Houssam paused in his tracks, his broad shoulders still towards her, and she just waited, waited to see what his reaction was going to be.

Finally he turned around, his face a mask of careful neutrality.

“What?”

“Me and Abdullah. It’s not for real. Well I mean it’s for real but at the same time not.”

He put his hands in the air.

“What does that even mean!?”

She shifted uncomfortably.

“It’s complicated.”

“Are you engaged or not?” he demanded, and she fingered her plate nervously.

“In technical terms. But in reality it’s more of a…business deal.”

Houssam’s eyes widened, and he took a step backwards.

“Oh my GOD! What does that even mean!? Is he PAYING you to be his fiancée!? Good Lord Hana I can’t even believe you!”

“No! Houssam no! Wait. It’s not like that please calm down. Okay business deal was a bad choice of words.”

“I’ll say.” He said with a snort. “Just tell me the truth Hana.”

She sunk into one of the dining room chairs.

“Okay. I will tell you. But just be warned this is weird and out of the ordinary and I don’t want you to judge me. I would never usually do something like this.”

“Alright. I’ll try to keep an open mind.” He grumbled.  

“Let’s say, if God Forbid your mother was dying? And literally her last wish was to see you getting settled. What would you do?”

He regarded her suspiciously.

“What kind of question is that?”

“Just answer it Houssam.”

“I would find someone I like, and get married.”

Hana shook her head.

“They gave her a month maximum to live. There isn’t time to search and find someone.”

Understanding dawned in his eyes, but his face still remained impassive.

“I would find someone to pretend for her.”

She nodded.

“Exactly.”

He took a deep breath.

“Abdullah’s mom is dying?”

Hana was silent for a second, before turning her face away from him.

“Yeah. It’s not looking good. They gave her another two weeks but the way she has been…” she trailed off, and Houssam put a hand to his neck.

“Wow. I knew she had been sick for a while, but I had no idea.”

“Yeah.”

The two of them were silent for a few moments before she sighed.

“He came to me two weeks ago and told me that her doctors had given her maximum a month to live, and she told him that it was her only wish to see her son with someone. He is her only child after all.”

“He came to you?”

“Well he came to my dad. But he explained it to me.”

“Does anyone else know?”

“My parents and his dad do. But no one else.”

He fiddled with his keys.

“How come?”

“Can you imagine Ilham and Hisham letting me do this? Even Yusra and Amir? Plus, we don’t want it to get back to his mom that it isn’t real. It would be so upsetting for her. Every time I go and see her she just absolutely lights up, and the doctors say that it’s the happiest she is all day.”

His face softened slightly.

“Why did he ask you?”

Hana shrugged.

“I’m not sure honestly.”

“I do.”

Hana’s eyebrow raised.

“Why?”

“Because he likes you for real, and then is hoping that you will really fall in love with him and then not want to leave him.”

“Oh Houssam,” she said a bit irritably. “We don’t even talk outside of the hospital. You know how I got this ring? He dropped it off at my dad’s office and left it with his secretary in a brown manila envelope! Not exactly romantic! He knows I love you. He is the one who told me to tell you!”

Houssam attempted to keep his features cool, but it was hard as it was the first time she had straight out admitted she loved him.

“Then how come you didn’t tell me?!”

“Would you have let me do it?”

At his silence, she shook her head.

“See? You had to go to New York for you. I had to do this for me.”

“How is this for you?”

She raised her hands in the air.

“If I get to make someone a little happier who is going to leave this Earth soon, then it was worth it.”

“It was worth it having me think you ditched me for another man? Why did you do this two weeks before I returned!?” he demanded.

“You didn’t speak to me for six months! You didn’t ask about me or tell me any news! I used to ask Yusra about you every single time I talked to her! Every single time! And then soon she stopped talking about you so I took that to mean you were having doubts! A girl doesn’t like to beg you know!”

“You should have told me. You don’t know the agony I was going through.”

“I am sorry for that. But we had no understanding when you left. There was no obligation between us.”

“That’s because you told me to go!”

She nodded.

“I did. Because you needed to find out who you were outside of us. I didn’t need that. I have never doubted my feelings for you, and I never will. But you have to understand why I did this. When he first proposed, I said no. Why would I say yes when I would have waited a hundred years for you!? But then he explained to me what was going on, and I couldn’t say no. There was no way.”

“I don’t like it.”

Hana looked up at him sharply.

“What?”

“I know you Hana. You are one of the sweetest people I have ever known. You may think you are going to get out of this but you won’t.”

“Excuse me!? What’s that supposed to mean!?”

“If his mom dies, you aren’t going to say ‘well here is your ring back, good luck with everything’. You’re going to stick around because you’re going to feel bad. You won’t leave him.”

“Houssam. He has no feelings for me. I have no feelings for him. This is not about you and me. This is about giving his mom happiness in the last few moments of her life.”

He shook his head again.

“I still don’t approve.”

“And I don’t need your approval!” she exclaimed, hotly, standing up from her seat in anger.

He took a step backwards at the volume of her words.

“I see. So I am nothing to you now?”

She sighed, and put a hand to her head.

“Look. I know that this is hard to take. I know in retrospect it probably wasn’t the brightest thing I have ever done in my life. But I couldn’t say no. His mom has spent hours telling me that she used to cry and cry about dying not because she was scared, but because she wants to see him happy before she goes.”

“So you’re lying to her then?”

“Houssam, don’t start this.” She said warningly, and he shrugged.

“Well you are. You may think you are doing a good deed but you are straight up lying to the poor woman’s face, and when she finds out…”

“HOUSSAM SHE IS DYING! She is on every single kind of machine possible to keep her alive. She can’t breathe on her own, she can’t eat on her own, and she can barely even talk. The fact that she is still alert some of the time is a miracle! I don’t regret doing this for her, and I most definitely don’t need your approval! So stop making this about you and your feelings. Stop making this about your insecurities about us. Should I have told you from the beginning? Fine, I probably should have for common courtesy’s sake. But there was no formal understanding between us besides us knowing how the other felt! So I owed you nothing!”

He stared at her, his jaw clenched tightly, his arms crossed over his massive chest, before he turned on his heel abruptly.

“Where are you going?” she called after him.

“For a run.”

As he left the house, with such a strong slam of the door the window’s shook, she almost threw the plate down on the floor in frustration. She had known he would act like this which is why she had hoped he would never need to find out. She hadn’t anticipated him coming home so early, and why would she when she didn’t hear from him, and Yusra never mentioned him? Even her brother and Ilham seemed to have an unspoken agreement not to mention his name during those six months.

The sound of crying from the baby monitor made her sigh, and she placed down her plate, walking up the stairs to get the baby.