(zayn POV)
stood there, the humid air sticking my shirt to my back, feeling the weight of her gaze. She didn't look like the girl who used to laugh at my sketches anymore. She looked like a woman who was demanding the truth from a ghost.
"I am the one who should be asking this question," Alayna said, her voice cutting through the quiet of the park. "Am I being married to a CEO, or the boy I used to know five years ago?"
I looked at her, and for the first time in a long time, the corporate jargon, the projected confidence, and the calculated silence all failed me. I thought of the man I'd become in Islamabad—hard, efficient, lonely. Then I thought of the boy who used to wait by her gate just to see what color she was painting that day.
I realized with a sinking chest that I couldn't find either of them completely.
"I don't know," I whispered.
The admission felt like a surrender. I didn't have a strategy. I didn't have a comeback. I just had the honest, terrifying truth: I was lost somewhere in between.
(Alayna's POV)
I don't know.
His answer was barely a breath, but it hit me harder than a shout would have. I waited for more—for a justification, a "CEO" explanation, or even a lie to make this easier. But Zayn just stood there in the shadow of the banyan tree, looking at me with an expression that was raw and completely unscripted.
He didn't know who he was. And he was expecting me to tether my life to that uncertainty.
I didn't say another word. I couldn't. If I stayed, I was afraid I'd either scream or break down, and I refused to do either in front of him.
I turned on my heel, the gravel crunching under my sandals as I walked away. I didn't look back to see if he was watching me. I didn't look back to see if he was still standing in the dark.
I walked through our shared gate, into my house, and straight up to my room. I didn't turn on the lights. I just sat on the edge of my bed, the "Mubarak" from the evening still echoing like a mockery in the hallways of my mind.
In three weeks, I was supposed to marry a man who didn't even recognize himself.
I looked at my hands in the moonlight. They were still shaking.