Eternal Temptation

❥ 27| contemplations and crime

THERE WAS A TYPE of woman I'd wanted to grow up to be my entire life. One who was always in control of her words and actions. One who always knew where her actions would lead her and what their consequences would be.

Maybe they were both the same type of woman. Maybe they were both the same but just not said in the same words.

All I knew was that, right now, I hadn't succeeded in being that type of woman. It felt like I was lost in the middle of nowhere — which I technically had been less than twenty-four hours ago — and had no control over anything that I did. This entire realisation was sudden but it made me want to travel back an entire year and change how I dealt with every single thing.

The control I had buried in deeply was slowly easing out of me and I had no idea how to get a grip on it again. I'd been acting like a stupid, lovesick, dazed girl this past year and I just wanted to erase and rectify all of it.

It had started that one cold night in February, almost eight months ago when I'd given in to the devil on my left shoulder and had foolishly decided to stalk a man who honestly had no commitment to me whatsoever. That control continued to slip further when my emotions broke loose and I let myself cry at the familiar sight of him kissing someone else for the first time. I'd thrown myself deeper down the rabbit hole when I'd agreed to marry a man who I'd never met before, partly because of my own pettiness and ego, without even trying to voice my argument.

Day by day, I'd began growing into the type of person I'd detested and hadn't wanted to be growing up.

Zayaan didn't want me to know whatever his side business was; sure, it was his responsibility to let his life partner know what his life involved and revolved around, but instead of coming to terms with the fact that he wasn't ready to share anything yet, I'd gone and forced myself into a situation neither of us were okay with. My lack of control is another thing that did me in this time. I had goddamn school, but instead of focusing on all the things in my life, I went sticking my nose into his and didn't think about the consequences of what I did and said. What exactly was I hoping to achieve by going with him? All we managed was to get into a plane crash and get lost in a whole other country.

Maybe it sounded selfish to say I wish I hadn't decided to come with him, but I couldn't help but want to go back and make that exactly what happened. I was right from the very beginning: I didn't want much to do with Zayaan's and the Haidars' life. I preferred the predictability and boringness of my own, where nothing dramatic happened and I could just live in my own little bubble without all these people. I couldn't even tell who was genuinely nice and who was fake most of the time.

Once again, it was my lack of control to blame for absolutely everything.

I knew that not embracing this new change wasn't a good mindset to have, but I couldn't care less. I just wanted my old life back. There just wasn't much I could do to achieve that.