Chapter 146

• DESPITE her brave words to him, Layla could not cleanse herself of want.
• She tried so hard—tried to simply hate him.
• Each morning as Baja bathed her the henna butterfly he had kissed faded a little. She filled her days with reading, with long walks on the beach, she wrote morose pages in her diary as she awaited his return—but at night she burned for him. She wished she had never known him, because up till then she had slept. Now her body twitched like a jumble of electric wires, nerves all awakened, all missing what just a week ago they had never even known.