LITMIR.BIZ

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else could be a lie dressed up like the truth? He felt cut off at his knees. Adrift in the middle of his own palace, where he had always known exactly what and who he was. “Why go to such lengths to live this lie?”

      “I haven’t gotten the impression that Bakri is renowned for its open-mindedness,” Sterling said in that sharp way of hers that he enjoyed a bit less than usual then. “Much less its king. And I’ve only been here a few months.”

      “I can understand why he would not wish to tell our father,” Rihad said, as if he was talking to himself. In part, he was. “The old man was harsh, despite his own weaknesses. He was of another time.”

      “Whereas you are the embodiment of the modern age?” Sterling sniffed. “What with the kidnapping and the ranting about legitimacy and your obsession with al Bakri blood. Very progressive.”

      “He should have come to me.”

      “It’s not up to you to decide how he should have lived his life,” she threw at him, that scowl that twisted her face making her more pretty instead of less, somehow. “What he wanted was to live as he pleased. What he wanted was not to be nailed down into the things you thought he should do. He didn’t need your permission to be who he was.”

      “Perhaps not,” Rihad said, and he heard a note he didn’t quite recognize in his own voice. Profound sadness, perhaps, that he doubted would ever leave him now. It cracked in him like temper. “But perhaps he could have used my support.”

      Her lips parted then, her expression confused, as if he’d spoken that last part in Arabic.

      “Your support?” she echoed. “What do you mean?”

      Rihad was furious. And something that felt a great deal like lost, besides. He had always known precisely what he had to do and how to do it. He had always known his path and how to walk it. He didn’t know this. He didn’t know how to navigate it—because it was too late.

      Omar was dead, and Rihad had loved him—yet never truly known him.

      The grief he’d understood would always be with him seemed to triple inside of him with every passing moment. Became darker. Thicker. And woven in with it was guilt. That he hadn’t seen. That he hadn’t looked. That he’d accepted his own brother at face value, even when doing so had meant thinking the worst of him.

      He hated this. He hated himself. He hated all those wasted years.

      “None of this explains you,” Rihad bit out at Sterling, because she was there. Because she’d participated in this deception. Because she’d known his brother in a way he never would, and he was small enough to resent that, just then. “If he wanted a beard, why did he not marry years ago and cement it? And if he was going to be in a fake relationship with a woman, why did he not choose a woman who would raise no objections? Why you?”

      “That seems to be the sticking point,” she pointed out, her lovely eyes flashing with something heavier than temper. Darker. He felt another stab of guilt, and hated that, too. “Not so much why he did it, but that he did it with a woman like me.”

      “Because it’s impractical.” He wanted to punch something. He wanted to rage. He settled for seething at her instead. “You are a lightning rod of controversy. Why not choose a woman who would have flown beneath the radar?”

      “Why don’t we conduct a séance?” Sterling suggested in that same sarcastic tone, her pretty eyes narrow and dark on his. “You can lecture him just like this. I’m sure it will have the same effect now as it clearly did when he was still alive.”

      He didn’t know when he’d drifted closer to her, as if she was some kind of magnet. Only that they were much too close then, and he wanted to touch her too much, and that was only one of the reasons he was furious.

      It was the easiest reason.

      “Don’t.” Sterling’s eyes were glittering yet her mouth was vulnerable and Rihad wanted her. God, how he wanted her.

      “Don’t what?” he asked. “You were never my brother’s lover.”

      “That doesn’t mean I have any desire to be yours.”

      Yet he could see the faint tremor beneath her skin. He could see the flush across her cheeks. He knew her desire as well as he knew his own.

      “Liar.” But he said it as if it was very nearly a compliment.

      She didn’t contradict him, and the world was still so far away. There was only her. Here. And there had already been too many lies. There had been too much hidden and for too long, and Omar was lost.

      His brother had never trusted him. Neither did Sterling. And he couldn’t have said why he felt both so keenly. So harshly. As if they were the same thing. As if he could no longer trust himself.

      “Help me solve the puzzle you present,” he urged her in a rough whisper. “Why did he have a child with you? What did he hope to gain?”

      She looked confused and slightly bereft. “He imagined that if he had a child, that would show you that he wasn’t as irresponsible as you thought he was, even without you knowing the truth.”

      “That is a fine sentiment, Sterling, but all the reasons I married you held true for him, too.”

      “I doubt very much it was his intention to die,” she threw back at him. “If he hadn’t, maybe we would have married. Had he told me the reasons why that would help Leyla, I would have relented. But we’ll never know what might have happened, will we?”

      “I know that if he’d come to me, if he’d told me, I would not have turned my back on him. That’s what I know.” Rihad let out a long breath. “I will never understand why he did not.”

      Sterling made a frustrated noise. “That might have a bit more weight if you hadn’t spent all these years acting as if he was a communicable disease.”

      He made a sound of protest, but she wasn’t listening to him. Instead, she thrust one of her fists at him as if she wanted to hit him, but held herself back at the last moment.

      “All you did was talk about how you had to clean up after him, as if he was garbage.” And her voice was so bitter then. Her blue eyes the darkest he’d ever seen them. “Maybe if he’d thought he could trust you, if you cared about anything besides the damned country, he might have risked coming out to you.”

      “I loved him.”

      Again that fist, not quite making contact with his chest.

      “Actions speak louder than words, Rihad. Don’t blame Omar for your failure to treat him like a person. That’s on you. That’s entirely on you.”

      And whatever was left inside of him shattered at that. Leaving him nothing but a howling emptiness, and the uncomfortable ring of a truth within it that he’d have given anything not to face.

      “Damn you,” he whispered, his tone harsh and broken, and he didn’t try to hide it.

      Then he reached for her, because he knew, somehow, that Sterling was the only person alive who could soothe that shattered thing in him—

      But she flinched away from him and threw up her arms, as if she’d expected him to haul off and hit her.

      As if, he understood as everything inside of him screeched to a halt and then turned cold, someone had done so before.

       CHAPTER EIGHT

      STERLING FLINCHED, WHEN SHE knew better than that. But she couldn’t seem to help herself.

      She’d finally pushed him too far. She’d felt safe with him all this time, safer than she’d ever felt with another man, but that was before. She’d gone over the edge at last and she’d seen that broken look on his face.

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