The Darkest of Secrets (20 page)

He turned back to her, his eyes flashing a warning. ‘You don’t know my family, Grace.’

‘Then tell me. Tell me what they did that’s so bad you can’t give your brother—your brother whom you thought was dead—a second chance.’

Khalis swung away from her and raked a hand through his hair. ‘You are trying to equate two very different situations. And it simply doesn’t work.’

‘But the principles are the same.’ Grace rose and took a step closer to him. ‘The heart involved in the relationships is the same—yours.’

Khalis let out a sound that was close to a laugh, but filled with disbelief and disgust. ‘Are you saying I can’t love you if I don’t forgive my brother?’

Grace hesitated. She didn’t want to make ultimatums or force Khalis to do something he wasn’t ready for or capable of. Yet she also knew that they could have no real, secure future as long as he harboured this coldness towards his family. ‘Ever since we first met,’ she began, choosing her words with care, ‘I sensed a darkness—a hardness in you that scares me.’

He turned around, eyebrows arched in cynical incredulity. ‘I
scared
you? I thought you loved me.’

‘I do, Khalis. That’s why I’m saying this.’

‘Cruel to be kind?’ he jeered, and Grace knew she was getting closer to the heart of it. The heart of him, and the thing—whatever it was—he was afraid of.

‘I’m not trying to be cruel,’ she said. ‘But I don’t understand, Khalis. Why won’t you even talk to your brother? Why do you refuse to mourn or even think of your family? Why are you so determined never to look back?’

‘I told you, the past is past—’

‘But it
isn’t
—’ Grace cut him off ‘—as long as it controls your actions.’

He stared at her long and hard and she ached to cross the room and hold him in her arms. ‘You helped me face my demons,’ she said softly. ‘Maybe now you need to face yours.’

His features twisted and, with a lurch of mingled hope and sorrow, Grace thought she’d won.
They
had. Then he turned away and said tonelessly, ‘That’s just a lot of psychobabble.’

Her eyes stung. ‘Do you really believe that?’

‘Don’t make this into something it isn’t, Grace. This isn’t about us. We can be perfectly happy without me ever seeing my brother again.’

‘No. We can’t.’ Her words fell slowly into the stillness, as if from a great height. Grace imagined she could almost see the irrevocable ripples they created, like pebbles in a pond, disturbing the calm surface for ever.

He turned back to face her, shock replacing anger. ‘What are you saying?’

‘I’m saying,’ Grace said, each word a knife-twist in her heart, ‘that if you can’t even talk to your brother—your brother whom you thought was dead—then I can’t be with you.’ He looked as if she’d just punched him. Maybe she had. ‘I’m not trying to give you some kind of ultimatum—’

‘Really?’ he practically snarled. ‘Because it looks that way from here.’

‘I’m just stating facts, Khalis. Our relationship has been a mess of contradictions from the beginning. Keeping secrets even as we had this incredible connection. Amazing intimacy and terrible pain. Well, I don’t want a relationship—a love—that is a contradiction. I want the real thing. Whole. Pure. Good. I want that with you.’

He let out a shuddering breath. ‘When we first met, I put you on a pedestal. I thought you were perfect, and I was disappointed when you showed me your feet of clay. But I accepted you, Grace. I accepted you and loved you just as you are. Yet now you can’t do the same for me? I’ve got to be perfect?’

‘No, Khalis.’ She shook her head, blinked back tears. ‘I don’t want you to be perfect. I just want you to try.’

His mouth curved in a disbelieving and humourless smile. ‘Try to be perfect.’

‘No,’ she said, her heart breaking now, ‘just try to forgive.’

Khalis didn’t answer, and that was answer enough. He couldn’t do it, she realised. He couldn’t even try to let go. And they couldn’t have a future together—a secure, trusting future—as long as he didn’t.

Slowly Grace walked over to the bed, where her clothes from last night still lay discarded on the floor. She reached for her dress. ‘I think,’ she said, ‘I have a flight to catch.’

Khalis stared at the nondescript door of the hotel room where his brother was staying. It had taken two days to work up the courage to call Ammar, and then fly to Tunis where he was staying. Now he was here, standing in the hallway of a nameless hotel, the cries and clangs from the busy medina of metalwork and craft shops audible on the hot, dusty air.

Even now he was tempted to walk away. Grace had demanded answers, yet how could he explain his reasoning for refusing simply to speak to his brother? What kind of man could be so hard-hearted?

Apparently he could.

Yet the feeling—the
need
—to keep himself distant from his family was so instinctive it felt like a knee-jerk reflex. And when he’d heard Ammar’s voice on the telephone, sounding so ragged and even broken, that deep-seated instinct had only grown stronger. Grace was right. He didn’t want to forgive Ammar. He was afraid of what might happen if he did.

It had taken her leaving him—
devastating
him—for him to finally face his brother. His past.

Khalis raised one trembling fist and knocked on the door. He heard footsteps, and then the door opened and he was staring at his brother. Ammar still stood tall and imposing, reminding Khalis that his brother had always been older, stronger, tougher. Ammar’s face looked gaunt, though, and there was a long scar snaking down the side of his face. He stared long and hard at Khalis, and then he stepped aside to let him in.

Khalis walked in slowly, his body almost vibrating with tension. The last time he’d seen Ammar he’d been twenty-one years old and leaving Alhaja. Ammar had laughed.
Good riddance
, he’d called. And then he’d turned away as if he couldn’t care less.

‘Thank you for coming,’ Ammar said. He sounded the same, surly and impatient. Maybe he hadn’t changed after all. Khalis realised he would be glad, and felt a spurt of shame.

‘I’m not sure why I did,’ Khalis answered. He couldn’t manage any more. Raw emotion had grabbed him by the throat and had him in a stranglehold, making further speech impossible. He hadn’t seen his brother in fifteen years. Hadn’t spoken to him or even looked at a photograph of him. Hadn’t
thought
of him, because to think of Ammar was to remember the happy days of their childhood, when they had been friends and comrades-in-arms. Not competitors. Not enemies.

To think of Ammar, Khalis knew with a sudden flash of pain, was to think of Jamilah and to regret. To wonder if he might have made a mistake in leaving all those years ago. And that was a thought he could not bear to consider for a moment.

‘So,’ he finally said, and his voice sounded rusty, ‘you’re alive.’ As far as observations went, it was asinine. Yet Khalis felt robbed of intelligent thought as well as speech. Part of him wanted to reach forward and hug the brother he’d lost so long ago. The other part—the greater part, perhaps—still had a heart like a stone.

The heart involved in the relationships is the same—yours.

And he wanted that heart to belong to Grace. For her—for them—he had to try. ‘Why did you want to talk to me?’ he asked.

Ammar’s face twisted in a grimace. ‘You’re my brother.’

‘I haven’t been your brother for fifteen years.’

‘You’ll always be my brother, Khalis.’

‘What are you saying?’ Khalis tried to keep his voice even. It was hard with so many contrary emotions running through him. Hope and fear. Anger and joy.
I don’t want a relationship … that is a contradiction.
He swallowed. He had to see this through.

Ammar released a shuddering breath. ‘God knows I have made many mistakes in this life, even as a boy. But I’ve changed—’

Khalis let out a disbelieving laugh, the sound harsh and cold. Grace was right. There was a coldness inside him, a hard darkness he did not know how to dispel.
She only wanted you to try.
‘How have you changed?’ he managed.

‘The helicopter crash—’

‘A brush with death made you realise the error of your ways?’ Khalis heard the sneer in his own voice.

‘Something like that.’ He gazed levelly at Khalis. ‘Do you want to know what happened?’

He shrugged. ‘Very well.’

‘The engine failed. I think it was a genuine accident, although God knows our father always suspected someone of trying to kill him.’

‘When you deal with the dregs of society, that tends to happen.’

‘I know,’ Ammar said quietly.

Khalis gave another hard laugh. ‘As well you should.’

‘I was piloting the helicopter,’ Ammar continued. ‘When we realised we were going to crash, Father gave the one parachute to me.’

For a second Khalis was stunned into silence. He had not thought his father capable of any generosity of spirit. ‘Why was there only one parachute?’ he asked after a moment.

Ammar shrugged. ‘Who knows? Maybe the old man only wanted there to be one so he could be sure to take it in case of an accident. I always thought he’d be the last one standing.’

‘But he changed his mind?’

‘He
changed
,’ Ammar said quietly, and Khalis heard a note of sorrow in his brother’s usually strident voice. ‘He was dying. He’d been diagnosed with terminal cancer six months ago. It made him start to really think about things.’

‘
Think
about things?’

‘I know he had a lot to answer for. I think that’s why he decided to hand the company over to you. He only did that a month or so before he died, you know. He talked about you, said he regretted being so harsh with you.’ Ammar gave him a bleak smile. ‘Admired what you’d done with yourself.’

It seemed so hard to believe. Painful to believe. The last time he’d seen his father, Balkri Tannous had spat in his face. Tried to hit him. And recklessly Khalis had told him he was taking Jamilah with him.

Over my dead body
, Balkri Tannous had said. Except in the end it had been Jamilah’s.

And still Khalis had left. Without her.

Pain stabbed at him, both at his head and his heart. This was why he never thought about the past. This was why he’d cut himself off from his family so utterly, had insisted his father or brother could not be redeemed. So he wouldn’t wonder if he should have stayed. Or returned sooner. Or taken her anyway. Anything to have kept his sister alive.

‘You’re thinking of Jamilah,’ Ammar said quietly and Khalis swung away, braced one hand against the door. He wanted to leave. He was
desperate
to leave, and yet the thought of Grace—the warmth of her smile, the
strength
of her—made him stay. ‘It was an accident, you know,’ Ammar said. ‘Her death. She didn’t mean to kill herself.’ He paused, and Khalis closed his eyes. ‘I knew you’d wonder.’

‘How do you know it was an accident?’

‘She was determined, Khalis. Determined to live. She told me so.’

Khalis let out a strangled sound, choking off the cry of anguish that howled inside him. ‘If I’d come back for her—’

‘You could not have prevented an accident.’

‘If I’d stayed—’

‘You couldn’t have stayed.’

His hand clenched into a fist. ‘Maybe I should have,’ he said in a low voice. ‘Maybe if I’d stayed, I could have changed things for the better.’

His back to Ammar, Khalis didn’t hear his brother move. He just felt his hand heavy on his shoulder. ‘Khalis, it took an act of God and my own father’s death for me to want to change. It took Father’s diagnosis for him to even think about changing. Do not attempt to carry the world on your shoulders. We were grown men. We were not your responsibility, and neither was Jamilah.’

Khalis didn’t speak for a long moment. He couldn’t. ‘So what happened next?’ he finally asked.

‘I parachuted into the sea and managed to get to land. A small island south of here, closer to the coast. It had fresh water, so I knew I could survive for a few days at least. I dislocated my shoulder when I landed, but I managed to fix it.’ Ammar spoke neutrally enough, but Khalis was humbled anyway. He could not imagine enduring such a catastrophe.

‘And?’ he asked after a pause.

‘After six days I managed to flag down a fishing boat, and they brought me to a small village on the coast of Tunisia. I’d developed a fever by that point and I was out of my mind for several days. By the time I knew who I was and I remembered everything, weeks had passed since the crash. I knew I needed to speak with you, so I flew to San Francisco to find out where you were, and then to Rome.’

‘How did you even know about my company?’

‘I’ve kept track of what you’ve been doing,’ Ammar said. ‘All along.’

And meanwhile Khalis had deliberately refused to read or listen to anything about Tannous Enterprises. Again he felt that hot rush of guilt. He couldn’t bear the thought of his brother or father regretting his departure, watching him from afar. He couldn’t bear the thought he’d been wrong.

‘I know I wasn’t a good brother to you,’ Ammar said.

Khalis just shrugged. ‘Sibling rivalry.’

‘It was worse than that.’ He didn’t answer. He knew it was. ‘Please forgive me, Khalis.’

Ammar couldn’t say it plainer than that. Khalis registered the heartfelt sincerity in his brother’s gaunt face, and said nothing. The words he knew his brother wanted to hear stuck in his throat.

If I forgive you then the past can’t be the past any more and I’ll have to live with the guilt and regret of knowing I should have stayed and saved Jamilah. And I don’t think I can survive that. I’m not strong enough.

But Grace was strong. Grace made him strong. And he knew, just as Grace had known, it wasn’t only Ammar he needed to forgive. It was himself.

You helped me face my demons. Maybe now you need to face yours.

His throat worked. His eyes stung. And somehow he found the words, raw and rusty, scraping his throat and tearing open his heart. ‘I forgive you, Ammar.’
And I forgive myself.

Ammar broke into a smile and started forward. Clumsily, because it had been so long, he reached to embrace Khalis. Khalis put his arms around Ammar, awkwardly, yet with a new and hesitant hope.