Chapter Thirty-One
HIS FACE EMPTIED OF everything—emotion, reason, breath. Then, quietly, as if the word itself hurt to hear, he said, “What?”
I swallowed, the ache rising like a tide. “Div—”
“No. Don’t say it again.” He ran a hand through his hair, eyes wide, panicked in a way I’d never seen before. “I’m not...I’m not divorcing you, Lillian.”
“Why? Your mom died, Khalifa. There’s no reason to keep doing this.”
He looked at me then—really looked at me—and I almost wished he hadn’t. His gaze was fractured, flickering between fear and anger and something softer he wouldn’t let reach the surface.
“What about you?” he asked. “You really want to go back to that house with your mom? I thought you wanted freedom.”
I laughed—a hollow sound that didn’t belong to me.
“You think this is freedom?” I gestured to the loft around us, to the distance that had grown roots between our bodies.
“You think living here is any different than living with my family? I grew up in a home where I cared more about the people around me than they ever cared for me. And look at me now—doing the exact same thing, just with different furniture.”
His jaw tightened. “It’s not like that. I care—”
“Stop.” My voice broke on the word. “Just stop.” I took a step back. “You’re seriously not going to let me leave?”
He didn’t answer. His silence said everything.
I shoved his hands away, every nerve on fire. “Then we go back to the first month of this marriage performance. Ignore me, and I’ll ignore you.”
“Lillian—”
But I was already walking away, my vision blurring. I didn’t stop until I reached my door. My hand shook around the handle, my chest throbbing. I turned back once, just long enough to see him standing there—frozen, helpless, like he wanted to say something but didn’t know how.
So I did it for him and slammed the door.
I leaned against it, the sound reverberating through my spine, and finally let the tears fall. They came in shaking waves, each one breaking over the memory of his voice, the echo of I’m not divorcing you looping in my head until it no longer sounded like mercy, but punishment.
LIKE AN IDIOT, I CRIED myself to sleep. Not the delicate, movie-scene kind of crying with silent tears glistening on pale cheeks—but the raw, ungraceful kind that left my eyes swollen and my throat raw and my pillow damp enough to wring out by morning.
There was a reason every story warned girls not to make the first move.
Rejection wasn’t cinematic. It was humiliating.
It burned through pride, through composure, until all that was left was pain.
It hurt worse than my mother’s disapproval, which was saying something.
Worse than Malik stringing me along for six months with his half-promises and late replies.
Because this wasn’t just rejection—this was rejection from him.
From the infuriating, arrogant, beautiful man across the hall who somehow managed to crawl under my skin and rearrange everything I thought I understood about myself.
But when the tears finally ran out, something colder began to settle inside me. A slow freezing that crept into the cracks, claiming space where affection had once lived.
He’d made me believe I could be special to him. He’d given me warmth in one breath, then snatched it away in the next. He’d looked at me like I mattered, told me I was light, only to smother me into darkness the second I found the courage to reach for him.
My family had taught me well: love was a hazard.
A dangerous, unpredictable flame best admired from a distance.
So when I finally tasted even a trace of it, I mistook that spark for salvation.
They’d tried to raise me to be careful, quiet, and not too much—and I caught myself wondering whether, if I’d let them finish the job, I might’ve been protected from this heartbreak.
But the sharpest betrayal came from myself.
For forgetting who I was. For letting some vexing, complicated, emotionally barricaded man shrink me.
For letting his color-blindness seep into my perception, tricking me into seeing him through rose-colored lenses when he’d been gray all along.
For falling for someone who could hold my soul in his hands and still pretend he didn’t feel its weight.
I’d held lives in my palms, stitched together miracles in sterile rooms that reeked of loss. I had faced blood and misery and death, and somehow this man had undone me more completely than any of it.
I stared at the ceiling until the first light began to slip through the blinds, washing everything in a soft, indifferent gold. My body felt heavy, my organs hollow, but somewhere deep beneath the exhaustion, a small ember of defiance flickered.
I sat up slowly, catching my reflection in the mirror. My eyes were puffy, my hair tangled, and my face looked almost unfamiliar—no longer broken, only weary from the constant breaking.
I fixed myself, got ready for the day, straightened my spine, and whispered into the morning air, “You’ve survived worse, Lillian Tariq. You don’t fall apart over men who can’t decide whether to hold you or let you go.”
When I finally opened the door, my resolve still raw and quivering at its edges, the universe decided to test me with a tray of breakfast sitting in the hallway like an apology in physical form.
Two pieces of perfectly buttered toast, scrambled eggs that were probably still warm, sliced fruit, and a cup of orange juice that smelled sweet and freshly squeezed.
On top of the clear plastic was a sticky note.
Two words, written in that slanted, frustratingly neat handwriting that I’d come to know too well.
I’m sorry.
For a second, my chest double-crossed me. Something stuttered, a tiny shift, as if my heart wanted to believe that those words could unspool all the hurt between us. But I didn’t let it. Not this time.
Without hesitation, I stepped over the tray. My heel nearly brushed the cup, but I didn’t look down. I wouldn’t let myself. If I so much as glanced at that note again, I might forgive him before he even earned it, before he grovelled enough, before he begged on his knees for my forgiveness.
The kitchen greeted me the way it usually did—my coffee waiting in its insulated travel cup, the lunch he’d packed the night before stacked in the fridge, more stupid notes. Proof of his care, his infuriatingly quiet brand of affection. But I wasn’t interested in gestures that came without words.
I left it all there—his apologies, my coffee, our silence—and walked out the door.
Kevin looked up from his desk as I stormed into my office, his grin already forming. “Morning, Dr. T. You look—well—lethally gorgeous today. Did your hot and broody husb—?”
“I need coffee,” I snapped, dropping my bag onto the counter with enough force to make the pens rattle.
He blinked. “Coffee?”
“Now.” My tone left no room for charm or humor.
His smirk faltered, confusion replacing it. “Okay, sure, but—”
“And Kevin,” I said, my voice lower this time. “Don’t ever mention my husband in my presence again.”
He froze, eyes wide, then nodded. “Copy that.”
As he disappeared toward the break room, I sank into my chair, fingers curling against the rim of my desk, trying to breathe past the twinge clawing at my throat.
The practice droned around me—machines, voices, the faint echo of life continuing—but I felt like I was standing still, waiting for my pulse to stop reminding me of him.
I’m sorry.
Those words haunted me. They weren’t enough, not by a long shot, but a part of me still wanted them to be.
WHEN I PULLED INTO the parking garage, the streets were serene, sleeping, indifferent. My headlights caught the faint shimmer of rain on the pavement, the reflection of a home I didn’t feel like walking into.
I sat there for a lengthy minute, hands still on the steering wheel, forehead pressed against the cool leather. The exhaustion behind my eyes wasn’t just from work—it was from feeling too much, from trying to unfeel him and failing miserably.
I thought about sleeping in the car. Just reclining the seat, wrapping myself in the thin hospital blanket in the trunk, and pretending I didn’t have a husband waiting on the other side of the door.
But of course, I wasn’t that lucky.
Khalifa was pacing the apartment, phone on the couch, hair disheveled, eyes lined with a level of apprehension that made me want to feel sorry for him—and that made me hate myself for wanting to.
“Lillian,” he said the moment he saw me, relief spilling into his voice. “You’re home. Can we talk?”
My name on his lips felt like melted sugar dripping straight into my ears, coiling deep in my belly and sending a shiver racing all the way down my spine.
My body betrayed me, wanting to arch into the sound, to completely dissolve into him.
But I forced my feet to move toward the hallway, toward my room, toward anywhere that wasn’t him.
He stepped into my path. “Lillian, please.”
My grip tightened around my bag strap. “Move.”
He didn’t.
So I walked around him. Or tried to, because he moved again, standing in front of me like some immovable wall in human form. “Fine,” he said softly. “We won’t talk. Can you at least eat something? Please.”
I sidestepped him again, but this time he caught my hand.
That tiny contact—his fingers brushing my skin—sent a surge of fury racing through me. I yanked free, my voice shaking. “Don’t touch me. Ever. You’re lucky I’m not dragging your ass to court or reporting this hostage situation to the police.”
His expression shifted—pain, guilt, something deeper—but he didn’t reach for me again. “I won’t touch you. I won’t even come near you, but I want to talk—”
“Yeah, well,” I cut in, “we can’t always get what we want, can we?”
He sighed. “I’m trying to explain what happened last night.”
“Explain?” I scoffed, dropping my bag onto the floor. “I’ve already got you figured out, Khalifa. You’re a carbon copy of every pathetic man who thinks a rough childhood earns him a lifetime pass to the emotional range of a garden gnome. You’re thirty-six, for God’s sake. Grow up!”
His eyes hardened, the warmth draining out of them. “Oh, I’m the one who needs to grow up? As opposed to someone who throws a temper tantrum every time she doesn’t get her way?”
“At least I’m not a coward,” I snapped. “At least I don’t hide behind my past and call it personality. At least I don’t use pain as a basis to never let anyone in or feel anything.”
“Says the girl who specifically wanted a marriage arrangement with no feelings.”
I blinked, caught off guard by how precisely he hit the mark, but I didn’t let it show. “Things change, Khalifa. People change. It’s called being human.” I moved closer to intimidate him, to make sure he heard every word. “Not you, though, right? You’re incapable of change.”
His jaw flexed, his chest rose and fell, and I could almost hear the thoughts grinding behind his eyes.
Then, too slowly, he took a step toward me, and another, until the space between us felt like it was shrinking and folding in on itself. Until I could feel his breath graze my skin, warm and maddeningly steady, carrying the faint trace of soap and something uniquely him.
It shouldn’t have made my pulse stutter. It shouldn’t have made my knees feel wobbly or my anger flicker into an ungodly desire.
He tilted his head, voice roughened by too much truth. “And yet,” he said, “you still like me anyway.”
“Like you?” I echoed. “I hate you.”
“No, you don’t,” he murmured.
The words brushed against my parted lips, slipping into my mouth and lodging somewhere deep in my throat. My breath snagged around them, heat flooding my chest at how easily he could twist my emotions into knots. I met his gaze, the challenge in it, the certainty that he was right.
So I did the only thing I could. I glared. Hard. Then I turned on my heel, walked down the hallway, and slammed my bedroom door behind me so loudly the frame shuddered.
I pressed my forehead against the wood, eyes burning, ribs heaving. Even now, my hands were shaking from everything I still felt, everything I wished I didn’t.
A few minutes passed, maybe more.
From the other side of the door, a knock came.
I didn’t answer.
Something rustled, a gentle scrape against the floorboards. “Eat something, Lillian. Please.”
I stared at the door like it might dissolve under the weight of my thoughts before sinking to the floor, knees drawn to my chest.
I hated him for still caring. And I hated myself for wishing he’d said anything else but that.