Page 50 of Her Vow to Be His Desert Queen

It was happening again. She’d told him the truth and he’d walked away the way he had five years earlier.

Your own fault. You should never have told him you loved him.

It had been a risk, she’d known that. But when he’d smiled at her, looking like the man he’d been years before, she hadn’t been able to stop herself.

He was her husband and she loved him, and she wanted him to know that. After the truths of the night before, she’d thought he deserved to know that nothing had changed her feelings for him, and that nothing ever would. She loved him unreservedly, accepting him for everything he was, the way he’d accepted her, and she couldn’t bear for him to think that somehow he was unworthy of it, or didn’t deserve it after the things he’d done.

She didn’t know what she expected, but she hadn’t thought history would repeat itself.

‘So that’s it?’ She didn’t raise her voice. She didn’t need to. He would hear. ‘I tell you that I love you and your answer is to walk away? This is so five years ago, Khalil.’

He stopped dead right before the French doors, his back to her, his black robe swirling around him.

‘If you want my happiness so badly, explain to me how that is going to fill me with joy?’ she went on, since he didn’t look as if he was going to. ‘You did this last time too, making me feel as if this was all my fault somehow.’

‘No, that is not...’ His deep voice sounded ragged, and she very much wanted to cross the distance and put her arms around him, but she wasn’t going to. Not this time. ‘That is not what I am saying.’

‘So, if I had never told you everything would be fine?’ Anger was filling her now, the anger she’d never let herself truly feel years ago, an anger that she’d fought down and pushed away, hidden under the milder layers of irritation and annoyance. The anger that her aunt had never allowed her. The anger she should have given him five years ago and hadn’t. ‘That our marriage would be full of bliss if only I hadn’t mentioned the L word?’

He was silent, his back rigid, his wide shoulders tense. Then he turned around, and her breath caught. The expression on his beautiful face wasn’t impenetrable or hard to read now, no, she could read every line. He looked as if he was in agony. ‘Sidonie, that is not what I am—’

‘No,’she shouted suddenly. ‘No,you’rethe one who’s not listening tome.’ Then, before she could stop herself, she stormed up to him, stopping inches away from him as he stared at her with tortured dark eyes. ‘I can’t believe you’d tell me all those lies about how you can’t love me, and you want me to be happy, only to walk away from meagain.’ She stared fiercely back, letting him see her anger. ‘You’re a coward, Khalil. That’s the real issue. It’s not that you can’t love me or that kings aren’t permitted love. It’s that you won’t love me. Because you are afraid.’

‘It isnotfear.’

‘Then what is it?’ she demanded. ‘What is so very bad about loving me, Khalil?’

He looked as if he was going to come apart at the slightest touch, anguish bleeding out of him. He took a step so they were almost touching. ‘Because you broke me.’ His voice was ragged and hoarse. ‘Because you broke my heart, too. I loved you, but I could not have you. And I cannot... Iwillnot...let myself be broken again.’

It was the truth; she could see it in his eyes. She could feel it in her own heart, the shattering pain that had torn them apart all those years ago.

Leaving herhadbroken him, and he was protecting himself now, just as she had.

If she’d been the woman she’d been five years earlier, she’d have softened. She’d have put her arms around him and told him that it was okay, he could protect himself. She didn’t need to be loved back and being married to him was enough.

But it wasn’t enough. She understood that now and he’d made her see it.

She couldn’t spend the years of her marriage pouring her soul into a man who was too afraid to love her in return. Because she knew what would happen if she did. She’d lived it already with her aunt.

She’d become smaller, quieter. She’d push her own thoughts and feelings and wants and needs right down. She’d become weaker. A faded, washed-out version of the woman she was now.

The woman she’d become because of this man.

She didn’t want to lose that woman. That woman was strong and passionate and brave. That woman had learned to ask for what she wanted, and if she was going to hold on to her she couldn’t give in now.

Because deep down she knew, in her heart, that Khalil wanted her. That he needed her. And she thought that maybe he loved her too, but that was something he’d have to choose himself.

She’d stopped protecting herself and had stepped into her truth. Now it was his turn.

It was a risk to do this, to insist, but she had to do it.

For both their sakes.

‘Then leave.’ She took a step back. ‘Go on, run away, Khalil. You’re so very good at doing that, after all. If you’re not brave enough to bear loving me and having me love you in return, then you’re not the man I thought you were.’

He stood there, staring at her, his black eyes burning in his proud, sharp features.

But she wasn’t going to wait for him to walk away from her, not this time.

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