Page 58 of Oliver
"This weekend isn't about me," I said carefully. "It's about Parisa."
"Precisely. Parisa understands her role. She and Darryl will build something meaningful here—a family with influence." Her gaze sharpened. "You could have the same if you stopped chasing distractions."
My chest constricted, breathing becoming harder by the second. I had to get out of there.
"I need to finish the seating arrangements." I forced the words out, just barely.
"Yes, you do." Maryam stood, straightening her designer yoga top. "And Zahra? Remember that a night of passion is nothing compared to a lifetime of position." She touched my chin, forcing me to meet her gaze. "I just hope that when Oliver leaves—and hewillleave—better men will still find you worthy of their time."
Her words sank into me like fangs full of venom. Not because I was worried about Ryan’s currentorfuture interest in me, that was never happening, no matter how hard Aunt Maryam pushed, but because she was right.
Oliver wasn’t staying.
Those were the rules.
Those werealwaysthe rules.
And the worst part? I was the one who made them, the one who agreed to every goddamn clause and signed my name at the bottom of the contract.
The one who was so adamant from the very beginning that this was just business.
And I had no right to miss him before he was even gone, because I knew how that story ended.
I was the girl who let him bleed and walked away.
The girl who chose silence when he needed my voice the most.
The girl who wasn’t worth staying for.
And in ten days, he was going to erase me from his life all over again.
Eighteen
OLIVER
I checkedmy watch for the third time in five minutes, shifting my weight from one foot to the other as I scanned the hotel lobby. Brunch started five minutes ago, and Zahra was nowhere to be seen.
Not that I was eager to face her, not after this morning.
I’d woken up alone. At first, I didn’t process it. My arm had stretched out instinctively, reaching for warmth but finding only cold sheets.
For a brief, foolish second, I thought maybe she was in the bathroom, maybe she’d come back, maybe?—
Then I saw it.
Her phone was gone. Her tablet, her sneakers.
No lingering warmth. No note. No sign she had ever been there at all except for the wreckage we’d left in the wake of our solar flare. A perfect storm, sudden and intense. Lethal.
The room smelled like jasmine and sweat and sex, all tangled up in the air like some cruel reminder of what I wasn’t supposed to have.
The evidence was everywhere. The ruined sheets, my torn shirt lying next to the bed like a casualty of war. The faint, unmistakable ache in my body, like even my muscles knew I was never meant to let her go.
I sat up too fast, my head spinning, my skin still marked by the heat of her hands, her lips.
She left.
Of course she did.
