Chapter 30
Thirty
OLIVER
I stared at the ceiling, watching as dawn gradually painted it in shades of pale gold. The suite felt hollow without Zahra, the silence deafening where her soft breathing should have been.
I hadn't slept. Not even for a minute.
My bones ached with exhaustion, my mind replaying the events of the previous night like a pulsar emitting the same radiation pattern with predictable, maddening precision.
Zahra's face when I'd told her why my parents kept the house.
The pain in her eyes when she said she couldn't do this anymore.
The gentle but firm way she'd removed my hands from her face and walked away.
Small acts. Devastating finality.
I sat up, running a hand through my disheveled hair, forcing myself to go to the bathroom. My reflection in the mirror looked alien—eyes bloodshot, stubble darkening my jaw, wrinkled shirt hanging open.
"I can't fix this," I muttered to the empty room.
But even as the sour taste of those words lingered in my mouth, I knew I had to try. The thought of giving up, of returning to Seattle alone, of spending another decade without her was unbearable.
For the first time in my life, I had no plan. No careful strategy or calculated risk assessment. No rules to fall back on. Just a hollow ache in my chest and the certainty that if I didn't find a way to reach Zahra, I'd spend the rest of my life lost.
A binary star system collapsed into a singular orbit, still spinning hopelessly around a companion that had long since burned out. Without her, I wasn't just alone. I was unanchored, adrift, a star that had forgotten how to shine without something to pull me toward meaning.
I'd spent so much of my life hiding behind intellectual distance, emotional detachment, and rigid rules. I'd thought they were protecting me, but they'd only imprisoned me. And now they'd cost me the one person who made me feel like more than the sum of the weight I carried.
If I wanted her back, I couldn't keep hiding. Couldn't keep measuring my words or controlling my emotions. I had to lay myself completely bare with no guarantee she'd accept what she saw.
The thought terrified me to the core.
I showered quickly, dressed in fresh clothes, and left the hotel with only one destination in mind—the Nazarians' home.
I knew Zahra would be there, probably still asleep after the long night at the reception, but I couldn't wait.
Not anymore. Every minute that passed felt like another mile of distance growing between us.
The morning air was crisp, the neighborhood quiet as I drove through familiar streets. I parked a block away, needing the walk to organize my thoughts, to find the right words to convince Zahra to give us another chance.
As I rounded the corner, my steps faltered. A familiar car pulled up to the curb in front of the house.
Ryan.
My fists clenched instinctively, the memory of his trachea crushing under my fingers flashing vividly in my mind. I watched as he emerged from the car, adjusting his collar to showcase the bruises I'd left, his swagger intact as he approached the front door like he had every right to be there.
Every cell in my body screamed to intervene, to put myself between him and Zahra. To end this, once and for all.
My nails bit into my palms.
I could see it playing out—the air knocked out of Ryan’s lungs when he hit the ground, my knuckles white, Zahra rushing between us and pulling me off him as I watched him take his last breath.
But I'd already failed her once by thinking violence could solve what trust had broken. No more.
Instead, I slipped around the side of the house, staying out of sight but within earshot. I wasn't eavesdropping, not exactly. I just needed to be sure Zahra was safe.
The front door opened, and Zahra's groan of frustration carried clearly in the morning air.
"Seriously, Ryan?" Her voice dripped with contempt. "What will it take for you to read the writing on the wall?"
"Whoa, retract the claws." Ryan's hands went up in mock surrender. "I come in peace."
Zahra closed the door behind her, making it clear she wasn’t letting Ryan get farther than the porch steps, then crossed her arms as she fixed him with a glare so fierce I felt the menace from my hiding spot.
Ryan waited, his smirk twitching when all Zahra did was glare at him with unmasked loathing without saying a single word.
Then he kicked his smile up a notch, coming closer. Too close. Always too fucking close.
"I wanted to check up on you after the way Oliver crashed the wedding yesterday," Ryan said, his concern almost convincing. "I know I was an asshole the past two weeks, okay? I'm sorry."
I knew he was full of shit, but Ryan had always been good at twisting the truth, at playing the wounded party, at making Zahra doubt herself and others.
"That was before I learned how dangerous Oliver is." His hand lifted to his neck as if on cue. "I'm worried that he'll come for you, Zahra. You can't trust him."
My stomach dropped, a weight settling in my chest.
This was how it had always been with Ryan—half-truths wrapped in concern, designed to isolate and manipulate. Zahra had fallen for it once before, choosing his lies over our friendship.
If she fell for it again now, when my heart was completely in her hands...
"Not interested," Zahra deadpanned, and I almost laughed with relief.
But Ryan wasn't backing off.
"You really thought he'd be different, huh?
" His voice was almost gentle, full of pity.
"He used you, Zahra. Just like I did. At least you meant something to me—you were my first love.
But Oliver? You're nothing to him. Never was and never will be.
" He stepped closer to her, invading her personal space, but Zahra didn’t flinch.
"Some people were born with a lack of common sense, babe.
You were just unlucky enough to be one of them. But I can fix that."
He reached out to stroke Zahra's hair, grinning like he'd already won. Rage and desperation flooded me, my body tensing to intervene—and then Zahra spoke a single word.
"No."
Without waiting for his reaction, she shoved him as hard as she could, sending him flying off the stairs. I had to press my hand against my mouth to stifle the cheer when he landed hard on his ass.
"You crazy bitch!" Ryan yelled from the ground.
"That's right, asshole. I'm a crazy, bad bitch," she retorted, her voice full of rage and power. “And I am so fucking sick of hearing your voice.”
“Now, listen here?—"
“No, you listen.” Zahra stomped down the stairs, her every movement radiating righteous fury. "You didn't break me. You didn't ruin me. You have no power over me."
Ryan tried to act tough, but the way he scrambled away from her, his ass dragging against the bricks paving the path, chafing his designer jeans? He was scared.
And I couldn’t blame him.
Zahra had transformed into a solar flare personified, her wrath an inescapable force.
"You know what's funny, Ryan?"
"Enlighten me," he gritted through clenched teeth, looking up from the ground as she loomed over him with her full five feet four inches of height.
"Oliver could've ended you. But he didn't." She leaned in, dropping her voice to a whisper so cold that chills ran down my spine. "If you ever come near me again, I won't be that merciful."
For the first time, Ryan seemed to get it. Terror flashed across his features before he scrambled to his feet.
"You're not worth it anyway," he spat over his shoulder as he retreated to his car, his steps hurried.
Zahra rolled her eyes. He wasn’t worthy of a response. She turned, walking up the porch steps with her chin high, her movements strong and sure.
I stayed hidden behind the corner of the house, my back pressed to the rough brick, and my heart hammering painfully against my ribs.
I wanted to go to her.
I wanted to fall to my knees at her feet, to beg her to see that I could change, that I could still be the man she needed.
But I didn’t move.
Because I saw it now, clearer than any star I'd ever mapped.
Zahra Nazarian didn’t need me.
Not to save her.
Not to hold her up.
Not to complete her.
She was whole already.
And me?
My whole life, love had been a transaction measured in sacrifice. Earn your keep. Pull your weight. Be useful or be invisible.
Even with Emmet, every booking I took at Foxy’s, every late-night study session, every dollar scraped together—it all came back to the same desperate plea I could never put into words until now.
Don't leave.
Don’t forget me.
Please need me, or else I'm nothing at all.
Because without something to offer, I was nothing—and all I had left to give Zahra were the pieces of myself too broken to matter.
I was still the boy who equated his worth to how much he could give.
She deserved so much more than that.
More than a shattered man who measured the distance he kept from the people he loved in light years.
The front door creaked open, and her mother stepped out, a cozy robe wrapped tight around her.
" Azizam ," she said warmly, pride thick in her voice. " I am so proud of you for how you handled that."
Zahra smiled, her entire body relaxing into Mina's praise.
“Thank you.” She leaned down, sharing a tight embrace with her mother. “I’m kind of proud of myself.”
"Have you heard anything from Oliver?" her mom asked, worry etched into the corner of her eyes.
Zahra’s face dropped, and for a moment, hope flared in my chest.
“I haven’t,” she said, adding a little shake of her head.
Her mother reached up and patted her cheek gently, the kind of touch that said more than words ever could.
"You will," she promised. "That boy can't live without you."
Zahra gave a small, noncommittal smile and looked out over the yard—right past the spot where I was hiding.
And in that look, that quiet, lingering absence, I saw the truth.
I was the one still stuck in orbit around Zahra, powerless to pull myself free, but Zahra? She’d be fine. More than fine. She would flourish.
The air thickened around me, every breath a battle as I forced myself to retreat. Step by step, I backed away from the house, from her, from everything I had once believed I could still have.
Because I loved her enough to let her shine without casting a shadow across her sky.
I wasn’t her gravity anymore.
I wasn’t her home.
And maybe...I never really had been.