A week had passed, no, more like an eternity for Kubra, maintaining the façade that she was all fine and well.

She would force the food in her stomach and command it with everything she had to remain inside just until she could separate herself from her parents. Then she would rush to the toilet and flush it all out.

She would lay on the hard floor, which was still too plush with the carpet, until the exhaustion from doing nothing all day take over her and she would pass out.

Or she would simply gaze at the moon from her window, just like she did in the cell. In the cell, she used to count the days she could be free again. In the luxurious suffocating confines of her home, she couldn’t help but wonder if she would’ve been well off in the cell.

She sighed with the toothbrush still in her mouth, staring at the haunted corpse that was much like her own. How long can I keep this pretense up? She wondered.

One thing she couldn’t fake was touching another living being. She couldn’t ignore the creepy feeling when her mother would try to caress her cheek or when her father would try to pat her on the back. The ants would sting instantly and she would be repulsed immediately.

Except for Saad, of course. But he seemed to be more concerned about not letting her starve (he was failing miserably but she didn’t want him to know). She didn’t blame him, not really. It was the default setting in humans that hunger came before anything else. No matter how much mentally unstable she was, she needed to eat first. And it wasn’t like everyone knew that there was a mean person who was a figment of her own imagination who was trying to bring her twenty steps back with every step she took forward.

She spat the minty toothpaste out and looked at her reflection, determined enough to conquer the world, but this determination would barely be enough to win over her own demons.

It couldn’t go on like this forever. She couldn’t do it anymore, albeit it had only just been a week.

“Great, are we finally going to say goodbye to this world?” KB said excitedly, an emotion Kubra hadn’t seen on her until now.

She tied her hair in a ponytail and put on her tracksuit, covering herself adequately to keep the cold out and fastened her joggers.

“No, we’re getting out of our haven.”

*~*~*~*

Saad stopped the car in front of Kubra’s house at exact seven-thirty in the morning. It was fairly early for the donuts and coffee he’d brought her, but something told him that she would be awake, and by the way she’d been throwing up everything, he knew she would be starving as well.

Grabbing the box of sugary deliciousness and cup of bitter coffee, he made his way into the house. He would surgically put the food in her if that’s what it took for her to keep it down.

But when he entered the hall, the earth got snatched from under his feet. When he saw Sonia Shahbaz half-fainted on the couch, tears staining her cheeks, a maid who also was visibly worried tending to her, he immediately assumed the worst.

Had something happened to Kubra?

Had she done something to herself?

Was he going to have a repeat of that dreadful night in the hospital when she’d almost left him?

What had she done to herself? Pills? Hanging? Cuts?

No. He shouldn’t think like this. He forced his raging thoughts to a stop.

He didn’t remember putting the items in his hands on the table as he rushed towards Sonia. Sitting on his knees on the floor by her, he grabbed her hands and rubbed them. “Aunty, what is it? What happened? Kubra’s fine, right?”

A few sobs left her mouth before Sonia answered. “We can’t find her anywhere. She’s nowhere in the house. It’s been an hour and half since Shahbaz has left to look for her with all the guards but there’s no word from him either. Saad, please find her.” She pleaded at the end, gripping her head as if would split in two if she didn’t.

He took a breath in relief. This was good, right? She was just missing. He could find her. Maybe she’d gone to a park for a walk or something. Maybe she’d even gone to the farm house. But as long as she was fine, he could find her.

He always did.

Then he broke into a sprint, until he was seated in his car, not giving a damn about the seatbelt and roared the car to life.

*~*~*~*

Her lungs screamed, her feet burned and her muscles ached, but she still willed her legs to run. She didn’t know what she was running from but she just was. She was all alone now, but she couldn’t seem to stop.

She hadn’t started her day like this. When she had reached the park, the sun had barely touched the sky, the vast nothingness tinged with multiple hues of peaches, pink and blue.

She had started jogging, the smell of fresh wet grass and trees putting her mind at ease for the time being. There had been no one in the park that stretched across acres of land. She was all alone and she felt at peace for the first time in a week.

No, she had been at peace in the small window of time when she and Saad were alone. But those moments were barely a moment long, and she was always overwhelmed from the previous events.

But here, in the vast greenery that stretched across miles around her and she was almost always obscured with the old and sturdy trees, she felt like she really was free, that she really had left the confinements of the cage.

Until, the sun had started illuminating the sky further.

And people had started filling the tracks that had been her lone sanctuary. But that hadn’t been what had pushed her over the edge.

That pleasure had gone to the stares. And the whispers, that were all too loud.

“Isn’t that Kubra Shahbaz, the girl from the TV?” One young woman whispered to her spouse when they passed her.

“What a shame she brought upon her family. . .” another whisper reached her ears.

“. . . Such tragedy that poor girl has gone through. . .”

“Isn’t that the girl involved in Wali Bajwa’s murder?”

“I feel so bad for her parents. . .”

“. . . This is what happens to girls who are given such free reins. . .”

“I hope she’s okay. . .”

“I hear she was engaged to the lawyer who fought the case against her. What was his name? . . . Ah, yes! Yusuf Bukhari.”

“No, isn’t she with her own lawyer? That son of Shams Mirza?”

“Poor girl. . . Spent four years in jail wrongfully. . .”

All sorts of whispers reached her ears as if they weren’t trying to hide at all that they were talking about her. And those who didn’t talk, they looked at her with such obvious expressions that she could tell what they were saying. Those with sympathy in their hearts were thinking something along the lines of “such poor girl” and those who blamed her were cursing her.

“See? This is what people think about you here. Nobody likes the pathetic excuse of a human that you are.” This was unsurprisingly KB who had once again materialized out of nowhere, looking meaner than ever and without the loss of breath or the red angry flush in her cheeks.

“Why you got to be so mean, KB? Let her breathe. Let her enjoy. Let her be free. Why are you always pushing her down?” Of course, Saddy never remained behind.

KB snickered. “I’m not pushing her down. She herself can’t even stand up.  And I do want her to be free. I want all three of us to be free. Let’s just leave everyone and go!”

“We’re not attempting suicide again! That hurt everyone so much!”

“Why do you care about everyone?! Just think of yourself. See how miserable we are stuck in this shell of a body?”

Kubra couldn’t help but agree with KB this one time. But Saad always evaded her thoughts whenever she found herself agreeing with her.

And so she had run. Ran so fast to wherever her feet carried her. Ran until her feet begged for mercy and her lungs screamed for air. Ran away from her own self. Ran away from the whispers that she could still hear echoing in her ears and the stares she could still feel digging holes into her skin.

Ran until she hit a man square in the chest and didn’t feel nauseous when he grabbed her from the shoulders to prevent her from falling backwards.

She knew this man clad in a midnight blue suit, and there was only one person she could bear the touch of.

So without bothering to see his face, she wrapped her arms around him and hid her face in his chest, wanting for the warmth to swallow her and stop the haunting shadows that followed her.

“Thank god, you’re here. Please, please, save me from them. Please, I love you so much. Please, just save me. I beg you.”

And then he spoke. And it was as if new demons had smoked out of the soil and materialized right in front of her.

His blue eyes were something that spooked her every night.

And his voice was the one she woke up shrieking hearing after.

This man was Yusuf Bukhari. And God damn her, she was so shocked that she couldn’t even remove his arms from around herself.

So shocked that she didn’t realize the man she loved had just listened to her confess love to another man.

*~*~*~*

Saad didn’t want anyone to ask him how, but he just knew that she had come to this park. That’s what she used to do before. If she has left before the dawn has even broken, she would be here. Maybe for the isolation this vast park and it thick trees provided. Who knew?

Though unluckily for him, this was one hell of an area. It would take hours to find her if she had wished to hide.

He ran on the track he had seen her take countless times. She didn’t always take this path, but it was the most frequented one.

A girl stopped her in his track. “You’re Saad Mirza, right? Kubra Shahbaz’s lawyer?”

He almost pushed her off his way, thinking she was some journalist wanting an interview. But luckily for her, she was fast-talker.

“If you’re looking for Miss Kubra Shahbaz, she ran off in that direction. She looked overwhelmed honestly. I don’t blame her.”

He would’ve hugged that girl, if he didn’t have a lover to find.

He ran in the direction the girl had pointed towards, which was totally off-track.

He didn’t even know why he was running that hard. She was okay. She was well. He could find her without exerting himself this hard. But he just needed to find her, to hold her in his arms and never let go.

He didn’t know how far and for long he’d run, but when he stopped, he didn’t do it on his own free will.

The wind was knocked right out of his lungs and refused to go in when he saw Kubra in the arms of his former best friend once again, pleading him to make it all stop when it should have been him, telling him ‘I love you’ when it should’ve been him!

And he realized, for the second time in his life, he’d run so hard for something and he’d been late. Again.

*~*~*~*

~Sometime before the murder, when Yusuf proposed~

“Hey, buddy?”

Saad looked up from the file he was reviewing to meet the nervous gaze of his best friend, Yusuf.

“Yeah?” he asked. It wasn’t like Yusuf to hesitate about anything. That was Saad’s thing. Thinking ten times before saying anything, weighing his every word before letting them out of his mouth, that was Saad’s thing, not Yusuf’s.

“Do you think Kubra and I look good together?”

Giving an answer to that question would be like walking slowly over burning coals. And for his favorite people, he would do that as well, because he could see how they both loved each other.

Didn’t mean it was easy for him when pretended to answer nonchalantly, “Of course. Why do you ask that out of nowhere?”

“I’m thinking of proposing to her tonight,” Yusuf dropped the bomb on him, putting a box on his table and displaying the elegant diamond ring, resting in the velvet.

Saad didn’t know what he thought would happen if he simply gave way to Yusuf to pursue Kubra, but he had never expected this scenario. He’d never expected their casual relation to go this far.

“T-tonight?” He hoped Yusuf didn’t catch the stutter in his question.

“Yeah. I’ve prepared everything. Just need to ask her. Do you think she’ll say yes?”

“I don’t see why not,” he assured him as the pencil he was holding broke with a crack under the table.

Later that night, when all had deserted the office except for Saad, he made a decision to break the heart of one of the two people he adored.

He couldn’t just watch as Kubra was effortlessly swept of her feet by someone other than him. He wasn’t that selfless, and he wasn’t that coward.

He just hoped he could confess his love to her before she promised herself to someone else.

He didn’t recall the journey from his office on sixth floor to his car, just that he called Kubra the moment he was strapped in his seat.

“KB, where are you?”

“With Yusuf. By the lake in their farmhouse. Superman, it’s so beautiful here!”

“You don’t mind if I join you, do you? I have to tell you something.” She would never say ‘no’ to him. He knew that.

“Of course not. I’ll be waiting.” Oh, how he hoped she actually was.

But when he reached Yusuf’s farmhouse in the country and ran the grounds to reach the artificial lake he had spent many beautiful moments of his childhood in, he knew he was late.

Kubra looked so beautiful in the teal dress she was wearing, standing in the middle of the gazebo, enlightened by the multiple fairy lights that seemed to shine brighter than the stars in the sky. But the thing which illuminated her was the heart-stopping smile that was etched on her lips. If only it was for him. Instead it was directed at the ring in her finger.

He was glad the man who put that ring there wasn’t here when Saad approached her.

Why did he approach her anyway? She was already engaged. And her fiancé had probably gone inside to bring something to celebrate it.

There was nothing for him here. So he stopped, looked at her longingly one last time and turned around on his heel.

He was late. Not by much. But enough that he didn’t want to risk anything that might bring dishonor upon her, his friend or his family.

He was late. And like the coward that he was, he didn’t have courage to say ‘fuck it’ to time and tell Kubra that it was him she should love because was the one who had spent every waking hour that he could count loving her and would continue to do so till the last breath that he takes.

He was late.

*~*~*~*

~PRESENT~

Only this time, he wasn’t.

And he understood that only when he heard the bloodcurdling of Kubra. It was a sound that chilled him to his bones. He never wanted to hear that ever again.

“Leave me! Get away from me, you bastard. Help!”

Yusuf had immediately dropped his arms and was holding his hands in front of him as if trying to calm a wild horse.

Except he didn’t succeed, because before he could utter any soothing words to her, Saad was upon him.

Saad wasn’t a violent person, or at least he didn’t think he was. But the way his own hands hurt with every blow he gave Yusuf and didn’t feel any of that pain with the adrenaline pumping through his veins, he thought he could become one.

It must have been him who was swearing that he would kill Yusuf, because he could hear Kubra sobbing and pleading in the background to leave him alone.

He didn’t.

And didn’t think he could.

*~*~*~*

Assalam o Alaikum everyone!

How are you all?

Am I the only one who’s supposed to study for her exams but can’t find the motivation to?

Only me? okay.

Anyhow! How was the chapter? Yes, I can hear you all screaming excitedly because Yusuf got beaten. Not gonna lie, I’m pretty happy too.

Do let me know what you guys think of it all. Next chapter would be a light one, I promise. Okay, okay. As light as I can write. It will be relatively lighter than all the others.

Anyway, thank you all.

Please vote ⭐ , comment 🖋️, share 📨 and follow.

Lots of love ❤️❤️❤️
Javeria.