Chapter Twenty-Eight
KHALIFA REFUSED TO tell me anything.
Not the destination. Not the plan. Not even how long it would take to get there. He just said, “Trust me,” like those two words weren’t the verbal equivalent of jumping off a cliff blindfolded.
We’d barely merged onto the highway before I started asking.
“Are we there yet?”
His fingers tightened on the steering wheel. “We’ve been driving for eleven minutes.”
“Time is a social construct.”
“It’s not.”
“It feels like it’s been at least...forty-seven.”
He didn’t dignify that with a response.
Five minutes later: “Now are we there?”
“No.”
“Are we close?”
“No.”
“Are we—?”
He turned, eyes flicking toward me in warning. “Lillian.”
“What? I’m engaging. This is fake-couple bonding.”
“This is psychological warfare.”
I gasped. “You said you trusted me.”
“I said you should trust me.”
“Details,” I muttered, waving him off. I folded my arms and stared out the window, pretending to be offended while fighting the smirk tugging at my lips.
The mountains rose higher with every mile, their peaks dusted white even though it was early spring.
Pines blurred past in endless shades of green, the sky a perfect watercolor blue.
After a while, I said, “You know, this is the first time we’ve driven somewhere together that wasn’t an airport or a hospital.”
He smiled faintly. “We drove to dinner with my coworkers. Besides, you don’t go anywhere.”
I kicked the dashboard lightly. “I do too.”
“Name one place.”
“The grocery store,” I said.
“That doesn’t count.”
“Why not?”
“Because you don’t go to shop. You go to silently judge everyone’s produce choices.”
“I don’t—” I stopped, remembering the woman who’d tried to return avocados because they were “too green.” I sighed. “Okay, maybe I do.”
He grinned, and the sound of his unguarded laughter filled the car, melting the frost inside me. For the first time since Jennie’s surgery, I felt my chest expand without pain.
I glanced at him, leaning back against the seat. “You’ve done this drive before.”
“Hundreds of times.”
“With who?”
“Mostly myself. I like quiet drives.”
“Of course you do,” I teased. “You seem like the type who needs silence to recharge your inner storm cloud.”
He side-eyed me. “And you seem like the type who fills silence just to hear herself speak.”
“Incorrect,” I said primly. “I fill silence to annoy you.”
He gave a soft, disbelieving hum that almost sounded affectionate.
We fell silent for a while, the radio playing something slow and instrumental. When he finally spoke again, it was low. “I used to come this way a lot when I first moved to Canada. Before I started teaching.”
I turned toward him. “Why?”
“Because it reminded me of home. The mountains, the smell of pine after rain.” His jaw tightened. “Beirut has a range like this—less snow, more olive trees. My mom used to make us climb every summer. Said it kept our hearts strong.”
“Did it?”
“Guess we’ll find out.”
I folded inward, drawing my knees up to my chest, curling sideways in the seat until my cheek found the cool leather.
It made me feel smaller, contained in a way my feelings weren’t.
And from that cocoon, I watched him drive us to God knows where.
I wanted to say something about last night, about his brother, about how his father’s grief had turned into a loaded stare that pinned all the blame onto the nearest surviving heart.
I wanted to know how it felt to live with a loss that didn’t scar so much as rewrite the entire blueprint of a person.
A better, braver version of me would have reached for that, would’ve poked gently at the margins of it, asked how long he’d been carrying the guilt, asked if anyone had ever told him none of it was his fault.
But the cowardly me sitting beside him just continued to look at him.
His brown curls were stirring in the breeze from the cracked window, and his posture was startlingly loose, one hand resting on the wheel, the other drifting over the clutch lazily.
The light melted him into someone I almost didn’t recognize, illuminating all the places I’d once mistaken for cold and untouchable.
He seemed suddenly refracted, like someone had tilted a prism, and colors I’d never noticed before were slowly announcing themselves.
His words from yesterday rose again, uninvited but impossible to ignore: If I were capable of being that for anyone...I think I would choose that person to be you.
And I thought, I think I would choose that person to be me, too.
I’d always believed love needed to arrive with theatrics—grand speeches, sweeping gestures, some cinematic swell of feeling.
It was possible I’d sprinted to that conclusion because I’d spent my entire life begging for crumbs of fondness from my family, mistaking scarcity for proof that love needed to be loud to be real.
But maybe that glittery, movie-scene genre of romance was only one type of love.
Maybe there was another type—quieter, steadier, no less true.
Because somewhere between the brutally honest confessions and the long car rides and the way he always seemed to notice the things I never said out loud, I was beginning to wonder if I’d been wrong about Khalifa.
He wasn’t emotionally unavailable. He wasn’t distant or cold or incapable.
He was careful—still on the surface, pulsing with entire worlds underneath.
Maybe I didn’t need some flamboyant, storybook display or a man who wore his heart like a billboard.
Maybe what I needed—what I’d been craving without realizing—was this: someone who showed unconditional affection through consistent, tender, intentional gestures.
Someone who was fluent in me, in my edges and habits, who remembered the big things without trying and the little things without being asked.
Someone who didn’t erupt with emotion but offered it gently, more unwavering, like it was something precious he’d saved only for me.
Maybe what I needed was him, exactly as he was.
All I knew for sure was that when Khalifa offered devotion in those soft, intimate touches, the impact of his passion echoed louder than any dramatic proclamation ever could.
“You’re staring,” he said, eyes fixed on the road like he wasn’t calling me out at all.
“I’m napping,” I countered, face still smushed against the seat.
“With your eyes open?”
“Mhm. Gotta make sure you’re not secretly luring me into the woods to bury me alive.”
“I don’t think so.” His mouth twitched. “I know what napping Lillian looks like. And creeping Lillian. And hangry, and annoyed, and—”
“Is there a Lilly Handbook I didn’t authorize?” I snapped, lifting my head just enough to glower at him.
“Yes,” he said immediately. “You gave it to me on our second date.”
I groaned. “Oh my God, you actually read that thing? I figured you were using the pages as emergency toilet paper. Which, by the way, is dangerous—the colored ink can permanently stain your butt. Very hard to explain at doctor appointments.”
He laughed, loud and unrestrained, the tips of his ears turning cherry red. “Every time I think I have you all figured out, you go and say the weirdest, most unhinged thing imaginable.”
“Is that a bad thing?”
His lips softened into something that wasn’t quite a smile but was definitely aimed at me. “No,” he said. “It’s not.”
Before I could bask in that for too long, he reached over and plucked my hat straight off my head, tossing it into the back seat.
“Um, excuse me?” I grabbed for it. “It’s part of the outfit.”
He gave me a knowing look. “Lillian Tariq doesn’t hide.” He hesitated, then added faintly, almost shy, “Besides...I could barely see your face.”
A buttery heat pooled low in my belly, which could have just been the pancakes staging a volatile comeback and not something far less explainable.
I cleared my throat, suddenly hyperaware of my reflection in the window. “Fine. Whatever. Can you at least tell me if we’re going somewhere where other people will see me?”
“Yes,” he said.
I frowned. “Yes, you’ll tell me, or yes, people will see me?”
“Both.”
I dragged my purse into my lap and flipped down the visor mirror to start damage control—swiping on a little blush, a little gloss, anything to make me look less like someone who’d been emotionally steamrolled for the past twenty-four hours.
He glanced over, amused. “What are you doing?”
“Making myself more presentable,” I muttered, lifting my mascara wand. I’d barely gotten one stroke on when he swerved, the tiniest jerk of the wheel, and the mascara jabbed me right on the nose.
“Khalifa!” I shrieked, smacking his shoulder.
He chuckled, and of course, my irritation collapsed like wet paper. Who knew Khalifa Nasser had a playful side? Certainly not me. Certainly not my heart, which was now performing stunts no cardiologist would sign off on.
We rolled to a stop at the red light. He popped open the console, grabbed a tissue, and angled himself toward me. “Come here.”
I leaned closer, and he braced my chin, gently blotting away the black streak.
“Perfect,” he murmured, lingering a beat too long, long enough that the air thickened, warm and fizzy, and I forgot what oxygen even was. For one giddy, downright irresponsible second, I was certain he wasn’t talking about my freshly de-mascaraed nose at all, but me.
A horn blared behind us, shattering the moment, and we jolted apart like two teenagers caught doing something that was only technically innocent. He faced forward and started driving. I stared out the window, pretending my pulse wasn’t attempting to break the sound barrier.
After what felt like forever, he finally slowed down. I didn’t realize where we were until we parked next to a deep valley with a silver ribbon of river flashing far below. A bridge was suspended in the sky. I leaned forward, reading the sign up ahead.
Whistler Bungee.
My heart stopped. “No.”
“Yes.”