SHAYAN WATCHED Evan as they walked through San Diego International Airport. He wasn't sure if this was a trap. He wasn't sure if bringing Evan along was worth the risk, but he didn't have a choice. The man standing beside him was the only one that had a hold on Selena, whether they liked it or not.
He felt eyes on him from every corner of the airport as if they all knew that Shayan was breaking so many laws with a gun loaded and concealed in his backpack. It didn't help that he embodied the exact profile Americans feared the most.
He was so screwed.
Trying to mask his paranoia, he turned back to Evan, who whistled a jolly tune under his breath. The teenage boy ran his fingers through his hair, his eyes flicking around the airport like he thought he was being watched too. At this point, they were accomplices, and Shayan knew that the golden boy who stood beside him, with his spotless record and famous family, couldn't take any kind of bad publicity.
Being found with a gun in the middle of a crowded international airport would be the worst scandal to ever disgrace the Levington family name, especially if their youngest son was found with a man like him: a man that looked exactly like a jihadist.
Shayan lowered his gaze, unable to think about the hypotheticals surrounding their potential capture. He knew from the bottom of his heart, though, that if he and Evan were caught during their mission, it would be his ass in jail with no way out, while the white boy with the influential parents got off scot-free.
He sighed as the intrusive thought rattled his brain. Jasmine would have yelled at him for being so blatantly hateful towards Evan, despite the fact that everything he was thinking was true. She would have told him to be the one who forgave endlessly, the one who made others want to forget their Islamophobia.
Someone as perfect as Jasmine Karesh didn't deserve to suffer. If he had the chance, he would have taken her spot in a heartbeat, but the world didn't work that way. The people who heal were always the ones to be hurt, while the people who destroy live on in the shadows, untouched and unscarred.
It wasn't fair.
Pushing Jasmine out his mind, he cleared his throat to catch Evan's attention. "Call her," Shayan mumbled, scanning the airport for any sight of the Karesh family or Selena in the airport.
Evan groaned. "Calling Selena isn't going to get you to Jasmine quicker. Calm down."
His eyes flashed. "Calm down? You expect me to calm down when the girl I love is in danger of being killed at any minute?"
"You're so dramatic," he claimed with a huff, pulling his phone out of his pocket as he mocked Shayan. The phone began to ring. "Happy?"
"Stop chatting, dumbass. She can't know you're with someone."
"Do you think I'm stupid?"
"Obviously, if I just called you a dumba–," Shayan began but was cut off abruptly when Evan punched him swiftly in the gut. He wrapped his arms around his stomach and winced, not wanting to draw any more attention to himself, as the phone clicked on. He sent the boy a glare that could send him straight into the ground, which was unapologetically ignored.
"Evan?" Selena's soft voice rang through the phone and Shayan could see little, pathetic hearts orbiting around Evan's head.
"Selena, where are you? We need to talk. It's urgent," he replied, averting his eyes to the plane outside the window. It wasn't surprising that Selena could turn Evan into a completely different person with just a few well-placed words. He was much too easy to manipulate, which made him just the match for her.
"I'm taking a break and going on a vacation." She let out a dry chuckle. "Yet another perk of having a dead aunt who left her all wealth to you. Why? What do you need?"
He sighed. "I want you back, Sel. I'll do whatever you want as long as you let me be with you."
"Evan," she whispered, her breath shallow as his voice rang through her ears. She seemed unsure of what to tell him, of how to break this boy's heart again, and Shayan could feel their mission slipping from their fingertips as each silent moment passed.
"Please. Let me meet you on your vacation. I need a second chance to show you that I'll never give up on us." He paused, as if all the oxygen was knocked out of his lungs, and opened his mouth not a second later to say something more, but decided against it.
Shayan and Evan were greeted by silence again, and for a minute, he was afraid that she had hung up on them. Shayan held his breath, praying that she hadn't. They'd never be able to find Jasmine without this key moment of weakness. After all, Selena was human and they were banking on just that.
"Is anyone with you?" she asked, her words shaky and hesitant.
"No one. You can trust me," Evan lied through his teeth, crossing his fingers behind his back like a child.
"Ahmedabad." She released a short breath. "It's a city in India. I'm at a hotel across the street from Jasmine's house. I came to apologize. I'm so scared she'll brush me off, though, so I haven't managed to ring her God-forsaken doorbell."
"She'll forgive you. She's Jasmine and you're Selena. If you two aren't friends, the world would stop turning." He laughed and made a motion for Shayan to write down everything she was saying.
He shrugged. He knew he would remember the details considering he had gone to Jasmine's bungalow more times than he could count. The last time he was there, their families were whole. It was before Rahul died and before his parents were divorced. It was when his mother and Aishwarya were still best friends and when Bianca was seen as more than a color.
They would go to the bazaar in the heart of the city every morning, chatting amongst themselves. Aishwarya, Maya, and Bianca would take the children to help with the shopping, holding up bags of colorful spices to the light with bright smiles spreading across their lips. Their husbands would follow closely behind, their poor arms becoming makeshift baskets for the groceries. The sun would beat down on their backs and the heat would creep up their necks, but no one ever minded.
Shayan held onto the memory like a priceless jewel, for he knew he would never be able to recreate it ever again, no matter how hard he tried. Their families had fallen apart to the point where nothing could ever glue them back together.
And the next time he was revisiting his childhood, it was to make sure the beautiful girl who captured his heart all those years ago didn't die.
He was snapped out of his thoughts when he heard Selena laugh to herself. "You're right."
"Wait for me, Sel. We can go to Jasmine together. You deserve to have someone in your corner." Evan smiled, seemingly unable to separate his true emotions from his acting, still crossing his fingers even tighter than before.
A few moments passed before she muttered, "I'll wait. But you're not my knight in shining armor."
"Can I be your prince in an elegant tuxedo instead?"
"Shut up, Evan." She chuckled. "I'll see you soon then."
He unclasped his fingers. "I love you."
"I love you too." She hung up and Evan fell into the chair behind him with a groan.
"That girl takes everything out of me with just a few words." He shook his head, placing his face in his hands before mumbling, "Do you know how to get to Ahmedabad?"
"I even know how to find Jasmine's house in the city," he responded with a raised eyebrow. "I'll buy the tickets now." Shayan pulled out his phone, his fingers skimming over the gun he had used to kill Maria and Ashton. He continued to debate how he would get it past airport security when Evan gave him an offer that would solve all his problems.
"Why buy tickets? My father is the CEO of a company worth 3.6 billion dollars, in case you forgot. We can use his jet in the dock near the back," he said, lowering his voice so quickly that Shayan was worried it attracted more suspicion to them than before.
"Convenient." He threw him a surly glance. "Lead the way, Levington."
The two men maneuvered their way through the crowded gates until they reached the docks where the Levington jet was fabled to be. Evan approached the smallest plane in the area and called out to the pilot leaning against the base, ordering him to open the doors.
When the doors opened, Shayan climbed up the stairs, his eyes scanning over every tiny detail of the aircraft. His heart slammed out of his chest when he realized that he was stuck in the middle of the sky with someone he barely trusted, faced with no plausible escape but death.
In an attempt to calm his nerves, he fell into one of the reclining seats and put his arms behind his head. He disregarded his worries to catch up on some much-needed sleep, trying not to think about how little he knew the people in his life— whether it be Selena, Evan, or Jasmine's family.
He didn't want to think about how they would try to run away with their daughter to India. It frustrated him beyond limits, especially when he knew that it didn't take much effort for Selena to find them anyway.
Instead, he hoped that when all of this was over, they would finally be together. The fact that they could make it through this without losing their love was enough to prove to him that he had met his match.
And he had no intention of letting her go that easily.
So, we have a few plans in place here. Selena is planning on killing Jasmine but is now waiting for Evan to join her. Shayan is planning on saving Jasmine by using Evan as a double agent. And then, you have Jasmine thinking only about how to make sure her mother doesn't drug her and marry her off. What do you think will happen?
Please leave a vote and a comment if you enjoyed this chapter and let me know your thoughts! That's all for today! See you soon.
Much love, Ana.