Zaid was drowning again, gasping for breath beneath the oppressive desert heat. It was unbearable.
What had she done to him?
He kept running on the sun-scorched sand until all of the air had been stolen from his lungs and his limbs no longer felt attached to his body. He liked that feeling. That numbness. Anything to divert his focus from the emptiness that raged inside him.
He felt cold inside, despite the overbearing heat. Cold and empty. More now than he had ever felt as a child. Because he understood as an adult what he couldn't as a child. In saving himself, there had been a cost. His mother had spent her last days alone, abandoned by her husband, her children. He hadn't been there for her when she'd needed him most. Because he had been too afraid to return home, to stand up to his father.
Now he'd done the same thing to Harper. He had pushed her away, run from her, from the intoxicating weakness that settled over him whenever she was near. Out of fear again. Because he was afraid he was too broken, too damaged to be worthy of her.
His body thrummed with an anguish that had no name, no relief. The only time he'd ever held it in abeyance had been when he'd been in Harper's arms, in those moments when he had been bound to her. When they had been bound to each other.
He wanted to scream into that vast emptiness where his soul should have been. A void that, for a while, had been filled with her. Had been filled with what he now recognized as love. Her love for him.
Love he had considered a weakness, and so he had turned it down, refused it when it had been offered. The most precious thing he had ever been given, and he had treated it no better than the sand beneath his feet.
She would never trust him again. Not with her heart, or her child. Or anything else, for that matter.
Zaid picked up his pace, every second more desperate than the last. This was for the best. Not only for him, but for Harper. For the baby.
She was right. There had to be boundaries. Without them, they would only hurt themselves, each other. Their family.
Family.
The word caught in his throat and settled there, cutting off what little remained of his air supply. His head spun. He hadn't had a family in so long. After his mother died, his relationship with his father had become practically nonexistent. And Matthias had never been more than a peripheral character in his life, a name that popped up alongside his in web searches, an ignominy that colored his reputation by association.
He’d had no one. Nothing. And with that, the freedom of having nothing to lose.
Soon he would have that again. That freedom.
Only it didn't feel like freedom to him. The prospect of being without Harper felt more like a prison than any cage ever could, one forged out of shame and regret.
But she was not the one who had put him in that cage. She had done nothing but offer to love him, to provide him with a family to make up for the one he had lost. An offer he had steadfastly refused.
And now it was too late.
He balled his hands more tightly into fists, his knuckles stretching the tears in his skin. It was a welcome ache, something he could focus on instead of focusing on the void that echoed inside him, threatened to consume him, leaving nothing left.
He had been with women before. But he had held back from them, kept them at arm's length emotionally. He had never let them inside, never let them close enough to see the scars etched on the walls of his soul, the cracks in the surface that served as the fault line on top of which he had been built.
Yet Harper had broken through his defenses, had seeped into him, uninvited, inciting in him feelings he'd thought long lost. Feelings he was sure he had locked away forever.
Love. He loved her. So much it hurt.
The thought clenched his heart and tried to pull it out through his throat.
It wouldn't last.
Everything would go back to normal. The way it was before. In enough time, Harper would be a memory to him. One that haunted his dreams as he slept.
Until, like all memories, she faded away, taking with her the dark pools of her eyes, the scent of iris from her perfume, the sweetness of her mouth on his, the soft, staccato gasps she made when he kissed the most intimate parts of her body.
Regret tore at him like hands from a grave.
He felt the full weight of it now, that emptiness inside him, and everything he had done to protect it.
He was no better than his brother. No better than his father. Both empty men who filled themselves himself with women and liquor and money and whatever vice came along to dull the ache of that void, even for a moment.
There was no strength in him, no honor. Nothing he had done up until this point had been honorable. He had tried to convince himself otherwise – that he was acting for the good of Harper, for her child; that he had to be strong, for them – but those were shallow excuses. Ones he pretended to believe, even when he knew better.
It wasn't strength that had driven him. It was fear. He was afraid to get too close, afraid that if he did, he might lose her, the child, his family. Again.
A terror that stabbed the weakest, most vulnerable pats of him. Parts he still carried with him. He had never truly escaped at all.
Everything he'd done to push her away, and still she was inside him.
That small, aching part of him raged.
He could go back. He could go back and find her and beg her forgiveness. He could tell her the truth, that he loved her, that the love they shared meant something to him, more than even he knew.
She was his future, the only future he could fathom. Without her, his life held no meaning.
An insidious fear latched onto him, holding him tightly in its clutches. He wasn't used to that kind of fear. Hadn't felt it in so long. Had vowed never to feel it again.
But this was what made him weak. His pride, not his emotions. Not Harper. She had been the one constant in his ever-changing world, the light in the darkness guiding him home whenever he was lost.
And he was so helplessly lost. Still the same scared, lonely boy he had been when he'd run away from his father, when his mother had passed away. He'd used that pain to his advantage, leveraged it to build his significant wealth, assume control over his country.
But it wasn't the thing that had saved him.
Harper. She had saved him.
He stopped, trying to control his breathing. Willing the knots in his chest to loosen, for the fear to subside.
And when it did, he turned back toward Basmadan and took off running again.