The Airport Reunion

I watch the arrivals board change.

Dubai - Landed.

Two years. Seven hundred and thirty days since Sumaya left for a marriage she didn't want, to a man she didn't know, in a country where I couldn't follow.

Now she's coming home.

And I'm the one who came to get her.

"She asked for you specifically," her mother—my aunt—told me on the phone. "Don't know why. You two were never that close."

We were that close.

Closer than anyone knew.

Close enough that her leaving broke something in me that hasn't healed.

The doors open.

Travelers stream through—businessmen, tourists, families reuniting. I search the crowd for her face, the face I've seen in my dreams for two years.

Then—

There.

She's thinner. Tired. Her abaya is expensive but wrinkled from the flight. Her eyes find mine across the terminal, and for a moment, neither of us moves.

Then she runs.

I catch her. Pull her against me. Feel her body shake with sobs she's been holding since Dubai.

"I'm sorry—" she cries into my shoulder. "I'm so sorry—"

"For what?"

"For leaving. For agreeing. For being a coward."

"You weren't a coward." I hold her tighter. "You were protecting your family."

"I was protecting myself from feeling this." She pulls back, looks at me. "From feeling you."

We're in the middle of Heathrow. Thousands of people. CCTV cameras. Family arriving any minute.

None of it matters.

I kiss her anyway.

We don't make it home.

I tell her mother the traffic is bad. Tell her we'll stop for food. Tell her anything to buy us time.

Then I drive to the Premier Inn by the airport—anonymous, forgettable, the kind of place nobody asks questions.

"We shouldn't—" Sumaya says as I get the key.

"We've been shouldn't-ing for five years." I take her hand. "I'm done shouldn't-ing."

"I'm still married."

"Not for long." I lead her to the room. "You're getting divorced. Your mother told me everything."

"She told you about—"

"The affair. His affair. The prenup that saved you. All of it." I close the door behind us. "You're free, Sumaya. For the first time in two years, you're free."

She looks around the small room. The plain bed. The thin curtains.

"This isn't how I imagined it."

"Neither did I." I step toward her. "But I'm tired of imagining. I've been imagining for five years. Now I want the real thing."

We were teenagers when it started.

Fifteen and sixteen, cousins who saw too much of each other at family gatherings. Everyone thought we were just close. Family. Innocent.

They didn't see the stolen moments in empty rooms. The texts deleted before anyone could find them. The growing need that had no name and no acceptable outlet.

When she turned twenty, her parents announced the engagement.

"A man in Dubai," her father said. "Good family. Very successful."

She didn't look at me when they said it.

If she had, she would have seen me break.

"I thought about you every night," she says, her abaya pooling on the hotel floor. "In his bed. In his house. I closed my eyes and pretended—"

"Don't." I pull my shirt off. "Don't talk about him."

"I have to." She steps toward me in nothing but her underwear. "I have to tell you it meant nothing. That he never made me feel—"

"I know."

"How can you know?"

"Because I felt the same." I reach for her, pull her against me. "Every woman I've been with since you left—I saw your face. Called your name in my head. Wished she was you."

"Liiban—"

"I love you, Sumaya." I say the words I've held for five years. "I've loved you since we were children. I know it's wrong. I know what people would say. But I can't—I won't—pretend anymore."

She kisses me.

And five years of waiting catches fire.

We learn each other properly for the first time.

No stolen minutes. No fear of discovery. Just hours stretching ahead of us like a gift we've finally earned.

I lay her on the bed and worship her—kiss every part of her that someone else touched, reclaim her with my mouth and hands. She cries and moans and says my name like she's been saving it.

"Please—I need—"

I know what she needs.

I've needed it too.

When I push inside her, something slots into place.

Like a key. Like a lock. Like every moment of the last five years was just leading to this—her body under mine, her legs around my waist, her eyes locked on my face as I finally, finally make her mine.

"Liiban—oh God—"

"I've got you." I move slowly, feeling everything. "I've always had you."

"Don't stop—"

"Never again." I speed up, feel her respond. "I'm never letting you go again."

She comes with my name on her lips.

I follow, spilling into her, marking her, claiming her in the most primal way possible.

We stay connected, breathing together, the hotel room forgotten around us.

"They'll find out," she says eventually.

"Yes."

"My parents will disown me."

"Probably."

"Yours too."

"I know." I pull her closer. "Is that enough to stop you?"

She's quiet for a long moment. I can feel her thinking—weighing family against feeling, duty against desire.

"No," she finally says. "I've lost two years trying to do the right thing. The right thing made me miserable." She looks at me. "I choose you. Whatever it costs."

"Are you sure?"

"I've never been more sure of anything."

We face them together.

The family meeting is brutal. Her mother screams. My father refuses to look at me. Words like haram and shame and disgrace fill the air.

But we stand together.

Hold hands through all of it.

And when her father finally runs out of rage, when the silence fills the room like smoke, it's my grandmother who speaks.

"Enough."

Everyone freezes. Grandmother hasn't spoken in an hour.

"They love each other." She looks at Sumaya, then at me. "I've seen it since they were children. I prayed it would fade. It didn't." She turns to the rest of the family. "Would you rather they live lies? Marry others? Spend their lives miserable and apart?"

"It's not right—" my father starts.

"Many things aren't right. Forcing our children into loveless marriages isn't right either." She stands. "I give them my blessing. The rest of you can do what you want."

She leaves the room.

One by one, the others follow.

Some never forgive us.

But enough do.

We marry a year later.

Small ceremony. Only the family members who accept us. It's not the wedding either of us dreamed of as children, but it's ours.

"Mrs. Liiban Hassan," she says, testing the name.

"That's you."

"Finally."

"Worth the wait?"

She pulls me toward our hotel room—nicer than the Premier Inn, though that place will always be special.

"Ask me again in fifty years."

I plan to.

Every year for the rest of our lives, I plan to ask her.

And every year, I know what she'll say.

Yes. Always yes. Worth everything.