leaving.
Because of me—because I’d yelled and accused and said all the wrong things.
Because Malik was a fragile little weasel who probably snitched on him, and he got fired.
Because I’d finally broken the unspoken rule of our fake marriage: don’t feel too much.
“Khalifa?”
He stepped out of his bedroom, rolling his sleeves up.
“You’re leaving?” I blurted, my heart thudding in my throat. “You said everything was fine—”
He shook his head, cutting me off gently. “I have to go to Lebanon. My mom...she’s going to pass soon. They don’t think she’ll make it to the end of the week.”
All the selfish panic drained out of me in an instant. “Oh,” I whispered. “Khalifa, I—I’m so sorry.”
He nodded once, avoiding my eyes. “I booked a flight for tomorrow morning.”
“I can come with you,” I said before I even thought it through, the words tumbling out. “I can—whatever you need. I can be there.”
“No,” he replied immediately. “It’s not safe for you to travel there right now.”
“But it’s safe for you?” I asked, incredulous.
“I don’t have a choice.”
I wanted to say something, but words felt clumsy in the face of something so big. Grief wasn’t a language I knew how to speak.
“Okay.”
But I couldn’t sleep. Every sound—the hum of the fridge, the clock ticking on the wall, even my own breathing—was suddenly too loud. I paced my room for hours, torn between guilt and something that felt dangerously close to worry.
At midnight, I called Robert. “Hey, it’s Lilly.” My voice came out thin. “I, um...I have a bit of a family emergency. Would you be able to cover my patients for a few weeks?”
He hesitated, then sighed softly. “Yeah, of course. Don’t worry about it. Take all the time you need.”
“Thank you.”
I dragged out my suitcase, trying to ignore the part of me whispering that Khalifa would hate this.
But I didn’t care. He could be angry, he could roll his eyes and shut me out.
I wasn’t doing it for him—I was doing it because the idea of him being alone in that kind of loss wasn’t right, even if we were nothing more than.
..roommates? Acquaintances? Semi-friends?
By five a.m., the sky was a deep, sleepy gray, and I was sitting on the couch, dressed and ready, my carry-on at my feet.
When he walked out of his room, his hand froze mid-button. “What are you doing?”
I looked up, meeting his surprised stare. “I’m coming with you, Khalifa. You don’t have to like it—you just have to accept it. Besides, you still owe me a honeymoon.”
He exhaled slowly through his nose and went into the kitchen.
I cleared my throat, trying to sound casual. “How’s your hand?”
The corner of his lip curved just so. “It’s perfect. I barely felt a thing. Guess there wasn’t any man hiding under that pretty face.”
My brain was too flustered to come up with an acceptable response.
He leaned a hip against the counter, studying me. “What did he say to you before I came?”
You’re too much for anyone to handle.
I swallowed and forced a small shrug. “Nothing really.”
You’re not enough.
His eyes didn’t move from my face. “You looked upset.”
Who would want you?
“I wasn’t,” I said lightly, fidgeting with the zipper on my suitcase.
“Why are you checking a bag?”
I frowned. “This is a carry-on.”
“That is not a carry-on, Lillian.”
“Yes, it is. I always carry this bag on.”
He shook his head, grabbing a travel mug from the cabinet. “You must’ve been flying with very forgiving airlines. Did you even buy a ticket?”
“No,” I said, chin lifting stubbornly. “You can buy one for me at the airport.”
He stared at me like I was the most exhausting person alive. “Oh, I’m buying it?”
“Yes, you are. I didn’t agree to do fifty-fifty.”
He rolled his eyes, shoved the second coffee he’d made into my hands, and brushed past me toward the door. “Let’s go.”