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From the darkness of the shadows, Huda watched through the trees as her husband disappeared. Her legs ached from crouching, and her body pulled towards the ground like an anvil. She collapsed into a sitting position and picked up her phone. Her thumb rubbed across the screen as she scowled. Swiping back to the gallery of videos and photos, she replayed the recording she captured of the meeting between Jessica and Rayan.
“Ugh. This is Raghibah all over again.”
She groaned, tossed the phone onto the sand, and put her head in her hands.
“Father is going to tell me he told me so.”
Her heart shrunk inside her chest, and her stomach clenched with pangs of nausea.
Could she be wrong? Could she have misjudged Jessica? The woman’s outfits were heinous, but was there some trace of good in her after all? She thought of all that she had said about Jessica behind her back. To the resort director. To her new friend, Jennifer. Jessica deserved some of it, but would Huda have to take some of it back now?
She thought of Rayan getting back to their bedroom and finding her gone.
“Oh, shit!”
Huda grabbed her phone and jumped up.
I have to beat him back, she thought.
She tore through the trees, trying her best not to trip, until she paused at the edge leading out onto the green. Her eyes darted around.
“Where is he?”
Her eyebrows narrowed as she dashed out across the green for the path she had used so many times in her moving about unseen, spying on Jessica, or sneaking out to talk to Jennifer. She knew it like the back of her hand, and soon she reached her room and slipped back into bed. She fought to breathe and slow her pounding heart, waiting for Rayan to return. As she clutched her pillow, she revisited the events of the evening. A sour taste oozed into her mouth as her throat burned. Jessica may have abstained from Zina with her husband, but her claws still sunk into him before her eyes. Rayan giggled like a schoolboy, putty in her hands.
He wants her. I know it, she thought.
Her eyes narrowed, glaring into the dark, and her teeth ground together. She imagined holding a knife, approaching Rayan in his sleep, and castrating him. That would teach him a lesson.
Her heart skipped at the sound of the doorknob turning. Saliva pooled in her mouth, and she swallowed as she focused on the sucking sound of weather stripping separating from the door frame.
Idiot. He thinks he has fooled me. Like I don’t know he’s been out. Or where he’s been, she thought.
She pretended to wake up, making her voice sound sleepy.
“Rayan?”
A grin crept across her face in the dark as she imagined his panic.
“Yes, dear.”
“Is that you?”
“Yes. I’m sorry to wake you.”
“What are you doing? What time is it?”
“It is late. Go back to sleep.”
She reached over for the bedside lamp and turned it on, fake wincing to appear as though the light hurt her eyes. Rayan stood still just inside the door, his eyes downcast. She raised her voice, careful to keep the sound of slumber.
“Where have you been?”
He stuttered, and his eyes widened as he held his hands out to her.
“I just couldn’t sleep. I needed to go for a walk to think.”
“By yourself?”
She scowled at him, and he lowered his hands.
“Yes, dear. I needed time to pray and get some fresh air.”
Her eyes seethed, unblinking, as they moved up and down his body, and her lips pursed.
“You should be in bed.”
“Yes, dear.”
She reached back for the lamp and turned it off. And smiled with narrowed eyebrows.
I’ll continue this guilt trip in the morning.
