Chapter Thirty
EVERYTHING WENT BACK to normal—or at least, the version of normal you settled for after your world had spun off its axis and landed slightly crooked.
I was seeing patients again, smiling at new mothers, listening to heartbeats that were too small to understand how fragile life could be.
The guilt wasn’t gone; I didn’t think it ever would be.
But I did what Khalifa told me to—I folded it into my work.
I channeled it into the desperate need to help, to do better, to avoid letting it happen again.
And every morning, when I stood in front of the mirror and wrapped one of my thirty-seven beautiful hijabs around my head, I felt that familiar swell of triumphant pride, a blessing from God Himself.
Because even though the universe would keep handing me people who had the audacity to feel threatened by a piece of fabric, it still wasn’t enough to make me take it off.
I never saw Mr. Thompson after that day. The only reminder of him was the faint mark on my arm where his fingers had clamped down, already fading to a ghost of a bruise. Men. Stupid, angry, toxic men who thought women owed them obedience and apology. This was why I hated them.
Except for one man. My husband.
The ripple of my ill-advised infatuation had grown into something wild and mutinous, expanding over late-night sleepovers where silly laughter hid between breaths and silk sheets, over calm evenings when I’d watch him lesson-plan with a concentration that made my chest burn, over the times I’d offer to listen to him practice his lecture for the next day just so his voice could sink into me, marinating around every inch of my being.
It wasn’t a crush anymore. It was something terrifying and unbearably warm, something that filled every empty place inside me until I could barely hold myself together.
It was the kind of feeling that made me want to run and stay all at once.
The kind that rewrote every rule I’d ever made about love, and men, and the things I told myself I didn’t need.
It was getting harder and harder to be around him without giving it away—my breath catching when he smiled, or how I caught myself looking for him in every beautiful moment.
He never spoke about his brother again. I hated that he chose that moment to finally, finally open up and tell me about his past when I wasn’t in any position to comfort him the way he always somehow knew how to comfort me.
If I’d been more alert and less in my own “I just killed three people” spiral, I could’ve hugged him, run my fingers through that infuriatingly perfect hair I’d been dying to touch, maybe even coaxed a few tears out of him.
I had the inkling suspicion he’d be such a pretty crier in a serene, yet devastatingly cinematic way.
But that was wishful thinking. Khalifa Nasser didn’t break down; he professionally contained. If restraint were an Olympic sport, he’d have a gold medal, a sponsorship deal, and a stoic smile for the cameras.
Still, somehow, I didn’t mind. Maybe he’d never learn to spill his emotions the way I did—loudly, dramatically, with a level of enthusiasm that could frighten small animals—but that was fine.
Because that was him. And for reasons I was refusing to admit to myself, I was completely, helplessly okay with that.
I used to hate him. I used to tell myself that he was rude, and stubborn, and emotionally unavailable, and every cold thing about him was personality, not a challenge I wanted to solve. But now...
God, I couldn’t even think it without feeling like the ground might crumble beneath me.
Because if I admitted it—if I let that four-letter word form fully in my mind—it would mean I’d crossed a line I could never uncross.
When Sarah walked into my office, I was lying flat on the floor, staring at the ceiling tiles like they might rearrange themselves into answers.
She froze in the doorway. “What are you doing?”
“Trying to figure out how to turn my humanity off,” I said, deadpan.
There was a beat of silence. Then, cautiously, “Like...what vampires do?”
I nodded. “Exactly.”
Sarah sighed, set her coffee down on my desk, and then—because she was Sarah—lay down beside me. “Don’t you need your humanity to be a doctor?”
I thought about that. “Yes,” I admitted. “Okay, maybe just half of it. I’ll keep the part that feels emotions toward babies, pregnant women, and you. But I’ll turn it off for everything and everyone else.”
“What about your husband?”
I stared up at the ceiling again. “Especially him.”
“Right,” she said slowly, “because emotional repression always works out well for people.” I didn’t answer, so she added, “Look, I don’t know what’s got you in this funk—or what compelled you to lie down on a floor that literally touches the bottom of shoes every day—but can we move on to me for a second? I have news.”
That got my attention. I rolled onto my side, propping my head up with my hand. “What kind of news?”
“I went to dinner with your cute husband’s coworker.”
“What? You went on a date with Amir?”
She nodded. “And it went great.”
“Great? How great?”
“Super great. He was nice, and cute, and religious in a prays-five-times-a-day-but-isn’t-a-toxic-extremist way.”
I gasped, clutching her hand like she’d just told me she’d found the cure for heartbreak. “I’m so happy for you.”
She hummed, a soft, content sound that filled the silence. Then she turned her head toward me, expression gentler now. “What’s going on with you, Lilly? Really.”
I sighed, sitting upright. “It’s just like you said. A funk. It’ll pass.”
She sat up too, brushing dust off her slacks. “Want to go plan baby futures?”
That earned a real smile out of me. “Of course I do.”
We stood and left the floor behind, trading existential crises for tiny socks and strollers, pretending for a little while that the world wasn’t such a complicated place to keep your heart open in.
I STOPPED OUTSIDE THE door, my hand hovering over the handle, and took a few steadying breaths. It was ridiculous, I knew. I was just walking into my own home. But lately, the air inside that place had become way too charged.
When I finally pushed it open, the familiar smell of garlic and olive oil simmering on the stove hit me.
Khalifa stood in the kitchen, sleeves rolled to his forearms, stirring something in a pot with that effortless calm he wore like a second skin.
The overhead light caught on the curve of his jaw, and my pulse immediately betrayed me—fast, uneven, loud enough to drown out my thoughts.
He turned toward me, smiling an easy smile that instantly made my chest turn into mush. “Hey,” he said. “Dinner’s almost ready.”
I nodded mutely, toes curling in my shoes as I bent down to unlace them. Focus on the floor, on the door, on anything but him. I slipped them off and tucked them neatly into the closet.
He made a surprised sound. “What’s wrong with you?”
I froze mid-motion. “What do you mean?”
“You put your shoes away,” he said, feigning horror. “Clean Lillian must be a side effect of something deadly. Are you sick?”
My jaw dropped. “Are you serious right now?”
He grinned.
I scowled, marched back to the closet, yanked the shoes out, and tossed them dramatically into the entryway. “Happy?”
His grin widened, perfect teeth flashing as he stirred the pot again. “I was kidding about the mood swings disorder thing, but maybe you should actually get checked out. I promise I won’t divorce you if it comes back positive.”
I glared at him, but he just chuckled.
“Wow,” he said. “No rebuttal? You must be sick.”
I turned on my heel and muttered, “You’re insufferable,” before heading to my room.
Once the door clicked shut behind me, I leaned against it, pressing a hand to my chest. My heart was still beating too fast, my palms damp.
I told myself it was just stress, exhaustion, nerves, adrenaline residue.
But then I caught my reflection in the mirror: hijab mussed, cheeks flushed, eyes too bright.
No, it wasn’t stress. It was him.
The memory found me before I even realized I’d stopped breathing.
The bathroom, his voice, You’re my light, Lillian.
He told me I was beautiful, radiant, that if he could open his heart for anyone, he’d choose me.
And I’d lay there, still and stupid, my heart folding itself in half because what else was I supposed to do with that?
What did a person do when someone said something like that and then never mentioned it again?
He had to have meant it. He wasn’t careless with his words; if anything, he was stingy with them, like every sentence cost him something. But then why hadn’t he said anything since?
Maybe he was incapable of being with someone. Maybe that was the tragedy of him—he could offer tenderness only in flashes, never long enough to be real. Or maybe he was waiting for me to make the first move.
Except girls weren’t supposed to. There was an unspoken rule, buried somewhere deep in every romantic ideal of womanhood and restraint I’d ever been fed: don’t say it first, don’t need it first, don’t feel it first. Wait. Always wait.
That was the reason, wasn’t it? Why I was so determined to keep my mouth shut? Because if I never said it out loud, I couldn’t make it real. And if I didn’t make it real, and he never felt the same way, then I couldn’t get hurt. It was self-preservation disguised as dignity.
But maybe I’d already broken that rule just by feeling this much.
And once you broke it, there was no going back.
Because saying something out loud wasn’t what made it real—feeling it did.
Letting it melt through you, liquefy in your veins until you couldn’t function without it.
Letting it spread into every hidden corner of your body and soul—that’s what made it real.
And you couldn’t unfeel something like that.
Once the seed was planted, the roots were there for good.