The Sheikh's Redemption Page 17

  He’d once said he was her updated and improved version.

  Would beating his brother again, for a throne no less, explain everything that had happened between them? Cold logic said that made more sense than what he’d professed. That his emotions had always been so powerful they’d survived the years of humiliation and alienation, that he loved her now above everything, as she loved him.

  She had been wondering if it was possible for anyone to have all that, to be so happy. Had she been right to wonder, because no one could? Because none of it had been real?

  Her world teetered on the verge of collapse.

  Then he looked at her, his eyes empty. And it did.

  * * *

  Haidar looked at Roxanne and knew. Hearts did break.

  She’d wept in his arms with pleasure, pledged love and allegiance. And she’d again hidden something of major importance from him. She hadn’t trusted him. She hadn’t put him first.

  She never would.

  He now faced the truth at last. What he’d been trying to run from all his life. His mother had been right. No one would ever love him. He inspired nothing but deficient, distorted emotions in those he loved. The proof was his mother’s love itself. That monstrously manipulative, obsessively possessive emotion.

  But he’d also been right about himself. He hadn’t and wouldn’t change. He couldn’t live with having less than all of her.

  That left him with none.

  He stood facing the two people who had almost full monopoly of his emotions, formed the major part of his being. They’d again found it right to exclude him, to alienate him, to shut him out. All he could do now was relinquish hope. Accept that no matter what, he’d be forever alone.

  “That’s why you went after Roxanne this time?”

  The dreadful growl yanked him out of his numbness.

  He blinked, found Jalal in his face, his expression demonic.

  “And to think I was agonizing over how to mend the rift between us, over what I accused you of, thinking I was wrong the more I thought about it. I was only wrong in imagining the depth of your depravity. I don’t know how I never saw you for the monster you really are all our lives, but you deserve to be alone for the rest of yours. And although I didn’t really want to be king, I’ll now do anything to take that throne, to stop you from taking it.”

  Haidar barely registered his twin’s abuse, let alone understood it. He saw nothing but the betrayal on Roxanne’s face, felt nothing but the agony blasting off her.

  But…why would she be the one feeling betrayed, agonized?

  Because she was? By what? His choosing to save himself pain by giving up and walking away as she’d once done?

  Suddenly, the enormity of his mistake crashed on him.

  He’d been wrong.

  If she chose to exclude him, he shouldn’t consider it mistrust, or a deficiency of love. She had a right to help Jalal if she believed he’d make a better king. Even if she didn’t, he was her friend, and she had every right to help him, do anything she chose to, his opinion or consent, or even knowledge, not required. And it stood independent from her relationship with him. It didn’t affect her love for him, that she maintained parts of herself he had no access to.

  He shouldn’t ask for all of her. He had no right to it.

  He would be happy, grateful, with any parts of her she chose to give him.

  He reached for her, but something irresistible stopped him. He struggled with it, and something with the force of a sledgehammer struck him. The explosion detonated from the point of impact upward, shooting behind his eyes, jolting his brain.

  Roxanne’s receding figure buzzed in and out on his retinas, like a movie reel catching, blipping, burning.

  Fighting off the disorientation, he tried to run after her. He slammed into something immovable. This time he fought back, moved it, ran after her, caught up with her.

  Her hands smacked at him when he reached for her, her voice choked with the tears that ran down her cheeks. “What more do you want? I don’t have any more information.”

  His vision was still warped, and so was his balance. He stumbled a step back when she pushed at him. “Roxanne…I don’t…”

  “You didn’t need to go to all that trouble. You will surpass your rivals without any special strategy, just by being who you are. You are the best king Azmahar could hope for. The kingdom needs someone with such convoluted cunning to get it out of the maze of problems it’s mired in. Not that I care what happens here anymore. I’m leaving. This time I’m never coming back.”

  He must still be disoriented. He didn’t understand a thing she was saying. She was supposed to be slapping his face for daring to go back on his vow of always telling her everything. He should have told her how he felt, talked it out with her. Where did the throne come into this? What information was she talking about?

  He caught her back and suddenly another pair of hands were on him, those he finally realized were Jalal’s.

  “Get your hands off her, Haidar,” Jalal hissed. “This time, you’re keeping them off her.”

  “I can fight my own battles, Jalal,” she snapped.

  “What battles? What are you two talking about…?” Something warm and wet trickled down his face, distracting him.

  He put a hand to it, squinted at what came off. Blood.

  He gaped at Jalal. “You hit me!”

  “And you have the gall to be surprised?”

  Haidar switched his stunned gaze between Jalal and Roxanne. They were in her bedroom. And he suddenly understood. What they were accusing him…worse, what they’d condemned him of.

  And he did what he’d been seething to do for the past few decades. He smashed both fists into Jalal’s shoulders, all his strength and years of fury and frustration behind the blow.

  Jalal slammed into the wall with a crack that rattled the whole room. Roxanne gasped, stumbled against another wall. Haidar barely noticed, his focus pinned on Jalal who was now gaping at him.

  Of course he was shocked. This was the first time in their lives that Haidar had ever shown him physical violence.

  Before Jalal could recover, Haidar faced them both, his teeth bared. “Again? You’re doing this again? You’re passing judgment on me without giving me a chance to defend myself?”

  Jalal straightened, returning his glare. “Excuse us as your actions and words speak so loudly they drown our attempts to exonerate you.”

  “So I compile a dossier on your activities and findings since you came here,” Haidar hissed. “To prove that I was bound to find out, to show my disappointment that you both excluded me again, and you assume I got it from Roxanne? Worse, that I was with her just to get it? And for what? To foil your bid for the throne?”

  Jalal’s glare wavered. Haidar heard something distressed squeezing from Roxanne’s chest.

  He included her in his bitterness. “Zain, let’s have this out. Air all your grievances and suspicions and accusations, the substantiated and imagined, and get this over with.”

  Jalal gave a disgusted grunt. “You mean an encore of the lifetime I spent doing just that? When every attempt at closeness or confrontation got me evasions, brush-offs and obstinate refusals to communicate or share anything?”

  Haidar countered, “You mean those endless times when you were your pain-in-the-ass, intrusive, invasive, insensitive self?”

  Jalal shrugged. “If you choose to see it that way.”

  “I do choose.”

  Jalal’s gaze wavered. “Bottom line is, you always left me no recourse but to come to my own conclusions.”

  “And of course they had to be the worst ones. And you know why? Because I’m the walking reminder of what you lived your life afraid of facing, the personification of all your fears. What I spent my life trying not to ru
b your nose in. But, dearest twin, here it is, dry. You’re part demon, too.”

  Jalal’s teeth ground together.

  Haidar smirked at the obvious hit. “You may not look it, and you may have convinced everyone you’re all Aal Shalaan stock, but you haven’t convinced yourself. You’re as paranoid and suspicious and possessive and unreasonable where it comes to your loved ones as I am. You are my twin, Jalal, whether you like it or not.”

  Jalal’s wolf eyes suddenly flared again. “I may be everything you said, Haidar, but I didn’t finance our mother’s conspiracy.”

  * * *

  The jagged pain that slashed across Haidar’s face yanked Roxanne out of the well of agitation she’d been spiraling in.

  She’d misjudged him. Again. Hurt him, again. She was out of excuses this time.

  She stepped between the two forces of nature snarling at each other, clung to Haidar’s arm, whispered a tremulous “I’m sorry.”

  He tore his gaze away from his duel with Jalal, looked down at her. “Why? You think none of the things you said to me are true? Would you still be sorry if I tell you what Jalal just accused me of is the truth?”

  Suppressing tears with all she had, she shook her head. “It can’t be. It isn’t.”

  “Why this sudden and unwavering trust?”

  “Because this is my natural state now,” she insisted. “I was having a minor breakdown minutes ago.”

  One eyebrow rose, the rest of his face unyielding. “It didn’t look minor to me. And don’t be so quick to anoint me with your unconditional belief. I did finance my mother’s conspiracy.”

  She shook her head again, her heart bruising against her ribs. “Then you didn’t know what the money was for.”

  “Minutes ago you assumed I screwed you over to get myself a throne. Why assume a couple of years ago I wasn’t willing to screw my whole family and kingdom over for an even bigger one?”

  “Because you’re no traitor.” Her declaration was unequivocal.

  “You just thought I was,” he persisted.

  And tears flowed. “That was your mother’s long-acting, insidious poison and my own fear that this—” her gesture between them was eloquent with what they had, shared “—is too perfect to be true. The emotions you inspire in me are so overpowering, I’m still having trouble dealing with them, believing they are reciprocated. Mainly—I can’t believe my luck.”

  He regarded her dispassionately, his face impassive. “I still did finance my mother’s conspiracy.”

  He was pushing her. Seeing when her trust would waver, crack.

  She wiped away her tears, gave him a serene nod. “And I’m sure you’re sorry about it and won’t do anything like that again.”

  And he smiled.

  She gasped in the breath she’d been unable to draw, her hand trembling on the terrible bruise spreading across his jaw as she attempted to smile back. “I’m cured. This time, irrevocably.”

  He dug his fingers into her hair, drew her up for a brief but fierce kiss. She moaned as she tasted his blood, the injury she’d been responsible for.

  Seeming to realize this, he withdrew. “No more mistrust?”

  “Insecurity,” she insisted.

  His nod was slow, accepting. Then he smiled again, a teasing sparkle entering his eyes. “And I won’t monopolize your emotions and allegiance. You can love other people. Even Jalal here. If you must.”

  “As touching as this is, mind if you don’t evade me again?”

  Haidar turned to Jalal, that coolness that had once made both her and Jalal believe he was indifferent again coating his face. “You said you were agonizing about how to mend the rift between us, were no doubt loitering because you didn’t know how to beg my forgiveness for your accusations.”

  Jalal took a threatening step closer. “Now, listen here—”

  Haidar cut him off smoothly. “You wanted to because you thought they were wrong. What rationalization did you come up with for my actions to think that?”

  Glowering at Haidar, Jalal exhaled. “I thought you didn’t know why she wanted the money, but being the stupid sap that you are when it comes to her, you gave it to her without question.”

  Haidar’s smile was the essence of concession and self-deprecation. “You think she’s that stupid? She asked me for money over many years, every time with a reason, saying she couldn’t ask our father, and didn’t have enough money herself. I realized both were lies, assumed she demanded it as…tribute from me, as a proof of love and loyalty. Once I understood this, I sometimes gifted her with major sums, just because. I never suspected she had an insurrectionist agenda. The worst I suspected was that she’d do nothing philanthropic with it.”

  Jalal exhaled. “And you still gave it to her.”

  Haidar echoed his resignation. “It might seem unacceptable to you, and you must think it unbelievable I’d have this inexplicable soft and blind spot, but I do love her. I don’t think I can stop.”

  Jalal drove his hands into his hair, wiped them down his face. “I can’t stop, either. After all she’s done, all she’s cost us, I was right there with you, pleading for exile instead of imprisonment. B’Ellahi, I even call her regularly and drop by when I can.”

  * * *

  That was a surprise to Haidar. “She didn’t tell me. Still plotting, I see.”

  But then he was resigned that she always would be, lived wondering what her next strike would be.

  “So…aren’t you going to ask me about the other parts of her plans that I seemed involved in? What made you assume I was party to them?” He rubbed his jaw, only now registering the pain. “Ya Ullah, how I wanted to break your jaw when you intimated that.”

  “I thought she gave you what must have seemed like unrelated tasks that you couldn’t have realized were cogs in the machine of her plan. Except after the fact.” Contrition finally appeared in Jalal’s eyes. “But I wanted you to tell me that.”

  “I didn’t want to tell you anything. I wanted to smash your face in.” Haidar smiled as all the remembered pain seeped away. “And you need to get to know me from scratch, like Roxanne needed to, if you don’t realize why I didn’t share details of my involvement with you or with anyone else. I had suspicion trained on me by the sheer evidence of my existence, by being the one she’d orchestrated all this for. I wasn’t about to add my own sonly indiscretions to make a better case against myself. When you discovered them, like the relentless wolf that you are, and faced me, I was so…angry at myself, at you, I refused to defend myself. If you didn’t know me enough to know your accusations were ludicrous, I decided I didn’t want to know you at all. Of course I regretted it the moment I walked away. And of course I didn’t know how to walk back into your life. I thought you would come to me, as you always did. You didn’t.”

  “I wanted to,” Jalal groaned. “Every single second of the past two years. I didn’t know how to, either…”

  Suddenly Jalal dragged Haidar into a rough hug.

  * * *

  Roxanne’s tears flowed as Haidar stiffened, then groaned and sagged in his twin’s hold. Then he hugged him back.

  The poignancy of the moment drowned her, her heart battering her insides in delight as she felt the two men who mattered most to her begin to re-form their damaged bond. The man she was born to love, and the brother she’d longed to have, becoming what they should have always been, each other’s sanctuary, and hers.

  She watched them for as long as she could bear. Then she pounced on them, hugged them both with all her strength, pouring the tears of her relief, love and thankfulness on both their chests.

  They at once took her in, at last acknowledging and delighting in the other’s love, for one another, and for her.

  It was Jalal who pulled back first, smirking at Haidar. “This doesn’t mean I’m letting
you become king.”

  Haidar’s fist landed in a playful shove against his chin. “And this doesn’t mean I don’t owe you a broken jaw.”

  Jalal’s gaze narrowed on him ponderously. “You have changed. You would have never joked about using your fists.”

  “I have changed.” Haidar hugged her off the ground, gazing at her adoringly. “You’re looking at the fuel of my metamorphosis.”

  Jalal cleared his throat, a bedeviling, knowing look directed at both of them. “And this is my cue to leave you two doves to coo to each other and go see if Rashid has already taken over while we indulged in our biannual twinly showdown.”

  Haidar gave him a considering look. “Maybe we should let him.”

  Jalal only gaped at him.

  Then he directed a stern look at Roxanne. “Whatever softener you’re using on him, ease up.”

  Giving them both a grinning salute, he walked out.

  Roxanne hugged Haidar harder, buried smiles and tears into his expansive chest. “Forgive me.”

  A tender finger below her chin raised her face to his. “As long as you do me.” She burst out laughing. He threw his head back and joined her. “That, too. Regularly.”

  She nestled deeper into his embrace. “And always. Along with everything else.”

  He squeezed her tight, a tremor passing through his great body at yet another, and this time last, averted heartache. “I’m holding you to that.”

  She nodded against his heart. “For as long as we both shall live. And beyond.”

  Epilogue

  “Azmahar is and will always be a major part of who I am, and its people are my people. I will always be at its service, will do anything to mend the damage my closest kin have done to it.”

  Applause spread like thunder in the Qobba ballroom.

  Roxanne’s heart expanded until she felt it would burst with pride. Haidar had asked her to arrange this event with all the representatives of Azmahar’s tribal councils. After his opening words, there was no doubt. They loved him. Believed in him.