ZAYAAN AND I LEFT the cemetery soon after, bidding our families a pained goodbye. It felt like I'd left half of my soul behind when I climbed into the car, settling into the passenger seat which I now claimed as mine.
It used to be that way in Aden's car too. Whenever we went on road trips, or even a quick spree to the shops, I always rode shotgun with my brother regardless of who else we were with. We may have bickered like cats and dogs at times, but there was no one I trusted and believed in more than my brother. He'd always been there for me, especially when our parents weren't there. His name was the first word that I'd spoken, his hand was the first that I'd held when I took my first steps and he was my first best friend.
When I was younger, I used to picture Aden and I living in neighbouring houses when we were older, nurturing our own families but always being bonded in the way that only siblings could be. Especially siblings who depended on each other completely and viewed the other as both their freedom and family. Because Aden was my family, but in a way that I didn't feel caged or neglected when I was with him, and felt as if I could do anything I wished for with his support.
I used to picture growing a family with Logan, having a couple of kids, and having weekly Sunday lunches with Aden's family without fail. I used to imagine us being so happy that nothing could defeat us. I used to view the world as all rainbows and sunshine, where we could dance when the rain came out to play and wait for the rainbow that would inevitably follow.
But it all looked so bleak now. I'd taken off my rose-tinted glasses and learned that we lived in a world where there was so much corruption, crime and bloodshed that when it rained, it would only be a storm of blood that followed. There would be no rainbow. There wouldn't even be the smallest glimpse of sunshine.
My dreams had shattered into nothing. Now, Aden was dead and the only person I could picture being my family, let alone growing a family with, was my husband. He couldn't be more different to Logan even if he tried, and despite my overwhelming feelings for him, I had to separate from him.
There was no happiness. Only sorrow and heartache.
God, everything hurt so much. I just wanted to rip everything out of me — all the pain, all the oxygen, the will to survive through each day — and go and curl up into a ball in a dark, silent place. Where no one bothered me. Where I wouldn't be able to hear anything but my own pitiful thoughts.
When I saw Zayaan shift the gear from my peripheral vision, I turned to him, wanting to prolong this moment for just a little longer.
"Can you take the next left?"
"The left?" His eyebrows furrowed. For some reason, that brought me a flash of when I'd seen him throw his gun into the dash. They were illegal in the UK, but somehow, he managed to have one on him during precarious situations. The man sitting next to me was just so different to the one who'd interrogated and terrified one of Hosseini's men. "Do you not want to go home?"
"No." I shook my head. "Not yet, please."
He nodded, taking the left onto a road that we rarely drove through. "Should I keep driving or park?"
"No, keep driving." I leaned my head against the window. "I don't want to go outside anywhere. Going back home is just going to make everything more real."
The last three days had gone by as if nothing but a horrible dream, but walking through the door after my brother's funeral would only cement the fact that he was truly gone. That he would six feet into the drying soil. And it would mean that I couldn't dwell in this moment with Zayaan any longer. I wouldn't have an excuse to procrastinate any longer if we were home and I had no doubt that Zayaan would begin to hate me after I'd done what I had to. I just wanted to push all of that away and live in the present, where we were a normal couple who weren't bound together because of death and soon to separate because of death.
Right now, it was just us. Just Fatimah and Zayaan. I could momentarily imagine that my brother was well and alive, and I could imagine myself having a future with Zayaan that didn't look so damn bleak and foreboding.
For what was most likely the last time, I traced every single curve and detail of Zayaan's profile. I doubted that I'd get another moment like this, and if losing Aden had taught me anything, it was that I should cherish every moment I had with a loved one. And in this case, I knew that I was going to lose Zayaan — only in a very different way.
"Do you want to go anywhere in particular?"
"No." That seemed to be my favourite word today.
He sighed, but it wasn't with frustration, just sadness. He'd been so patient with me over the past three days — not that he usually wasn't — but he'd been so understanding and so calm despite my mood and my tendency to snap or start crying at random times.
One thing that I'd noticed, though, was that he hadn't asked me if I was okay even once. I remembered telling him once that the question was so pointless; no matter how a person felt, even if they were on the verge of crying their heart out, their answer would always be yes. They would always respond that they were okay; it was what society had normalised and if a person said that they were not okay, then either the person who'd questioned them wouldn't know what to say or they would be classified as attention-seeking.
I knew, and he also probably knew, that if he were to ask me that question, I'd begin sobbing once again because of how it would be nothing but a trigger.
Zayaan sighed again, this time much more heavily, looking troubled.
"Whatever's on your mind, just say it."
He glanced at me. "I hate seeing you like this, Fatimah. I hate seeing that empty look in your eyes and I'd hate for you to think that I'm forcing you to continue as normal when you've just lost your brother, but it fucking guts me to see you this way. I know that it's going to be impossible to recover from this — that it's not possible to forget or move past it to get our lives back on track like it was before — but I just want you to smile. To talk. To allow at least a small glimpse of that light back into your eyes. I want you to come out of that shell and talk; even if it's one word about how you're feeling, or something so mundane as just telling me where you want to go if it's not home. Just give me something. Anything."
"I don't know where I want to go, Zayaan." I decided to appease him by telling him the only truth I could right now. "I just want to keep driving. I don't want to be in one place where it feels like the walls will close in on me. I just want to stay in this one moment where the place we're in is as temporary as each second. I just want to continue going on like this, in an illusion where it feels as though this moment has no end, when in reality everything has to come to an end. I just want to escape that reality. I want only the now to tide us over and keep on going like this forever." With you.
Those must have been the truest words I'd spoken in who-knew-how-long. I'd wrenched those words out from the deepest ends of my soul, even though they were drenched in bitterness. Because I knew that no matter how desperate I was for my words to be prophetic, they could never become reality.
I couldn't keep going on like this forever with Zayaan. We couldn't keep driving with no end in sight for the rest of time.
But we did for the next few hours. Not another word left either one of our mouths and the wind rushing in was the only sound to fill the silence.
We kept driving until the sun began to set, the sky streaked with purple and pink pastels. We kept driving until the streetlights turned on, illuminating the familiar roads when we finally headed home hours later. The headlights paved the way till we parked the car, where everything went deathly silent without the constant purr of the engine.
Tell him now, my brain urged. End it now before you step foot into the house.
As much as I didn't want to, as much as my heart protested, I forced the words to leave my mouth before I changed my mind. "Zayaan, I don't want to do this anymore."
His brow creased. "Do what?"
"This." I gestured between us. "The whole married-couple thing. It's not working."
"It's not working?" Disbelief and confusion coated his tone as he turned his undivided attention on me, the darkening sky making his eyes glow.
I shrugged. "It just doesn't seem right anymore. I'm so used to being just friends, and I'm not sure I like this change."
I wanted to come across as aloof and uncaring, but each word that left my mouth made my tongue heavier. It physically began to hurt when I forced myself to string together those words.
"Did something happen? Me, perhaps? Did I do something wrong?" He asked, reaching for my hand.
"No. It's not you. Aden—" My voice caught and I cleared my throat. "Aden's death has just put things into perspective, Zayaan. And when I think about people it would gut me to lose, you're not one of them. I don't want to keep lying to either one of us anymore by continuing this relationship."
I wrenched my eyes away from him and turned to face the window, hating the ugly words I'd spew.
"Lies," he murmured. "Everything you just said was nothing but a lie, Fatimah."
"No," I whispered.
"Then look at me," Zayaan challenged. "Turn around and look at me. Tell me that what's between us isn't real. Tell me that everything was just a lie." When I didn't, he caught my chin and turned my head around to meet my eyes. "Go on. Tell me you don't feel anything, Fatimah. Tell me you don't love me."
But that was the thing. I couldn't.
He saw my eyes welling up and nodded at me, urging the lie to leave my mouth.
"I can't," I said weakly. I sniffled. "I can't tell you that."
"Then why did you try?"
"Because I had to." Knowing this was the last chance I would get to do this after I told him the pathetic truth, I reached forward to grasp his face and pressed my lips to his in one hard, desperate kiss. He paused, grabbing my wrist, before tugging me closer. It was a messy kiss, with me leaning over the console and didn't fill me with any joy unlike three days ago. It was harsh and made my chest ache when he fingered through my hair gently when we broke apart, untangling the mess. The gesture was filled with so much patience and affection that I loathed it. "Because I have to."
My tear-stained cheeks and my words were so contradictory that he took a second to pause again. But then realisation dawned in his eyes; he realised that I was tearing us apart no matter what and he pulled back. "Why, Faithe?"
Faithe.
"Because I promised that I would."
"Promised who?"
"Myself." I took a shuddering breath. "I told myself that I would leave you because I need you and the rest of your family to be safe. I don't want what happened to Aden to happen to anyone else."
"Why would you leaving me prevent anyone from getting hurt?"
"Because I overheard your conversation with that man outside the cemetery earlier."
He sighed. "Faithe, I'm honestly lost here and I need you to spell it out for me. What the hell are you saying? What did you see?"
"It's because of me that you got shot the night we found those children in Tehran. It's because of the vendetta Hosseini has against me for finding the lorry that he killed my brother and sent a hit-man to kill another person I love. It just seemed like a warning, Zayaan. It seems like death follows wherever I go and I can't bear to lose another person, whether it be from my family or yours. So I just thought that leaving you would perhaps rid you of the bad luck surrounding me and protect you from harm."
Pain, so visceral that it seemed to reach into my chest and choke my heart, darkened his eyes. "And you think leaving me will solve all your problems? Like I'm not a person with feelings of my own? Someone you can easily discard so that you can erase your guilt?"
"No, Zayaan," I denied quickly, wanting to reach out but second guessing myself as the pain in his eyes was replaced with something more harsh. Something more cruel. "I don't want anything to happen to you or our family. I can't lose any more of you."
"Seems like you will either way," he said bitterly. "If you want something badly enough, then simply putting your faith in God would be enough. If you're worried about something, then you should have talked to me about it. What you shouldn't have done was go and sacrifice us as if we're nothing but mere pawns in a game where you don't want to lose any valuables. You shouldn't have just cheaply discarded us to get out of this guilt-free."
"No, Zayaan—"
"No, Faithe. I should have known that this was where it would inevitably end up. Where it would inevitably end."
A gasp caught in my throat. "What?"
"You wanted this relationship to be over. It's been over the second you decided to let go us." With that, he turned to open his side of the door and stepped out, slamming it shut before he walked away.
Fuck.
I dropped my head onto my lap, covering my face with my hands as my shoulders shook. I'd underestimated how much it would hurt when I'd run over this scenario a hundred times in my head. I'd thought that it would feel like my heart had cracked into two, not the irreparable smithereens Zayaan had just shattered it into when he walked away. But what I'd severely misjudged was how pathetic, how stupid my reason and my plight would sound when I explained it to him.
All it did was reveal my selfishness. My insecurity. My foolishness.
It was over.
What had just begun was already over in the blink of an eye. All because of my stupidity. But if that stupidity meant our family would be safe, then I would do this again as many more times as I needed to.
I wiped my eyes and stepped out with the November chill biting at my skin. The warmth of the building enveloped me when I walked in and up the stairs, but the painful feeling clawing at my skin only worsened as I got closer to our flat.
Zayaan was in the kitchen when I opened the door, a glass of water in his hands as he stared outside at the howling wind.
"Did you do this with Logan?"
"Do what?" I asked carefully.
"Sacrifice him to gain something else."
I shook my head, but then realised how it must've have come across when he scoffed.
"Of course. Your perfect Logan. The one you always planned to return to, no? The one you tricked your husband for, pretending to develop feelings for him and asking him to kiss you only to break everything off so that we'd separate faster? It was all just a scheme to get back with him, wasn't it, Faithe?"
I started to shake my head vehemently. "I know that I made a stupid mistake but there's no need to be cruel, Zayaan. There's no need to make everything we went through into a lie when you know that it was nothing but the truth."
A harsh, bitter laugh left his mouth. "A mistake, Faithe? What did you was no fucking mistake. It was a deviously concocted game because you never stopped loving him, did you? You initially tried replacing him with me but it didn't work and now you're desperate for a taste of your old lover, am I right?"
His accusatory tone and horrid questions made me blanch. I charged forward, shoving him in the chest with both hands and as much force as I could muster.
"You bastard, can you fucking stop making assumptions about me? Do you really think I'm nothing but a cheap homewrecker? I would never have asked you to kiss me if I still bore feelings for Logan and you know it! Stop making everything into nothing but a dirty lie. Everything I felt for you — feel for you — is real and pure. Logan hasn't been part of the equation since before our marriage. I didn't love him then and I don't love him now."
"Wow, Faithe. I almost believed you." He shook his head in mock awe. "Bravo, honestly. Because we are nothing but a dirty lie. You've made it so."
"Maybe I did, but your words are tainting any friendship we could have had. You're the one who's made such a tragic mess of any good we once had in our relationship." I wrapped my arms around myself, sick of our conversation and the ugly mess our relationship had turned into. "Do you know what your issue is, Zayaan? You just can't accept something for what it is and you just couldn't accept what I wanted. You probe, you blow things out of proportion and make the issue bigger than it needs to be. This had nothing to do with Logan and you brought him into it and found anything you could to build your anger. I get that you're hurt — I fucking get it — but you're only making things worse. Or is it just your ego that couldn't take the hit of rejection? Is that it?"
Zayaan's jaw tightened, and if I wasn't mistaken, I thought I saw a hint of guilt. "It's just not my hurt, Faithe. It's the betrayal. The realisation. The realisation that I thought I loved a girl, only for it to be nothing but a lie. Nothing but infatuation. A mere obsession. Because we can't fall in love with something we never had. Something that's just been an illusion. I can't have had any feelings that go past the surface level when I loved an illusion, including any egoistical ones."
Everything was such a mess. We were a mess.
The truth he'd just dropped on me didn't even feel as life-altering as it should have. Because all I could feel was regret that I'd ruined it and that I would never get to experience any love from him. Everything was just falling apart and I was losing everyone who mattered the world to me but all I could do was watch with both eyes open.
A vibration in my pocket made me snatch my phone out of my pocket, to see the name Logan glaring back at me. Oh, for God's sake. Talk about shitty timing.
Zayaan saw the caller and any trace of guilt vanished. He let out a sardonic laugh. "How silly of me to think even for a second that he was never your endgame. Pick up the phone, Faithe. The two of you deserve each other."
He strode away, out of the kitchen, possibly out of my life and a voice inside me shouted that if I let him leave now, he would be lost to me forever. That he wouldn't be a part of my life even in passing.
"Zayaan—"
He turned at the entrance, hand on the doorknob to leave the flat. "I'm leaving. The divorce papers will be mailed to you in a few days."
I declined the call and followed after him in panic. "Divorce papers? What—"
"You wanted it to be over, Faithe. I don't want to half-ass anything. We deserve a clean split." Zayaan pulled open the door and before leaving he said, "Go be happy with the one you love, Fatimah."
With that, he left me in a barren house, surrounded by memories of us and with his parting bittersweet words.
It was goodbye.