Page 34 of Enemy Within

Faisal put his finger to Adam’s lips. “Shhh, Adam. Don’t.” Adam had started to recite theShahada, the statement of faith of all Muslims.

“You always stop me.”

He sighed. “Those words have meaning. They can’t be said idly.”

Adam stared at him, his eyes pinched. “I don’t say them idly.”

“Adam—”

“I’m trying, Faisal,” Adam breathed. “I’m trying.”

“You are all over the place. Worried about your team, about the world, about me, and now you’re thinking about theShahada.” He shook his head. “You don’t have to be everything to everyone.”

“I want to be everything foryou.” Adam’s gaze flicked toward the gate’s waiting area. The team had stopped pretending to not be interested in what was happening between the two of them. Only Doc, still supposedly sleeping, wasn’t staring. Coleman’s mouth was open, his jaw hanging. “And I want to be everything for them, too.” He swallowed, looking down at the thin carpet.

Faisal shook his head. Serving too many masters was tearing Adam apart. His soul was fraying faster than he could bind the tears. “When was the last time you slept?”

Adam shrugged. “Saudi. Before we left. Maybe.”

After the team arrived, Adam stopped sleeping in Faisal’s bedroom. He’d crashed on the couch in the living room instead, but Faisal had heard him toss and turn all night long. He’d left his bedroom door open.

Faisal patted his thigh. “Rest. We have some time before the flight.” He held Adam’s stare after he spoke.

If Adam laid his head down, rested his cheek on Faisal’s thigh, the wondering would be over. The team would know there wassomethingbetween them, something deeper than they’d led them all to believe. If he did not, he’d keep spinning, his mind like a whirling dervish twirling out of control, dizzying anxieties sending him careening from worry to worry.

Fear strangled Adam’s gaze, made his eyes shine brightly.Yallah, Faisal knew exactly what Adam was feeling. A lifetime of hiding, a carefully constructed web of obfuscation. Cutting a piece of yourself out and keeping it hidden, afraid to expose it to the light. Feeling it die, withering away slowly, but unable to do anything differently.

Being a gay Muslim was like walking around with a target on his heart. First, his fear of Allah. Did Allah truly hate him? Was he broken? Made wrong?

And after reconciling that, the fear of human hatred, and humanfatwasthat ordered his death.

He’d always imagined it was easier in America. That freedom was as effortless as breathing. Adam had shown him how wrong that was. Side-eyed glares, and a pervasive message, from the top of society to the bottom, that who he was waswrong. There were no explicitfatwasagainst being gay in America, but people thought nothing of saying, right to a gay man’s face, that he was going to burn in hell for all eternity and that all gays were an offense to God’s nature. And even in America, people were killed for being gay.

Coming out, in Saudi Arabia or in America, was like playing with a loaded weapon. Who would go off? Who was safe? Where would the pain strike?

Faisal couldn’t quite figure out his uncle yet. Uncle Abdul had maneuvered his way into power, and then honed his children—and Faisal—onto paths that could put them each on a rise to equal prominence. Most of Abdul’s children had fallen away, but Faisal had never been able to shake the bone-deep gratitude that had filled the spaces between him and Abdul, the aching affection of an orphan searching for arms to hold him tight. How could he turn against his uncle after everything he had given Faisal?

How could he be anything other than who he was, either?

Where would they go from here? Would he be quietly shuffled aside, moved to obscurity and forgotten? Asked to leave the Kingdom? The thought made his stomach sour and his spine go cold. Leaving the Kingdom, the land of his family, the land of Allah… Arabia was his home. The desert was in his soul. Allah had revealed himself in those sands because of the primal power of the desert, the way life hung on the edge of a knife, taken or given with a single choice, a single act. How could anyone not be pressed against the divine in such a place? Feel Allah at every moment?

Imagining leaving, being banished from the desert, felt like dying.

Enough. Those thoughts were for later. Like Adam, he had to focus on what was before him. Everything else was too big, too large to fathom. Too large to battle, at the moment.

He’d given a choice to Adam, a way to break his swirling fears, the gnawing apprehension, and endless what-ifs. It was up to Adam if he was ready to embrace that.

He held his lover’s gaze, staying quiet. It had to be Adam’s choice, his free choice. The words of the Quran came to him: “Allah will not change a person; they must grow what is in their own hearts.”

Adam, I believe in you.

Taking a deep breath, Adam plucked up his backpack and set it off to the side. Turning, he carefully, cautiously leaned back, resting his head on Faisal’s thigh. As he lay, he let out a shaky breath and closed his eyes.

Faisal beamed down at him and slid his fingers through Adam’s shaggy hair. The longer look suited him, combed to one side instead of sticking into the air.

He closed his eyes and leaned back, resting his head against the cold airport wall. Barely whispering, he moved through the first lines of the Throne Verse, a prayer of protection, offering adu’ato Allah as his fingers slipped through Adam’s hair, over and over. “Allahu la ilaha illa huwa l-?ayyu l-qayyum.”

Adam rolled his head toward Faisal’s stomach, pressing his face into his belly. “Are you praying?” he breathed.