“Takes one exercise junkie to know another. You’re looking fitter than ever, Roxy.” Before she hissed that he’d lost the right to call her that, he silenced her with something totally unexpected. “I need to explain something I should have long ago. My relationship with Haidar.”
Her heart blipped in distress at Haidar’s name. At the way Jalal said it. At the bleakness in his eyes.
She attempted a nonchalant shrug. “While neither of you ever talked about the other, I gathered the relevant facts myself. You live to compete with each other.”
“Aren’t you at all curious to know how we got that way?”
“Standard sibling rivalry, how else? As you said, pathetic. But most of all, boring.”
“How I wish it was. Maddening, unsolvable, heart-wrenching more like.” He wiped a hand down his face in a weary gesture. “You’ve seen how radically different we are, and we were born that way. But we were inseparable in spite of that. Maybe because of it. Until it all started going wrong. I can trace the beginning of the friction, the rivalry, to one incident. Our tenth birthday party.”
Here was her first misconception destroyed. She’d always assumed their rivalry started at birth.
“I almost burned down the palace, and Haidar volunteered to take the blame. Instead of stepping forward, I … let him take the punishment meant for me. Things were never the same afterward.”
Their conflict had an origin, one in which Haidar was the wronged party? That was surprising. Disturbing.
“He began to treat me with a reserve I wasn’t used to, put distance between us. Once I became certain it wasn’t a passing thing, I was furious, then anxious, then lost. I needed my twin back. I tried to force the closeness I depended on, dogging his every move, demanding to share everything he did, for him to share everything I did, like we used to. When that only resulted in more distance, I became desperate. I started to do anything that would provoke an emotional reaction from him. He retaliated by demonstrating in ingenious ways that I couldn’t get to him. Then he learned a new trick, wielded a new weapon—he started showing me, and everyone else, that he was better than me. In just about everything. And it was so easy for him.
“He got the highest grades without trying, while I had to struggle to keep up. He was a favorite with our elders for being so methodical and achieving. He was a sweeping success with girls for being so good-looking, yet so cool and detached. The only thing I could trounce him in was sports, and he came close to equaling me even in those by mere cunning.”
He gave a deprecating laugh. “And of course, all through, our mother was praising the hell out of his every breath. As a boy who then idolized his mother, I grew frantic for equal appreciation, and when I despaired of that, for any at all. She did show me some on occasion, but it always felt like the crumbs that were left over from Haidar’s feast. It took me years to outgrow the need for her validation, to be resigned to who she was, and the kind of relationship I had with her. But I could never become resigned to my and Haidar’s relationship.
“It was a paradox. I wanted to be with him the most of anyone in the world, yet no one could drive me out of my cool, collected mind but him … at least, no one then …” A dark, distracted look settled in his eyes. Before she could ask who else had later done the same to him, he shook his head slightly as if to rid himself of disturbing memories, resumed his focus. “He seemed to want my company as much, in his own contradictory way, showing me moments of emotional closeness before shutting me out again.”
You, too? she almost scoffed. Haidar had subjected her to the same dizzying, confusing, addicting pattern.
Jalal sat back, fists braced on his knees, eyes seeming to gaze into his own past. “As we got older, we showed the world a unified front, for the sake of the rest of our family, politics and business. But when we were alone, we butted heads like two stupid rams on steroids. And I think we both were addicted to the conflict. I believed that was who we were, the only relationship we could have, and I had to accept it.”
Roxanne gaped at his grim profile. She’d never thought things were that complex and complicated between them. It was fascinating in the most terrible way to learn how these two twins who had everything they needed to forge an unparalleled bond had been driven apart. Needing to reach out to each other yet held back by something inescapable.
And why was she including them both in that assessment? She’d bet Haidar felt no equal anguish for the state of affairs with his twin. She’d bet Haidar didn’t feel at all.
But where Jalal was concerned, so much now made sense. The wistfulness and guardedness that had come over him when Haidar was mentioned, the snarkiness that took over when his twin was around.
No matter if this snowball had started with an incident in which Jalal was the culprit—that Haidar had set out to punish his twin for it for the rest of their lives proved what a twisted, vindictive bastard he was. He’d even been proud of the fact that he made one hell of an unforgiving enemy.
Jalal threw his head back on the couch. “But accepting it didn’t mean I could handle it. Being unreasonable isn’t part of my makeup, but I became that with Haidar. And I no longer knew how much of our rivalry was due to what had turned him against me early on, or to my self-defeating tactics in trying to get him back, our mother’s divisive influence, or who we are, our choices, actions and reactions. Then we met you at that royal ball.”
Her heart did its best to flip over inside her rib cage.
How she remembered that night.
It had been in her first month in Azmahar. She’d thanked the fates for the job that had gotten her mother and herself here. When they were invited to that ball, she’d felt like a Disney heroine entering a world of wonders way beyond her wildest dreams. The impression had grown stronger when she’d met Jalal.
Then she’d seen Haidar.
Just the sight of him, an apparition of aloof, distant grandeur, had kicked to life every contradictory emotion inside her. She’d bristled with defensiveness, burned with challenge and melted with desire.
Jalal turned to her now, taking his account from the profoundly personal to the shared past. “I saw your instant attraction to him, and out of habit, I challenged him for you. We both know how far he took that challenge. But I swear to you, I forgot that silly bet in minutes. Everything you and I shared was real. You were the friend I could share everything with, the sister I never had.”
And he’d been her confidant, champion and the brother she’d always longed for.
Still afraid of reopening her heart and letting him seal the hole losing him had blown in it, she narrowed her eyes. “So why did you wait six years to approach me? And even then, give up after just one phone call?”
“Because after you walked out and didn’t call me, I assumed you’d overheard us and included me in your hostility. My first impulse was to run to you, tell you what I just told you now. But as I was heading out to your house the next morning, I learned that your mother had been … dishonorably discharged. I held back then because I believed further contact with me might cause you more … damage.”
She blinked her surprise. “Why did you think that?”
“Didn’t you ever suspect why your mother was fired?”
“Sure I did. I suspected Haidar.”
It was his turn to be shocked. “You thought he was punishing you for walking out on him through her?”
“You find that far-fetched?”
He clearly did, found her suspicion very disturbing. “I prefer to think there are some lines he wouldn’t cross.”
“You think seducing me for a bet was an okay line to cross, but destroying my mother’s career to get back at me wasn’t?”