Heir to a Dark Inheritance (15 page)

Someone ran into him, laughed, a strange-sounding laugh. Drunken. Not genuine.

No wonder he had never found anything lasting here. No wonder this had never brought him satisfaction. There was nothing real in this. Nothing of substance.

Jada and Leena were the real thing.

They were all that mattered. And if he had to put himself through the pain of her rejection a thousand times, he would do it.

Because before Jada, he had been a prisoner in himself. And now, pain and all, he was free.

Alik had been gone for days, leaving Leena and Jada alone in Attar.

Jada couldn’t complain. She badly needed the space. Needed to get her head on straight. Find herself again, whoever that was.

Although the idea that space would somehow ease her
pain was terribly flawed. She knew that. Space, separation, caused so much pain.

Leena had fallen asleep already, which was nice in some ways. Not in others. Because without her daughter to entertain, all Jada had were her thoughts. And her thoughts were a sad, bitter place at the moment.

Bitter at herself, mostly. And at Alik for demanding so much of her.

Jada sighed and rested her arms on the railing, looking out over the ocean. She missed Alik. She missed his touch. His kiss. His laugh. She missed how she felt happy around him.

You’re not the same woman you were
.

She couldn’t get his words out of her mind. That was what scared her. That she’d changed so much. That all her memories were fading into a vague, colorless past. Happy, but no longer so poignant. No longer something she felt desperate to recapture. No longer something she idolized as utter perfection, but something she now saw as flawed. Real.

She was standing on the edge of a cliff, and she wasn’t sure whether or not she should jump. She was afraid that by embracing her new self with Alik, she would lose who she’d been with Sunil.

But Sunil was gone. And there was no way to know how things would have played out if he was still here. No way to know how she would have changed, or not changed.

The simple truth was, the woman who was here and now, wanted Alik, and no other man. The woman she was now wouldn’t go back, because this life, her life, was everything she hadn’t known she’d wanted. And she wanted Alik, so much. So incredibly much. His touch, his laugh, him.

She waited for the guilt that admission should bring, but there was none. Just a sort of sweet ache in her heart.

She closed her eyes and lifted her face to the sky, the ocean breeze skimming over her skin like a caress. That made her
think of Alik, too. When she thought of the word
husband
, it was his face she saw. When she thought of love…

She couldn’t go forward while she had one foot in the past. She realized that now. She also realized that she’d been doing it by design. That she’d been doing it to keep herself safe.

But Alik, stupid Alik, sexy, wonderful Alik, wouldn’t let her stay safe.

He had pulled her open, exposed her, made her care and laugh and love. Made her hunger for life, for the next chapter instead of the ones at the beginning of the book.

She had been terrified of shedding her old self. That her new skin seemed to fit so much better. Because she hadn’t been sure how to reconcile it all. She had been happy with Sunil. But…but with Alik there was the promise of something true. Something complete. And it had all been too much for her to handle.

And now she’d ruined everything. Alik would never offer his love to her again. His face when he’d said that…it had been so cold. So horribly cold.

“How dare you?”

She turned and saw Alik, walking toward her. He was wearing the remnants of a suit, no tie, his shirt rumpled and the sleeves pushed up to his elbows.

“How dare I what?”

“How dare you…storm into my life.”

“You were the one who stormed into mine,” she said.

“Then why am I the one left devastated?”

She flinched, the haunted look in his eyes almost too painful for her to witness.

He took her arm and pulled her to him, his expression fierce. “You stripped me of all of my protection. Of everything that was holding me together. And then you took yourself from me too.”

“How dare I?” she asked. “How dare you! I feel like…I don’t even know who I am anymore. No, that’s not it. I feel
like I found myself for the first time and I have nothing to hide behind. I have no excuse now, not to be this person, not to…not to grab what I want and I’m afraid of what I want, Alik. Of how badly I want it.”

“And what is it you want?”

“You,” she breathed. “No matter what…I…all I want is you. I’ve made some bad choices lately.”

“You have?” he asked, his expression frozen.

She nodded. “Alik, I was so stupid. I was so focused on protecting things that have already passed that I missed something I could have had now. I was too…I was too afraid of the person I was becoming and it made me want to cling to the past even more.”

“Emotion,” he said slowly, “is a very strange thing. As I am learning. I tried to feel for most of my life, and I failed. I tried to create deep feelings from shallow things but that doesn’t work. You can’t protect yourself and embrace love.”

“Sometimes you can’t stop it, either, even though you want to. I wanted to stop it, Alik, but I couldn’t.”

He laughed. “You wanted to stop what, princess?” The tenderness in his voice made her want to cry. Then she realized she was already crying.

She wiped a tear from her cheek. “Alik, I tried so hard to fix you because it was easier than looking at myself and seeing what a mess I still was. I was so afraid that wanting different things now, becoming a different person now, would make my marriage obsolete. That it would dishonor my husband’s memory. More than that even…that I just wouldn’t be able to hide anything of myself. You distracted me, made me start to forget.”

“My sex appeal, I think.”

“You
would
think that, and I won’t lie, it was that in the beginning.”

“And now?”

“I am the most self-righteous, ridiculous, un-self-aware person on the planet.”

“Are you?”

“I must be. I had myself convinced that my past was perfection.”

“And I know that I’m not perfection.”

Her heart seized. “Alik…no…let me finish. I thought moving on from my past would somehow be disloyal or that it would…that it would erase it. That wanting something different now might mean that what I had then was somehow less. Alik, you made me want again. You made me dream. You took me dancing. You made me happy. You showed me that I wanted things I hadn’t even known I wanted. And with all of that…I don’t need my memories anymore. And those memories meant so much. They’re warm and sweet, calm. They’re what my idea of love was.”

“We are not sweet and calm, are we?”

“No. We aren’t. You challenge me. You arouse me like no other man ever has. I’ve spent my life doing things exactly how I should, and no one has ever made me want to deviate from that path. But you…you had me up against a wall in an opera house! You make me lose my control. You make me dizzy. And this isn’t anything I’ve ever felt before, anything I ever wanted before. And I didn’t understand how this could be me. I didn’t understand how this thing between you and me could be love.”

He put his hand on her cheek, his eyes filled with sadness so deep it made her heart squeeze. “For you, maybe it isn’t.”

She shook her head. “No. You were right. It’s different because you’re different. Because I’m different. Because I need to be different. I realized it then, Alik. And that was when I ran. When you said you loved me, I had to face the fact that I loved you, too, and…”

“You love me?”

She nodded, the words sticking in her throat.

“Then why did you…why did you walk away from me?”

“I was running. You should know all about that.”

He slid his thumbs over her cheeks, wiping her tears away. “Will you stop running from me? Will you stop running from us? I have. I tried to go back, Jada. I’m not proud of it. I tried to go to a club, to pick up a woman. I found I didn’t even want to. I couldn’t. I am too changed by what has passed between us.”

She nodded. “I am, too. I don’t want to go back, either, and that’s what scared me, Alik. That I’ve moved on. Finally. Really.”

He took her hands in his, pinned them to his chest. “I have broken down every wall inside of myself so that there could be nothing between us, and I swore I wouldn’t offer it again, but, Jada, my pride can burn in hell because if I don’t have you…there is no meaning. Pride won’t keep me warm. Pride won’t show me beauty. You are what I have been chasing all my life. This is the feeling. I thought I was dead inside, thought I could never, ever have this…and then there was you.”

Jada looked at Alik, at the man who had changed her. At the man who was offering her healing. “I’m so sorry, Alik.”

“What?” he asked, his voice choked.

“This is what I did to you, isn’t it? I dragged you out of your safety, out of your comfort zone and I made you face everything that scared you the most.”

“You did. But it needed to be done. Protecting myself…protecting myself from the pain of losing my mother would have kept me from truly connecting with my child. It would have kept me from connecting with you. From loving you.”

“I was so arrogant to think I wasn’t hiding, too. I was. I was hiding behind grief and excuses. I
…I
don’t want to hide anymore. Alik, please, please forgive me. Please love me. Please tell me it’s not too late.”

He pulled her in, crushing his lips to hers, stealing her breath. When they parted, she was dizzy. “Of course it’s not
too late. In fact, I was planning on mounting a full-scale attack on your defenses.”

She laughed. “As if you hadn’t already!”

“I’m a strategist, remember? That’s what they pay me for. And I had a plan to win you back.”

“What was it?”

“I don’t remember. I discarded it somewhere between the plane from Brussels to Attar, then I spent days in a hotel room, sulking and then I went and got this.” He held his left hand up. There was a dark band tattooed around his ring finger.

“What is that?”

“My wedding ring. It doesn’t come off, which, I thought might make for a nice line about why you actually have to stay married to me.”

“Alik…”

She took his hand in hers and ran her finger over the band. “What does it say?” She looked up at him. “It’s in Russian.”

“Jada. And Leena. My family. I am committed to you, always.”

“What if I would have told you I didn’t want to be married to you?”

“Are you going to tell me that?”

“No.”

“Then it’s moot. But that was when I figured I would redraft a strategy and start working on ways to exploit your vulnerabilities.”

“My vulnerabilities?”

“Yes. For one, I thought I could take you to the opera and get you alone in a private royal box.”

“You are shameless.”

“Always. But now…only for you. I have tasted every empty, meaningless pleasure life has to offer and I’ve come to the conclusion that those things are only there to distract us from the real meaning in life. A man can get lost in the fleeting things and forget to look for anything real. I am so thankful you brought something real into my life.”

“Alik, I want you to marry me again,” she said, thinking back to their wedding day. To the dress that she didn’t like. To the lack of music. To her sadness. “And this time, I want to take your name. So we all have the same name. So I have your name.”

“But what about…”

“The past is the past. I have good memories there. But now I’m not afraid to simply let memories be memories. Not anymore. I have too much ahead of me to keep looking back. You are my future. My heart. My love.”

“And you have brought me love. For the first time, Jada. It’s like seeing the sun, seeing color, when before there was only darkness. Only gray.”

“Like waking up,” she said, and she realized that it was true for her, too.

“Yes. Like that.”

“I’m glad I woke up,” she said. “Because this is so much better than dreaming.”

“So much.”

“So, will you marry me again?” she asked.

Alik looked at Jada, at his wife, at his heart. He had spent his life not feeling, not caring. And now that he did, he loved with all of himself. “No one ever loved me,” he said. “And now, I have an embarrassment of riches. You and Leena? I am the luckiest man on earth. There are so many broken things in our lives and now…we get a chance to make something new. Something perfect.”

She arched one brow and gave him an impish smile. “So, will you marry me, then?”

“Nothing could stop me.”

“Don’t go challenging fate, Alik.”

“When I look at how things have played out, how I found Leena, how I found you, I think fate is on our side, don’t you?”

“I think you’re right.”

J
ADA
A
dJusted
h
er
r
ed
V
eil
and held her arms out in front of her, examining the intricate designs that had been painted onto her skin during the henna ceremony the night before. Sayid’s wife, Chloe, had helped with that and Jada was pleased that she’d found a friend in the other woman. Sayid was the closest thing Alik had to a brother. And now they were all family.

She could hear the music coming from the courtyard and her heart swelled, the smile that had been on her face since she’d woken up that morning spreading wider. She grabbed her bouquet from the dressing table and lifted her heavy skirt, adorned with gold fabric that caught fire when the midday Attari sun caught a hold of it. Bright, vibrant. Happy.

She ran down the stairs, her fingers skimming the stone balustrade. Two attendants opened the double doors for her, and she saw Alik, waiting for her at the head of the aisle, Leena in a red dress that matched Jada’s, resting in his arms.

She nearly laughed, her heart taking flight. She looked up into the bleached sky and smiled. The heaviness that had been inside her for so long was gone, burned away by the sun, by the heat of Alik’s love. She felt light again. She felt new.

Then she started to walk down the aisle. Toward her family, her husband. Her future.

Alik took her hand and she looked down at where they were joined, her hand small and dark in his. “I searched for
this moment all my life,” he said, his voice low. “What a gift to have finally reached it.”

“I didn’t realize I was searching for this moment,” she said. “But I was. Out of grief came the most beautiful path. And it was taking me toward you, Alik.”

“I’m so glad you followed it.”

“So am I, Alik. So am I.”