Black Keys (The Colorblind Trilogy #1) - Rose B. Mashal Page 0,3

just had to stop thinking of any good thought. I’d always understood they weren’t the nice and kind people Joseph was trying to make me believe they were. It didn’t mean I was shallow. I always thought deeply about everything, and my theories were based on the crimes and cruelty I’d seen the media and people talking about all my life. It was just impossible for it not to be true.

But the look in my brother’s eyes when he talked about her–he really loved her, but–was love really that blind that he couldn’t even sense rubbish when it hit him in the face? I wasn’t sure.

I got up from the sofa and paced the room back and forth a few times, moving my hands through my hair in frustration every once in a while. I was still not able to believe that my brother fell for a Muslim–an Arabian one, at that. What would our parents think of it?

I stopped in front of him and looked down to his sitting form, then asked again, “She makes you happy?” It was the only thing that really mattered, I’d come to realize. My brother’s happiness was more important than anything else. It was his life, so it was his decision. It was the right thing to support him in whatever he wanted as long as he thought it would make him happy. His happiness was truly the only thing that really mattered. Supporting him was my duty, even if I didn’t approve.

He looked up at me, a pleading look in his eyes as if he was silently begging me for something I didn’t even know. “She does. Like no other,” he whispered.

I paused for a few moments before I nodded. “When is the wedding?” I had to ask.

“In four days.”

“Four days? Really?”

“I–I came here only to get you.”

“Wow!” I said for what felt like the hundredth time in less than an hour. “Aren’t you rushing it?”

“It can’t be delayed.” He looked down again.

“You’re head over heels about her, Big Bro, aren’t you?” I smiled the best I could, even if I still wanted to go somewhere alone and scream my head off.

“Completely.” he replied almost instantly.

I nodded again, then shook my head less than a moment later.

“What’s her name?”

“Jenna.”

“Jenna? I didn’t know that was an Arabian name.”

“It’s not. Her name is Janna, with ‘A’ not ‘E’, but the first time she told me her name I thought I’d misheard her and asked her if it was Jenna, like you just did. She tried to tell me how to pronounce Janna the right way but she said I made it sound funny when I said it. She let me call her Jenna for a while, but then I mastered it eventually, and I couldn’t be any happier knowing how to say a new name.” He grinned, his eyes shining as he told me the little story about his princess.

A real princess.

The delight was back in his eyes with that spark that showed how much he actually loved her as he spoke those few words about her. I was completely sure by then that he really loved her and it wasn’t just a thing that would soon be over like most of his hookups.

She truly did make him happy.

And it was all that mattered.

“Then let’s start getting ready to meet your Janna.”

The things we do for love …

Here I was sitting on a plane, even if it was the thing I hated doing the most. It had everything to do with what had happened to my parents and what had happened on The Black Day. I think I had developed some kind of phobia towards airplanes since the accidents. But it was my brother’s wedding, so it was impossible not to be there. I wouldn’t miss it for the whole world. And if it took me two hundred hours sitting on this thing, I was willing to do it in a heartbeat.

I’d always known that I would do anything for my brother. I’d even take a bullet for him if things came to that, no questions asked.

I took a sip of my warm soda that I’d been holding in my hands for more than an hour, clinging to it and staring at the fancy glass for distraction. The anxiety I was feeling wasn’t a nice feeling at all, but I had to be at the wedding. It was Joseph’s.

Joseph’s wedding.

The words felt strange even in my mind, not only on my tongue. It seemed