Page 208 of Whisper

“I’d like that,” Kris whispered. “Thank you.”

“Come on,” Dan said, the hint of a smile quirking up one corner of his lips. “Let’s try and think this through together.”

Brentwood

Washington DC

September 9

1440 hours

“Oh Allah,” Dawood whispered. His voice cracked, splintered apart. Tears spilled like diamonds, his breath catching on his prayers. “I seek refuge in you from an anguish that eats me alive.” He gasped, tried to breathe through his closed throat. A sob raked through him, and he pressed his forehead harder against his prayer rug. “With your name, I die and live. To Allah we belong, and to Him we shall return.”

You must follow the path Allah has laid out for you.

His soulburnedfor Kris, to the very center of himself, the center of his heart. Desperation had fueled him. He’dhadto see Kris, once he’d known he was alive. See his face, just from afar. Then, up close. Just once.

Like a drug, he couldn’t keep away. He couldneverkeep away from Kris, not ever. Not when Kris carried a part of him within his soul. How could he run from his own soul, half of his being? Memories of their love, their life together spilled through his mind. Kris’s hand on his cheek, the glow in his gaze when he stared at Dawood. How his eyes were full of love, always, for Dawood.

Kris had been the moon that rose in the darkness of his soul, reflecting the light of the sun into his pitch-black corners. He’d been half alive before Kris, caught eternally between the boy he’d been and a man he hadn’t yet embraced, living in hiding behind a mask of his own creation. His soul had been built on shifting sands, but Kris had helped him form a foundation. Bring order to the chaos within.

Until Kris had been taken from him by this horrible, twisted life. This path.

Why?he wanted to scream.Why, why?

Why had their lives diverged? Why had they endured this separation? What point, what purpose?

Why was he to know his love, his soul,lived, only to lose him again in the end?

Endure patiently,the Quran said.The promise of Allah is truth.

He squeezed his eyes closed, pressing his face harder against his rug. His fingers gripped the edges so hard his bones hurt. He could still smell Kris, still feel his body against his skin, molding to him in all the ways that had always been so perfect, so exquisite to his existence.

Rushes of anguish crested, self-loathing and bitterness warring within him. He clung to his prayers, reciting the first surah of the Quran, the Al-Fatiha, the devotion. “In the name of God, the infinitely Compassionate and Merciful. Praise be to God, Lord of all the worlds. The Compassionate, the Merciful. Ruler on the Day of Reckoning. You alone do we worship, and You alone do we ask for help. Guide us on the right path—”

His voice choked, died.

Everything had shattered when he saw Kris, alive. Everything he’d planned, everything he’d meticulously laid out, for two years. Suddenly he was adrift, a castaway in an ocean of uncertainty. The man he loved, to the depths of his soul, who had defined his existence, who had given him the strength to face the world, and then face his destiny with the promise of their reunion in the beyond, was alive.

You must follow the path Allah has laid out for you.

He’d panicked, watching an egg sizzle in Kris’s studio, listening to the sounds of his love showering. What was he doing? He was off the path. He was ruining everything, everything he’d sacrificed for. Everything he’d poured his new life into. Could he really just walk away, give up on his plan?

Every prayer felt like his heart was being sliced, divided between his love and his devotion. Uncertainty was a cancer, a poison consuming him from within.

Agony poured through him, filling his heart, circling his mind. His lungs shuddered, his breath quaked, faltering. His chest seemed concave, as if someone had scooped out his heart, ripped it out of him, and he was left with the hollow emptiness.

He couldn’t breathe. Gasping, he clawed at his rug, snot and tears and choked breaths pushing against the dusty threads where he’d given so much devotion to Allah.Why, why?

Ten years in Afghanistan had changed him in ways he couldn’t fully count. The sands of his soul had shifted, resettled. He’d thought his love for Kris had been buried, lost like the ancient cities of old in the sands of history. Something deep within him, and for another time.

Kissing Kris, making love to him, brought everything back. Nothing had ever been lost, ever been buried. He’d never stopped loving Kris, not once. Not ever.

Love wasn’t something he’d expected from his life. Not when he was ten years old, staring down a cold, heartless world. Not when he was fifteen, and he’d realized with a dread that filled his entire being, that he was different, he was broken, that he craved the love of another man. His entire world had screamed that he was wrong, oh-so-wrong, and he’d buried that truth next to the memories of his father. He’d never love. Never.

David, stoic, dependable, predictable David, had been formed out of reactions. Reactions against himself, a careful mirage of everything he’d hated covered by something new, something different. Reactions formed by the world, reactions that shaped his identity until he was nothing but a kaleidoscope, shifting and ever changing under different people’s gazes.

But Kris had cut through all of that. Kris had found his soul, had delivered his soul back to him.