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“Why?” she asked, her mask falling, a sudden belligerence to that one word.
“I wanted to see your happiness. Your laughter. Your victory. Your passion. I wanted to see you, Yana.” And before she could probe him further, he said, “Do you have an agent yet?”
“No. I do have a pile of increasingly promising rejections from two years ago. They’d gotten more personal, came with more feedback. But after the last round a year ago, I stalled. I worked a bit more on the book and rejigged some major plot stuff. With Diana’s games and Thaata sick, my head wasn’t in the right space to start querying all over again.”
“Do you want me to recommend you to mine?”
“Why?”
“Why what?”
“Why would you recommend me? As a bonus for sleeping with you?” she said, half-laughing, half-mocking.
“You’re never going to stop taunting me, are you?” he said, knowing he deserved it. “My agent is amazing and will do a fabulous job negotiating you the best contract with Samuel. Fair warning about Samuel as an editor, though. He’s brilliant, but he might make you rip the book apart until you hate him, the book and yourself. Just stay...strong and keep your vision for the book at the forefront, okay?”
Yana nodded, feeling a rush of joy and something almost like pride well up inside her. “You believe in me, then? That I could do this author thing?”
“Of course I believe in you,” he said. “I’d love to read it and get a real sense of your work but I understand that you’re nervous about letting people read it.”
“Only you.”
“Only me what?”
“It’s only you that I’m twisted up about showing it to. I’ve given copies to both my sisters and brothers-in-law.”
His jaw tightened. “May I ask why?”
She shrugged. “Before, I was afraid that you’d mock it. Mock me.”
“You really painted me as a monster in your head, huh? And at every step, I added color to your rendering by confirming your worst impressions.”
“I think it helped to paint you like that.”
“Helped who, Yana? Because it’s been eating me up.”
“Me. It helped me. Every time I wanted to give in, admit defeat, throw in the towel, give up on myself, I’d get this image of you. I’d see you looking down at me full of anger and contempt and I’d tell myself,no way. No way am I going to give Nasir a chance to think less of me again. No way am I giving up. You were kinda like a fire under my butt.”
“I’m horrified yet again by my cruelty toward you and how it has—”
She came to him then and clasped his cheeks with that bravery that colored her every action. “It was a good thing, Nasir.”
“From which damned perspective,habibi?” he retorted, with an angry flush.
His fingers moved over her cheeks, soft and slow and reverent, as if he worried that he might mar her.
Yana leaned into his touch. “Even when I loathed you, you were a positive force in my life. I loved you. I wanted to be worthy of you. I—”
“You’re worth a million versions of me, Yana. You’re fiery and beautiful and worthier than a thousand sunrises and a thousand sunsets. Your heart is beauty and joy and life itself,habibi.”
“You’re making me cry.”
“Par for the course, then,” he said with a twinkle, and then he was kissing her, and every nip and lick was lust and reverence—two such opposing shades of the same sentiment. “I wanted to be the bearer of good news. Even that was selfish. Shall I tell you why I’m here, truly?”
“Yes. Now, Nasir. You’ve stripped me of all my roles and defenses. I can’t be strong for too long. Tell me now. Please.”
“The second piece of good news first. I had three pieces.”
“There’s more?” she said, wiping the back of her hand over her cheek with a vulnerability that squeezed his heart.
