The Price of Pride

Chapter 2

The ringing phone wakes her from a deep sleep and when she rolls over to check it, she moans when the motion leaves her body wracked with pain. By the time she gets the phone in her hand, the ringing has stopped and she sees a Missed Call notification on the screen.

"Emir!" Her eyes widen in shock at the caller ID, but even that movement causes pain. So she hits the button to listen to the voicemail and closes her eyes against the ache.

"Listen, Reyhan. I just want to apologize. I was unfair to you and I'd really like to discuss everything. Can we please talk? I'm on my way home now. We can go to dinner or something. We can get out of the mansion so that we can be alone and get everything out in the open."

Dinner? He wants to take her out? She's a little excited, but also a lot wary. The last time he took her to dinner, they ended up at the beach. And that didn't end well. At all. It was a disaster, actually. And he's spent the past four days hating and avoiding her. The idea of going out to dinner again worries her more than a little. Can she trust he won't make her feel like a fool again?

But he is right about getting out of the mansion. Something about this place confuses his mind and makes it hard for them to connect. Every time they seem to take one step forward in building trust in this marriage, something happens to make them go four steps backwards. That 'something' is usually his mother. Cavidan hated her from the moment she saw her. Nothing has changed. Reyhan has a bad idea that whatever happened this last time is also because of Cavidan. But as usual, there's nothing she can do except try to prove her innocence to Emir and pray that she can get through to him.

But to get through to him, she has to see him. He's been conspicuously absent of the past few days. She has to admit, though, that she hasn't exactly made herself available either. If she's honest with herself, she's been hiding in this room almost since she walked into it. He hurt her. And he disappointed her. All in all, everything just made her so tired. Getting out of bed was the last thing she wanted to do. But it's time now. Time to face him. Time to put this behind them. And hopefully, time to try taking another step forward. No matter how afraid she is, she has to go to this dinner with Emir.

She sits up to get out of bed and her head starts spinning. She takes a few moments to try to get her balance before attempting to get up again. She started feeling tired a few days ago. She thought she was just a little down about what had happened with Emir. She just wanted to stay curled up in bed wallowing in self pity for a while. The more he avoided her, the more upset she got and the more she stayed in bed. She didn't even notice that she's actually sick.

She puts a hand to her forehead and wonders if she has a fever. It's hard to tell. Her skin has that achy feel it gets when she gets a fever, so she probably does. Her body also aches, especially her head. She's had a headache that hasn't gone away for two days. And her heart feels like it's about to beat out of her chest. She catalogs her symptoms, but can't make a diagnosis. She probably just has the flu.

"Bathroom," she decides. She'll go to the bathroom and get the thermometer and pain reliever. If she has a fever, she'll just tell Emir dinner will have to wait. If not, the pain reliever should help with her headache.

When she finally pulls herself out the bed and makes her first step, pain shoots from her foot all the way up through her whole body.

"Ouch!" she winces, sitting back down so that she can take a look at it. She sees several cuts on the bottom of her foot. Angry and red cuts that she vaguely remembers getting on the beach that day. She had cleaned and dressed them, but not immediately when she got home. She was too preoccupied with trying to figure out why Emir was angry. It wasn't until after she returned home from her aborted runaway attempt that she'd thought to take care of them. They must have gotten infected.