Chapter Twelve #3
Malik watched as Hana received his words, her beautiful eyes widening in surprise, delight and something like the wonder he felt flushing his entire body. But he turned away from those eyes, just as she reached up to hold his face in her hands, because he was ashamed.
‘I’m so sorry,’ he admitted. ‘I can’t ask you for forgiveness for pushing you away. I’m ashamed that I ever hurt you that way. I did the one thing that you feared most and left you alone. And I don’t deserve what I’m about to ask for.’
His breath shuddered in his lungs, and he forced himself to confront his own heart, his fear of her rejection, because it was the least he could do. The very least.
‘But do you think?’ He hesitated, barely daring to ask, to hope.
‘Do you think that perhaps you could give me a chance to prove myself to you? To show you that I am worthy of your love, worthy to stand beside you for the rest of our days? Worthy of growing old with you and hearing all your thoughts and feelings as you care to have them and share them? Worthy of the…the children we might have, of the country we would care for?’
‘The children?’ she asked, her lips trembling.
He nodded. ‘One day?’ he asked as her hands reached to cradle his face in the same way that she unknowingly held his heart.
‘I… I don’t want you to offer that because it’s something you think I want or need,’ she rushed to say.
‘It’s not. I promise. You were right. About what you said.
I was scared and holding on to the past. Fearful that they would endure what I endured.
But I’m ready now, to do differently than what my parents did.
To try. To move on and to reach for the life—the full life—that I want,’ he said, for the first time perhaps fully understanding what a huge leap of faith love was, the giving of himself that neither of his parents had ever been capable of.
That selflessness that love could be and was.
‘You have my love,’ he stressed, ‘unconditionally and unendingly, no matter whether I’ve lost the chance to have you return that love.’
He dared to meet her gaze then, the glitter shining there brighter than anything he’d ever seen in the desert. She was his north star. The star of his home and heart and no matter what happened from here on out, he would always face her, return to her, protect, support and love her.
‘Forever,’ he said as much to himself as her, a prayer passed to her on the mere inches of breath that were between their lips.
Her fingers flexed against his skin and he lifted his hands to hold hers in place, fearful that she’d take away the contact.
‘Thank you,’ she whispered. ‘Thank you for saying that, and for giving me the freedom to choose.’
‘Always,’ he insisted fervently.
Hana took a deep breath and stole his.
‘I…’ She paused, and he braced himself, until he felt it. Felt her.
‘You were right too,’ she admitted, her gaze a little sad. ‘I was bending myself to be loved, making myself something I wasn’t. I realised that when I went home. That my need for it filled all the space, took all the air.’
‘No,’ Malik interrupted, hating that she thought of herself that way. ‘No, Hana, it was all the air I needed.’
Hana smiled. ‘Thank you for saying something so beautiful. But you were right. And…in that, I found a little bit of peace for myself. Something I wouldn’t have known were it not for you.’
He felt it then. The surrender to love that they’d both been so desperate for but fearful of.
‘I love you,’ she said, filling the dark space in his chest that had been empty more than it had ever been full.
She pressed a delicate kiss against his lips and told him again how much she loved him. He gathered her into his arms and the thought of being separated from her even for a second became unbearable. She had become his heart and his soul, just as he’d told her and it had been nothing but the truth.
Time lost all meaning as touch and words became the same form of communication, reassurance and promises of love.
It was long after the sun had set, long after Malik had first lit the fire that threw shadows and twisted flames across the newly decorated living room that Hana looked around and frowned, as if properly noting the changes here for the first time.
A small smile pulled at his mouth.
‘What did you do?’ she asked, wonder in her voice.
‘I don’t know what you mean,’ he evaded.
‘Yes, you do,’ she accused, the light laugh threaded through her words removing any sting. ‘How is it that we are here? What about the owners?’
‘Well, as the owner is already here, I think we’re safe to stay.’
‘What?’ she demanded, turning to look over her shoulder as if someone might suddenly appear from the bedroom. ‘Where?’
‘Right here,’ he said, taking her hand and placing it against his chest. ‘It is yours. It was bought and placed in your name.’
She eyed him suspiciously. ‘Did you do all this, just to make sure I couldn’t be arrested for breaking and entering?’ she asked, incredulous.
And this time he laughed, loud and freely in a way that he wasn’t sure he ever had. She was the only person who had dared tease him, challenge him or meet him where he was.
‘No, habibti. I bought this because I wanted you to have it. To have somewhere that was utterly and completely yours,’ he insisted.
‘Oh, Malik. That’s lovely but you are wrong,’ she said, shaking her head as his heart thumped once in his chest, until she finished what she had intended to say. ‘It is ours. Because everything I have, everything I am, is yours as much as it is mine. It’s ours. Together.’
That night, and every night that followed, Malik would wonder at how he had nearly let something so incredible slip through his fingers.
Never, ever, would he, or did he, take her for granted, or the feelings they shared.
There would, he knew, be hard times to come, but with Hana, his wife, his heart, his life, he knew that he would face them not as the boy his father had bullied, the son his mother had abandoned or the man his country had scorned.
He would face them as Malik, husband of Hana, and the protector of Al Surrahin, for as long as he was needed.