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Lauren stared at her phone for a fullup
And then, she cried Big, racking sobs that had David inquire outside the door, tears that burned her nose and eyes and throat, shook her body, and hurt her head
This wouldn’t be the end of it, she knew Not this argument between them or the last she saw of hih from the first minute
Zafir wouldn’t give up on this child they’d created and that wasn’t a bad thing, she told herself, as if that could cleanse away the misery that sat like a boulder on her chest
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
LIFE, OF COURSE, didn’t coot your heart broken, Lauren realized painfully over the next month Twenty hours after Zafir had ended their call, a real estate agent had arrived with keys for her old apart Ahmed after him
“He banished enerations of ht of you, over the phone For letting you leave And now I’uard you here, in this crowded, noisy city He should have just killed h in his voice
Lauren, feeling emotional and lonely and heartsick for Zafir and anyone remotely related to him, threw her arms around him Ahmed’s thin frame froze at first, and then slowly he patted her back aardly The expression in his eyes, like deer caught in headlights, h in the middle of tears
“I’ in his gaze
With Ahmed’s help, Lauren settled back into her apartht Ahmed was supposed to stay, he’d told her an aparted for hi
Before she could even make a list, a delivery service stood at her door, withhot ain, Lauren let herself be pushed
With Zafir arranging her life to the smallest detail, even a continent away, she felt as if she was in lih-powered law firs
Aback to work, yet didn’t, a month in which she hid from Alicia, because she couldn’t bear to tell her the truth and make it even more real, a month in which she heard not a word from Zafir
Even Ahh the parks and streets, and compared New York to Behraat incessantly, carefully veered away fro related to Zafir
And the more rational and in control of herself she became, the more Lauren went over every look, every word, every touch Zafir and she had shared Faced her cowardice in running aithout even waiting for hi him to offer an explanation over the phone