The message arrived while we were still strapped into the private jet, engines humming beneath us like a low, patient heartbeat.
Lucifer's name lit up my screen.
"Staying in Montreal one more day to tie up final details on the acquisition."
No emoji. No warmth. Just clean, corporate ice.
I read it three times, waiting for the words to stop hurting.
He wasn't staying for paperwork. He was staying so our paths wouldn't cross. Not yet. Not until the memory of me pushing him away had cooled enough to be bearable.
For the first few minutes after takeoff, relief felt almost holy. Alhamdulillah. Allah had heard every frantic astaghfirullah I sobbed into the hotel pillow after he left. This distance was mercy. No more risk of falling. No more haram waiting to swallow me. I could go home, bury the crimson lace at the bottom of my suitcase, and pretend Montreal had been nothing but fever.
But relief is fragile. By the time the wheels kissed Las Vegas tarmac, something darker had already taken root inside my chest.
The next morning I walked into Hardpound like I was stepping onto a battlefield. Hijab pinned so tightly my scalp throbbed. Kohl just enough to make my eyes look steady. I told myself I looked like the old Aafreen again — the one who still believed rules could protect her.
Lucifer was already behind the glass wall of his office. Dark suit. Sleeves rolled to the forearms. Jaw set. Eyes fixed on his monitor like the rest of the world had ceased to exist.
He didn't look up when I passed. Not once.
The day happened in bullet points.
"Revise Q4 projections — send by COB." "Cross-reference valuation assumptions with legal." "Prepare summary slide deck for board preview."
Every line perfect. Professional. Cold.
I should have been grateful. Instead each one felt like a small, deliberate cut.
I stayed late — far later than necessary. Rewrote sections no one asked me to touch. Triple-checked numbers until my vision blurred. Polished formatting until even the footnotes looked elegant. Somewhere in the back of my mind I was still waiting — stupidly, desperately — for him to notice. To walk past my desk, pause, tilt his head the way he used to, and say something that proved I hadn't become invisible.
He left at 7:14 p.m. Didn't glance my way.
The second day was worse.
We passed each other in the narrow corridor outside the east conference room. His sleeve brushed my arm — barely a whisper of fabric.
My body answered before my brain could scream no.
Heat detonated low in my belly. A sharp, involuntary clench between my thighs. Wetness flooded so fast I felt it soak through cotton and press hot and shameful against the inside of my thighs. I froze mid-step, breath snagging, thighs squeezing together in panic.
Ya Allah… forgive me.
My Qur'an-raised mind shrieked istighfar while the rest of me trembled like something feral had clawed awake inside my skin. I hurried to the restroom, locked the farthest stall, pressed my forehead to cold tile and tried to breathe through the throbbing.
It wasn't memory anymore. My body had learned him. It answered to the smallest trace of his presence the way flowers turn toward the sun — automatic, helpless, shameless.
By mid-week the hunger had teeth.
Wednesday afternoon I found Marie in the break room, stirring sugar into her coffee with those slow, deliberate circles she makes when she's thinking.
I wrapped both hands around my chai mug like it could anchor me.
"Marie," I said quietly, "hypothetically… if a woman let a man come very close — let him touch her in ways she never should have allowed — and then pushed him away because she was terrified… what should she do afterward?"
Marie didn't blink. She knew. She knew it was I who wanted her help.
"Habibti," she said, voice soft but unflinching, "if she let him taste her — really taste her — and then slammed the door in his face? That's not a small mistake. That's a crater. Men like that don't chase twice. They don't beg. Forgiveness doesn't arrive gift-wrapped the next morning. You have to earn it."
She took a slow sip, eyes never leaving mine.
"I pushed away a man once who would have burned cities down for me. I still wake up some nights hating myself for it." Her voice dropped lower. "But powerful men — the ones who've seen everything — sometimes they give second chances. If you show them you're worth the risk again. If you apologize with your whole body, not just your mouth. Eyes. Voice. Posture. Everything. Sometimes they need to see you on your knees — not begging, just… offering. Properly. Then maybe he'll remember why he wanted you so badly in the first place."
She touched my wrist lightly.
"Grab the moment when it comes, Aafreen. Don't wait until you cant pull each other anymore."
I nodded, throat burning. Hope flickered — small, dangerous, beautiful.
Friday night the apartment felt too quiet.
I made wudu slowly. Cold water on face, arms, feet. I unrolled my prayer mat, faced qibla, whispered Allahu Akbar and tried to disappear into salah.
But in sujood the memories came anyway.
His mouth dragging down my throat. His fingers bruising my hips. The thick, heavy stretch of him inside me — so full I couldn't breathe, couldn't think, couldn't remember my own name. The way he rasped Aafreen like it was possession, prayer, curse.
My nipples pebbled hard against cotton. My core clenched — empty, desperate, aching. Even as I whispered subḥān rabbiya l-aʿlā, my hips gave the tiniest, involuntary rock forward — chasing pressure that wasn't there. A slow trickle of wetness slid down the inside of my thigh.
I stayed in prostration long after tasleem, forehead pressed to the rug, tears soaking the weave.
Astaghfirullah… astaghfirullah… How could I stand before my Lord when my body still wept for a man who wasn't my husband?
Later I curled on the couch in the dark, knees drawn up, blanket pulled tight like armor.
I made a plan — small, careful, almost halal.
Apologize. In person. Eyes lowered. Voice soft. Ask him to start again — slowly. Coffee in public. Real conversations. Dates with boundaries. Something resembling courtship before we fell back into sin. Let him lead. Stop pushing him away.
The plan felt right in the quiet.
But I didn't type the message. I didn't move.
Fear is heavier than desire sometimes.
Fear he would look at me with cold indifference. Fear he would forgive me — and I would realize this was only lust wearing love's clothes. Fear he would refuse — and I would finally understand how deeply I had fallen.
Saturday passed in silence. No emails. No accidental brushes. No late-night summons.
Sunday night, just past eleven, my phone vibrated on the coffee table.
One new email.
From: L. Hardpound
Subject: Monday Schedule
"Monday 8:15 a.m. My office. Bring the updated Suamsungu's integration file."
Nothing else. No greeting. No signature. Just cold, precise instruction.
My heart slammed against my ribs so hard I thought it might bruise them.
I stared at the screen until it went dark.
Somewhere in the city, I knew he was awake too. I wondered — not for the first time — whether he ached the same way I did. Whether the distance hurt him as much as it was killing me.
I pulled the blanket higher, whispered one last trembling du'a for strength, and closed my eyes.
Sleep came eventually — restless, feverish, filled with hands I was still too afraid to reach for.