for.
He went to the bar and ordered a drink, then surveyed his surroundings. Until he spotted her. Blonde, tall and bombshell curvy. All the things Jada wasn’t.
She was leaning against the other end of the bar, a drink in her hand. She lifted a toothpick from it and put it in her mouth, sucking the cherry from the end. Subtle she was not. Good. He didn’t want subtle.
He wanted easy.
He put his glass to his lips and made eye contact with her. And on cue, she worked her way down the bar toward him, her hips swaying. He felt no desire for her. But this wasn’t about her.
“Buy me another drink?” she shouted over the music.
He nodded and signaled to the bartender.
He knew the steps to this dance. Everything about it was familiar. Except for the sick feeling in his stomach. Except for the total absence of adrenaline. Of the thrill.
The woman approached him, put her hand over his, tilted her head to the side. She talked. She played with her hair. She licked her lips.
His vision blurred. Until he saw Jada. In a white dress, walking down the aisle toward him like she was going to the gallows.
And then he heard their vows. Over and over again.
Promises of togetherness until death. Of faithfulness.
And Sayid’s words, echoing in his head.
You think what happened here today, the words you spoke, you think those won’t matter?
It mattered. Regardless of what he wanted to believe. It mattered.
She mattered. And the simple act of her not returning his love didn’t erase it.
“I have to go.” He put his drink down on the bar and turned away from the woman, walked back toward the door.
Someone ran into him, laughed, a strange-sounding laugh. Drunken. Not genuine.
No wonder he had never found anything lasting here. No wonder this had never brought him satisfaction. There was nothing real in this. Nothing of substance.
Jada and Leena were the real thing.
They were all that mattered. And if he had to put himself through the pain of her rejection a thousand times, he would do it.
Because before Jada, he had been a prisoner in himself. And now, pain and all, he was free.
Alik had been gone for days, leaving Leena and Jada alone in Attar.
Jada couldn’t complain. She badly needed the space. Needed to get her head on straight. Find herself again, whoever that was.
Although the idea that space would somehow ease her pain was terribly flawed. She knew that. Space, separation, caused so much pain.
Leena had fallen asleep already, which was nice in some ways. Not in others. Because without her daughter to entertain, all Jada had were her thoughts. And her thoughts were a sad, bitter place at the moment.
Bitter at herself, mostly. And at Alik for demanding so much of her.
Jada sighed and rested her arms on the railing, looking out over the ocean. She missed Alik. She missed his touch. His kiss. His laugh. She missed how she felt happy around him.
You’re not the same woman you were.
She couldn’t get his words out of her mind. That was what scared her. That she’d changed so much. That all her memories were fading into a vague, colorless past. Happy, but no longer so poignant. No longer something she felt desperate to recapture. No longer something she idolized as utter perfection, but something she now saw as flawed. Real.
She was standing on the edge of a cliff, and she wasn’t sure whether or not she should jump. She was afraid that by embracing her new self with Alik, she would lose who she’d been with Sunil.
But Sunil was gone. And there was no way to know how things would have played out if he was still here. No way to know how she would have changed, or not changed.
The simple truth was, the woman who was here and now, wanted Alik, and no other man. The woman she was now wouldn’t go back, because this life, her life, was everything she hadn’t known she’d wanted. And she wanted Alik, so much. So incredibly much. His touch, his laugh, him.
She waited for the guilt that admission should bring, but there was none. Just a sort of sweet ache in her heart.
She closed her eyes and lifted her face to the sky, the ocean breeze skimming over her skin like a caress. That made her think of Alik, too. When she thought of the word husband, it was his face she saw. When she thought of love…
She couldn’t go forward while