Chapter 76: 76

“It’s mostly about the funeral preparations, yes. But what happens after is for after. You don’t need to think about that now.” Ziza turned them down the hallway after exiting the lift and headed for Aliyah’s room. “What you need to do now is rest.’

A little while later, when Ziza was helping her get back into bed, Aliyah ceased her wrist in a firm grip. Stopping her in her tracks as she was pulling the covers over her legs and causing Ziza to give her a questioning frown.

“Why?” Aliyah asked. “Why are you still here?”

As Aliyah stared her down, that’s when her questions made sense. Ziza paused and licked her lips as she thought it over for a second.

“Why do you think I’m here?” She asked.

Aliyah shrugged before lifting her chin and looking her dead in the eye. “Honestly?”

Ziza nodded.

“I think you’re doing all this to prove a point.” Aliyah twisted her face away to stare at nothing outside her window as she spoke. “To show that you’re somehow better than me.”  

“You’re right,” Aliyah’s head whipped back around as fast as her neck brace would allow her to stare at Ziza as she rounded the bed and went to the window to gaze out of it too, “about proving a point I mean.” She laughed.

“And what’s that?” The new mother frowned.

“There’s no point in being hostile towards each other, especially during this time. It does nothing but hurt everyone. You might think that I’m out to get you, or that this is all a publicity stunt, because all you’ve ever known is the hostility between us. But what you didn’t know is that I didn’t even want to be here.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean exactly what I said. I could have been in the studio doing what I love. Or I could have spent the entire time I was here going out with my friends, not without thinking for a moment about what could have been going through. But I knew that if the roles had been reversed. If was the one who’d been in that accident and lost… Rafiq, I knew that the feeling of being alone would have eaten me alive.”

“I’ve been alone. I know how it feels, even when you have someone you love like Mina, and I knew I wouldn’t wish that for anyone.”

“Now, I’m not saying now that Faizah passed, we can suddenly be the best of friends and start braiding each other’s hair and doing each other’s makeup. I had to do this because—I’m doing this because of love. Take that however you want, but it’s the truth.”

She paused while letting all the emotional turmoil she’s been going through seep to the surface. “Love?” Aliyah looked as if Ziza had said the craziest thing she’d ever heard, “What do you mean, love?” She frowned as if it were impossible for it to exist in the same sentence with both their names.

“One thing you have to understand, Aliyah, is that love is more than just ‘I love you’ or a feeling.” Ziza turned around to look her in the eye as she said the next words. “Love was me—despite the gulf between us—caring for you, offering my shoulder to you, sacrificing my time for you. No matter how uncomfortable it made me because we’ve never been close. Love is more than just a feeling.”

That was the most vulnerable she’d ever been with Aliyah, and it scared her. The more she spoke, the rawer she felt. Every word felt as if she’d spoken them toward her current reality.

She felt as if she’d said all of that to Rafiq. Which only almost had her crumbling to the floor and curling into a ball and think about how alone she felt, despite having someone to talk to. When she felt the tears pricking at the back of her eyes, Ziza knew she had to leave.

“Excuse me.” She pivoted away from the window and gathered her purse and the papers from the foot of her bed. Confused at her sudden behaviour, Aliyah asked, “What—where are you going then?”

“I’m sorry, I have somewhere to go.”

“What about the meeting with Malik and the Lawyer?”

Ziza checked her watch again. “I’ll be back in time for that, don’t worry.” She couldn’t have rushed for the exit faster.

“Majeed?” she called as she gently closed the door behind her.

“Your Highness?” He was beside her instantly, as if he’d materialized out of nothingness, his pace matching hers.

“You’re coming with me. Tell the rest of your men to go back. I need some privacy.”