Under the Olive Tree

!!COMING SOON!!

You guys think I was gonna let you go that easily... smh, do you not know me?

I'm so so too excited to announce the SEQUEL to Under The Olive Tree with the same characters, a larger STORY, and NEW CHARACTERS WOOT WOOOOOTT: Between The Grapevines

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...Riyad took the final step around the motorcycle.

He pulled in a sharp breath at the sight the came before him.

A younger woman sat against the wall unable to hold the weight of her own head as it fell back with her eyes closed and lips parted, an expression like the absent one he often saw on the faces of the dead. Her hijab remained secured around her head to hide her hair and neck from wandering gazes of strange men in the streets. Riyad glanced to both sides of the road he stood in but nobody was around to claim the unconscious woman.

Releasing his hold on his weapon, he lowered himself in front of her to get a better look at the body he'd stumbled upon. Her bristly eyebrows were filled with sand particles that Riyad found himself urged to wipe from the darkness of her short hairs. The skin of her features was sunken in around her closed eyes and separated lips. His gaze caught on the unusual blue hue of her cracked and injured mouth. Her skin was dirtied with all sorts of sediments and what appeared as dark and red as blood.

But she was not bleeding from anywhere he could see.

"Hey," Riyad tried, nudging the foot beneath him for any sort of reaction. If she was dead, there was no use in dragging her all the way back to the camps for Farhan to question him about. But... if she were dead, what had killed her?

Riyad scanned the wall behind her and dirt beneath her for any sign of splattered or pooling blood but found nothing unusual around her. He edged closer until his legs hovered above her knees and reached forward, knocking the knuckle of his middle finger against the cleanest part of her forehead. "Are you living?" He asked.

Her eyelashes fluttered at the abrupt contact.

She was alive.

Slowly, as if fighting against stitches that laced her eyelids together, the woman opened her eyes to watch the unpaved dirt floor in front of her. Then her attention seemed to catch the new presence that had joined her. Riyad noticed the movement of her eyes quicken as they caught on his crouched legs and lifted to identify the man she'd awakened to find suddenly looming over her. He heard the weak inhale she'd pulled into her lungs in preparation to force her body up and away from him.

But the momentary tension he saw ripple through her thin and frail body settled when her hazel eyes caught on his. His eyebrows knit at the youth he saw fall over her features once her eyelids no longer fell so heavily over her eyes. She looked younger than him, yet, somehow, so much older.

After their gazes lingered within one another's for a moment, her attention shifted onto the white and black keffiyeh Riyad wore wrapped around his head. Then her eyelids dipped with a heavy blink that, joined with the sigh that slipped through her lips, betrayed her relief. Riyad's focus shifted to the subtle raise at the corners of her mouth. A weak smile.

When he felt her brush his shoulder, Riyad glanced down to find the girl's fingers closing around the soft material of his keffiyeh. Her lips moved with the utterance of a word that was never announced. He waited for her voice to break through, his eyes concentrated on the delayed movements of her cracked lips. A shuddering breath broke through with the tremble of her shoulders.

"What-," Riyad's question trailed off when he lifted his gaze to hers and caught sight of the tears welling above her lower lashes. Her hand slipped lower until he felt her fingers digging into his skin from the tightness of the hold she seized of his shirt. Though he hardly noticed it, though it only happened once before, Riyad found every wall he'd ever lifted protectively around himself crumbling at the sight of the heartache of an unfamiliar woman. The tension in his brows softened as his gaze swept over the depression across her features.

With each tear that fell from her long eyelashes, a brick of his defense abandoned its place and crashed to the ground with enough might to become powder. In his chest, Riyad felt his heart ache with a pain that pulsed throughout the tips of his fingers, leaving his entire person exposed to the woman before him.

His emotions raged even madder with every second he continued to hold her gaze.

"Come. I'll take you somewhere better. Somewhere safe."

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SUNDAY (yes, in FOUR days): Between the Grapevines!

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Love youuuuu and I'll see you... soon! ;)