Lib Novel Page 21
Parties would get her roofied.
Keep her head down, always.
Only give minimal details about her background.
All boys were liars. All men were rapists.
It was no wonder that, from middle school through college, she was seen as a weirdo. Everyone around her had waited for the day she exploded like a disgruntled postal worker.
“Sayeda, we need to talk.”
She spun around to Hannah standing in the middle of the room. “What about?” she asked, rising onto unstable legs.
Hannah took a few steps closer and looked down, frowning, the look intensifying the lower her brows fell. “It’s Adrían. You’re interacting with him too much, interfering. He’s asking about you when he should be focused on me. Then what’s with the name thing? You told him your real name?”
“I got scared. I forgot what name I was supposed to use, so mine slipped out.”
In the past, she would have already looked away from Hannah’s stare—down at the floor, over her shoulder, up into an eclipse. These days, however, she barely blinked, even as her cousin loaded her expression with judgment.
They broke her.
Things were not like they used to be, and their old ways of getting her to obey or fall in line belonged to the woman who might never again exist.
“I don’t want you to get hurt,” Hannah continued. “Men like Adrían aren’t for women like you.”
They’d draped her in a head covering and veil to hide her face and to make it clear that she was off-limits from a distance. But nothing they put on her body could change who she was underneath every last piece of fabric.
Adrían had held a knife to her throat, and her body’s response was an unexpected throb down low. Whenever he was near, she had to remind herself not to reach out to touch his cheek, stroke the back of his hand, or kiss him to see what would happen.
If he would kiss her back.
Out there in Morocco, where she had been stripped of everything she’d ever known, she was slowly being introduced to hidden parts of herself. Those hidden parts were slowly growing infatuated with the very handsome Adrían Delgano.
“Let me handle him,” Hannah reiterated. “Trust me. I want to. That man’s dick needs its own passport.”
Her brows twitched. “How would you know that?”
“Don’t worry about it, and never tell him I said that.” Hannah sighed and gave her a familiar scan. An “I’m worried for you, little sister” scan. “I love you, Sayeda. You know that, right? You’re basically my sister.”
“I know,” she said. “I love you too.”
“I just don’t want to see you get your heart broken, especially since I won’t be able to do anything about it.” Hannah gently squeezed her wrist. “Be good.”