I exit Zahra’s hospital room with a tight throat and a burning sensation in my chest. Hurting her was the last thing I wanted to do, but it’s necessary. Loving her isn’t an option. I have too much at stake and not enough flexibility to have her and the lifestyle I’ve spent my entire life pursuing. Earning my shares of the company needs to come first. If not for me, then for my brothers.
Zahra might not see it my way, but this is all for the best. We never had a future past two months, and it would have been cruel for both of us to keep pursuing something that had an end date. I didn’t realize how much my feelings were developing until I found her bleeding in my bathroom. Breaking her heart was inevitable. But I found my timing less cruel than leading her on because I wanted more time before I left Dreamland for good.
This was the right choice, no matter how hard it feels right now. If difficult decisions were easy, everyone would make them. These are the kinds of choices that make me good at my job.
That’s what I tell myself as I walk out of the hospital despite the heavy feeling pressing against my lungs.
For the fourth time tonight, I turn my body and try to find a comfortable position. It’s been three days since the hospital, and I have had maybe ten hours of sleep total.
I swipe my phone off the nightstand and check the time.
Three in the fucking morning.
If I can’t get a full night’s rest, I’ll be running on fumes by the end of the week. And with the vote fast approaching, I don’t have time for this shit.
I grab a pillow and tug it against my chest. It still smells like Zahra’s perfume, and I feel stupid pressing it against my face and taking another sniff.
The tightness in my chest returns with greater force.
You’re the one who wanted this. Think about your end goal.
But what good is an end goal if I don’t feel happy when everything is decided?
My blood heats in my veins, and I launch the pillow across the room. It lands with a soft thump near the door. Instead of feeling relieved, it feels as if someone is squeezing my throat.
Nothing makes the uncomfortable feeling go away. All my rationalization tactics fail, and I’m stuck staring at the ceiling, wondering if I made the right choice. It sure as hell doesn’t feel like it.
Not even a little bit.
I thought I could get information out of Ani about Zahra’s recovery, but she is ignoring me. Every text I’ve sent Ani has gone unanswered. I’m going a bit crazy since Zahra took a whole week off after she was discharged from the hospital.
All I want to know is if Zahra is feeling better. But Ani didn’t show up to our usual meet-up spot last night, and I was stuck eating my pretzel and hers. The ripple effect of my actions is starting to hit me like a tsunami.
I’ve resorted to stalking my buddy at her workplace because I hate the fact that she’s mad at me. If she were anyone else, I wouldn’t care. But Ani’s grown on me during my time at Dreamland.
“Hey.” I tap on Ani’s shoulder.
She tenses before turning around. “Hi. Can I help you with picking out some candy, sir?”
“Come on, Ani.” I pretend her words don’t bother me.
Her frown adds to the growing tension in my shoulders.
“I don’t want to talk to you.”
“Too bad. I’m your boss.”
She makes a disgusted noise as I grip her elbow lightly and take her to the empty back room of the candy store.
“Spit it out.” She stomps her foot.
The fist around my heart tightens as she shoots me a hard look I’ve never seen on her before.
“I thought we were friends.” Ani and I built a bond over the last few months, and I don’t want her pushing me away. I’ve grown to like her as a friend. The idea of her not talking to me anymore makes me sadder than I care to admit.
She shakes her head. “That was before you hurt my sister.”
“So what? We’re not friends anymore?”
“Nope.”
“You don’t mean that.”
She scowls. “Zahra’s my best friend and you made her cry.”
The inhale I take burns my eyes. “Your sister and I are—”
“Done. She told me.” Ani’s bottom lip wobbles.
“I didn’t mean to hurt you too.”
“I helped you hurt her. With the pumpkins, and New York.” Her eyes shine from unshed tears.
Fuck. Ani feels responsible for my actions? I never meant for her to carry the burden of my decisions.
“None of this is your fault.” I place my hand on her shoulder and give it a squeeze.
“No. It’s yours because you’re a big baby who can’t admit you like her.”
I can’t hold back my sad laugh. “If only life was that simple.”
“You told me excuses are for losers.”
Damn. I never thought she would use my own mentor advice against me. I had told her the same words in the context of trying to move out of her parents’ apartment and become independent.
It might seem like an excuse to her but I have my reasons.
She sighs. “Thanks for helping me and making me feel better about moving.”
Is she seriously trying to give me the brush off right now? “Ani—”
“You’re not my friend or buddy anymore. I quit.” She lets out a heavy breath.
Her rejection stings. I’ve genuinely enjoyed spending time with her. We bonded over many things from being the youngest sibling to our love for pistachio ice cream.
The fact that she can’t even look me in the eyes anymore sours my already darkening mood.
“Ani!” Someone opens the door.
“I’ve got to get going. Merry early Christmas, Rowan.” She offers me a half-assed wave before she escapes the room.
I’m left with an empty feeling I can’t seem to shake, no matter how hard I try.
Silence greets me when I walk into my house. After meeting with Ani, my day went from bad to complete shit. Nothing could keep my mind from drifting to thoughts about Zahra. I even caved and texted her, only to be ignored. It was supposed to be a simple conversation to lessen the building pressure inside of me, but Zahra didn’t even bother answering my message asking how she was feeling.
I change into workout gear and go for a punishing run around the property. My feet slamming against the pavement helps relieve some of the tension from my muscles, but it’s not enough to calm my mind.
By the time I run toward the gravel driveway of my house, my breathing is ragged, bordering on painful.
My eyes land on the forsaken swing. The one I never found the time to take down because I was too busy.
Or too much of a coward.
My molars smash together. I stomp through the house and toward the garage where my grandpa kept some tools and his old drill. I’m on a mission to remove that damn swing.
The same swing my mother read fairy tales to us on. Where she and my father would cuddle together while my brothers and I ran around the front yard. And the place where she took her last breath, with my father clinging to her cancer-riddled body while we all cried together.
I hate that fucking swing more than anything in the world. There’s nothing I want more than to remove the bolts and turn the whole damn thing into a bonfire.
I plug the cord into the wall with an unsteady hand. One test proves that the drill still works, and I grab a chair from inside to give me the height to reach the top bolts.
My hand shakes when I press the drill into the first screw. Every muscle in my arm groans in protest as I press the button. The screw rotates over and over before it drops straight onto the swing bench.
One down, three more to go.
I get off the chair and move it toward the other side. Resuming my position, I align the drill with the next screw. I freeze at the etched letters engraved right into the wood above my head.
My vision clouds as I trace the annotation. It’s jagged like it was done with a sharp knife, but the handwriting is unmistakably my mother’s.
My little knights,
Love with all your heart and show kindness in all your actions.
Mommy
I trace the words with a trembling finger. It’s been years since I heard the phrase, and it hits me like a punch to the gut. My mother lived by her words in every single one of her actions. She spoke them to us every morning before we went off to school and would whisper them to us every evening before bed. The words sink their claws into me, tearing apart whatever justification I had for the decision I’ve made.
Would my mother be proud of the man I am now? Part of me would surely hope so but another part of me knows I’ve done a lot of messed-up things in my life because that’s all I know. I wasn’t raised with the kind of values my mom preached—at least not once she was gone.
I understand I’m not in the business of making everyone happy, but there’s a difference between being business savvy and being unnecessarily cruel. I chose the latter over and over again without feeling a damn thing because it was the easy choice. Cutting back on better health insurance was a shitty ploy to get my father to allow me to sit in during board meetings. He wanted me to earn my stripes before I was given a seat at the table, so I decided to go for the big guns. Just like it was simple to vote against increasing the minimum wage and widen our profit margin. I was willing to think about the company first while proving to my father that I had what it took to develop my own streaming company with Kane money.
I chose myself every damn time because it was easy.
Show kindness in all your actions.
It’s a joke to linger on those words. Everything I did was at the expense of others while everything my mother did was based on her love and compassion. I forgot she was like that. I made myself forget because I think deep down, I didn’t want to remember the woman she was. Because I knew she would be disappointed in me. My actions over the years have been anything but kind, done from a place of greed and anger. I’ve shown little mercy, let alone love.
Whatever son my mother raised died along with her, and I feel nothing but shame.
A wave of regret hits me all at once. I discard the drill, take a seat on the chair, and allow myself to come to terms with the monster I became at the sacrifice of my mother’s most important values.
I stop by Zahra’s cubicle, hoping to catch her on her first day back from her sick leave. I enter the space, finding her drawing something on a…tablet? The brand is the same as mine. Whatever she’s drawing on the tiny screen is being mirrored on her desktop monitor, and honestly, it doesn’t look half bad.
“Is that a wheelchair?”
She jumps in her chair, dropping the plastic pencil by her feet.
I lean over at the same time as her, and our heads smack into each other. She hisses at the same time as I wince.
Our eyes lock. I brush my hand across hers before releasing my grip on the pencil. She sucks in a breath, and I smile on the inside.
I’m happy to see that some of her color has returned, although she seems to have lost some weight. I frown at the hollowness of her cheeks.
Her brows pull together as she scowls. “What do you want, Mr. Kane?”
Mr. Kane? My jaw clamps down on my tongue to stop me from saying something stupid.
She raises a brow in a silent taunt.
“I needed to speak with you.”
She remains silent. I see she’s not going to make this easy for me.
“I came to…” To what? Confess how I feel in the middle of a busy workday?
“Yes?”
“To ask if you would come over tonight.”
Her mouth drops open. “You’re joking.”
Fuck. She thinks I want to make a move on her? This is why I don’t talk about feelings.
“No—shit. I’m not saying this right. I want to talk to you. Just talk.”
“Yeah, well, I don’t want to talk to you.” She turns toward her little tablet and tinkers away at her design.
I blink at the computer. It hits me that she is creating her own design instead of working with me.
Because she doesn’t need you anymore. I’m not sure why the thought makes my throat tight. I feel like I’m being replaced and forgotten by the one person who really saw me. The person who believed in me and supported me when she had every reason to despise me for what I represented.
“Zahra, hear me out. I can’t sleep. I can’t eat. I’m stuck in a constant state of nausea and heartburn, no matter what I eat.”
“Sounds like you can feel after all.” She scowls.
“Yes. Are you happy? I feel like shit, ever since I left you in that damn hospital room, knowing full well you were crying because of me.”
“No. I’m not happy that you’re upset. On the contrary, I want you to be happy with your choices,” she speaks with such a neutral tone as if I didn’t break her heart.
“Why?” Why do you have to be so goddamn selfless all the time?
“Because I want you to look back on your choices and know they were worth it in the end.”
Except a lot of my decisions don’t seem worth it, despite how necessary they felt in the moment. I want to tell her that and a lot more if she will only give me a chance.
“Give me a chance to explain myself. I’ve been…thinking about everything. And I made a mistake. I shouldn’t have let you go because I was afraid. You were right. But I want to try again. With you.” My speech is stilted and awkward but it’s genuine.
She releases a resigned sigh, and my heart drops with it. “No. I’m not falling for this again. I gave you a chance and you blew it.”
“But—”
“No buts. What happens if you change your mind again? I won’t take that risk. I’ve been through enough, and honestly, I deserve better than anything you could half-heartedly offer me.”
I’m stuck slack-jawed, staring at her.
Her back tenses. “I need to get back to work. I’m on a deadline.”
“I could help you with that. No strings attached.” I take another look at the drawing.
Say yes and give me a chance.
“I think you’ve done enough.” She turns her chair, giving me her back.
She’s dismissing me. I’ve never felt so…awful. There’s an uncomfortable swell in my chest and a tightness in my throat that only intensifies the more I stare at Zahra’s back.
She’s really done with me, and it’s all my fault.
