Road to Jannah

Chapter Twenty-two • Zan Rayu Dake

I hear my door being gently creaked open and when I turn towards it, I immediately turn back to the window and pretend I didn't notice my brother walking in to my room. I didn't have the fortitude to hear Yasin telling me the extent of his dissapointment in me all over again.

"Jannah?" though his tone was soft, I didn't turn back but continued staring out the window.

"Jannah?" Yasin walks closer to me and when I still didn't answer, I feel his arm wrap around my shoulder.

"Your amazing, wonderful, awesome, and insanely sweet brother is here calling you but you're not answering?" He attempts to lift my mood with his playful tone but right now, my life is more serious than it has ever been, my life isn't a joke.

I brush his arm off me and turn back towards my bed, laying down and pulling the covers over me.

"Is this how we're going to do this Jannah?" he groaned and when I peeked from my covers, I saw the look of pure concern on his face. "For God's sake Jannah, won't you just forget about all that happened? Forget about that bastar-"

"Yaya," I unravel myself from under the duvet and stare at him in warning. "Please don't start with this again."

He sighes and runs a hand over his face before sitting heavily on the side of my bed. Perhaps he was going to give me his own brotherly version of the marital advice I've been getting from everyone these past few days.

"Jannah, sit up please. I want us to talk."

Reluctantly, I did what he said, placing my back on the headboard and making my face expressionless as I look at him. I just wanted whatever it is to be done quickly, whatever speech it was about how lucky I am to have gotten someone like Faisal Ibrahim to be my husband, should just be over with.

Yasin brought out a device from his front kaftan pocket and I immediately recognize it to be my phone. The same phone that has been ceased away from me for almost a month now. He fibbles with it for a moment before he turned the screen towards me making my breath hitch as I stare at the beautiful face striking a pouting pose on it.

"Maryam looked breathtaking that day." I managed to articulate and didn't even realise it when I had chuckled in reminiscense of that day. "So beautiful that Yaya, I had wanted to get 50k off you before I allowed you to see her but unfortunately Maryam stopped me. She... she loved you very much, she was about to say... yes."

I study Yasin's face closely but I couldn't decipher what my words had put on his mind or more correctly, his heart. I wanted to read through his emotions and find relief in the fact that he has finally healed but no matter how much I tried, I couldn't. Those big black eyes I shared with him didn't betray any of his feelings and they made reading Yasin impossible to me.

"You fell in love with the wrong person Jannah." he finally says in a whisper, with his eyes cast away from mine and I figure that he still has a thick wall around himself. He was trying not to show it but it was clear, the pain of losing Maryam was still haunting him.

"I want you to forget about that... whatever his name is. He doesn't deserve you and whatever happened that night, if I knew that you still won't forget him and even start hating him after that, I would have killed him right then and there." his whisper turned to a lower but deadlier tone.

"Yaya, I swear, all that was a misunderstanding. Nothing happened, I promise you Ahmad-"

"Don't you say that name Jannah!" Yasin's sudden rise in the tone of his voice made me shiver and wrap my arms around myself, hugging Ahmad's jacket closer to me.

I don't know anyone with a hotter temper than my brother's and at this moment, I knew it was best I complied and stopped uttering Ahmad's name around him. He took his time to calm himself down and I was glad that when he spoke, his tone was that of remorse and reasoning.