𝕿he lights flashed on the silver Lexus, and I sighed in relief.

With long strides, he rushed ahead to pull the door open, ushering me to the passenger's side, grabbing the keys. The brief contact of his fingers against my palm led to a small current.

Shaking his head, his tall frame backed out of the car, away from me. He even reached for the door to seat me in before he stopped himself. The seesaw inside me jolted. Sharp inquisitive eyes flashed across my face, the phantom scent of pine wafting over me.

"Are you sure about this?"

My heartbeat thumped heavily in my ears and I offered a silent nod back. He mirrored my nod wordlessly, then stepped back and slammed the door.

Within moments settled in the driver's seat, Asfand started the engine, smoothly rounded the car, then pulled a quick U turn in silence. Dread sank like a heavy stone into my gut. I didn't make eye contact, but I could feel him regarding me like he thought I might snap.

I think I already had.

Mentally, I ran through the conversations I would need to have, hands white-knuckling the leather upholstery. Partly because I was focusing all my energy on not asking Asfand to turn around so I could verbally beat the ever loving shit out of Altamash, and partly because Asfand had the hot forearm thing going, driving the car- a stick shift - so those muscles and tendons flexed as he drove, eyes fixed on the road. He made driving the Lexus along the dark, curving roads seem like a sport or an art form. One corded arm draped over the wheel, and his right hand sat loose atop the gearshift, his knee bobbing in a restless rhythm that never disrupted his control over the gas pedal.

When he caught me studying him, his brow lifted in tandem with his lips.

"Fuck my life," I muttered, watching the city streets bleed into the highway that led out to Islamabad.

I sensed Asfand's glance.

"We still good?"

"Yeah."

His mouth lifted the faintest bit at the corner as he looked away, eyes on the approaching exit. "I didn't see you eat at the event, hungry?" he asked. The event.

Oh good God. Flashes of my flirtation with him started to bombard my brain. Shit. His reminder made my chest warm and I looked away before a blush could fully bloom over me.

"Starving."

He nodded, and within minutes we pulled into a small roadside cafe. A sigh punctuated rustling, so I glanced up. Asfand cleared his throat, shucked off his jacket, and threw it in the back. "Just trying to get comfortable."

Then he proceeded to roll up his shirtsleeves and I bit my lip to stop a surprised gasp from slipping out. The strangely shaped tattoo on his forearm was such an odd part of him that it threw me off. It travelled from his forearm, all the way beneath his shirt.

What kind of financial analyst looked like that beneath his clothes?

"What do you want?" he peered into the makeshift cafe, his eyes and nose scrunched up. "On second thought, this might not be best place-"

"Oh it's perfect," the grit on the floor, the open air kitchen and sloppily washed dishes made me smile. Altamash and Daada Jaan would definitely not approve of this. I giggled like a mad woman. This was a completely inconsequential rebellion, but a satisfying one nonetheless. "I want something fattening and lowbrow. Something Altamash would never approve of."

"That bad huh?" the way he laughed, all soft and deep, made me feel like I was sinking into a warm bath. I stared at him, tousled dark hair and lashes, the long line of his nose, the shadowy stubble that I could not stop thinking about. Not for the first time I wondered what it is about him that affected me so. His fingers mesmerized me. Long, competent, and deft. I imagined them turning the pages of books in the late-night hours-fingers smudged with ink, just like mine used to be. Somehow this man had triggered that restlessness I'd always kept just beneath the surface. Whereas before I'd merely been alive, he made me want to live.

The grin I gave him was unhinged at best.

"They're sending me off to get married to the highest bidder... so yeah, it's bad," I dropped the loosely guarded secret, keeping my voice as light and casual as I could.

He just stared back at me, jaw popping like I'd pissed him off. Not a single word crested his lips, not a single tug up on his cheeks.

"Sir... kya leinge? (What will you have?)"

"Pakoray aur (and) chai."

"Your Urdu's surprisingly good for someone who hasn't set foot in Pakistan for the past thirteen years," I muttered, burning with curiosity.

"I'm the only son of a politician. You think he'd have let me get away with me now knowing Urdu?"

"There are others who don't," he watched me for long moments, until we were trapped in this stare-off, neither one of us wanting to be the one to back down. His eyes bore into mine, and I almost leaned forward, but stopped myself at the last second. I wanted to reach for him for some reason. Every time, his voice plucked a too-tight string in a piano deep in my stomach. There were no butterflies fluttering through my gut. Just blood vessels constricting and contracting around my organs. The twist of my veins and flow of my blood wanted me to fall against his chest, to have his arms wrapped around me.

It was overwhelming.

"I'm not like the others."

"Yeh lain Sahab (Here you go sir)," a young boy, dressed in a clean but faded shalwar kameez, handed us a wobbly tray. Asfand balanced it in one hand, while handing the money to the child.

"Wow, this looks -" greasy. Strange. Not entirely hygienic.

"We can go back to the city and get something else. I know you've probably never had street food before but it's really not that bad once you try it."

"I want to know about the time you tried this food before. I don't remember you being a fan of pakoras," I turned towards him, breathing in his intoxicating scent. His eyes pierced through me, so much fiercer than the thirteen-year-old boy who had been stuck in my mind for years.

It was more than just his physical appearance. It was the aura he gave off. I'd always been curious about him more so than anyone else, but this man in front of me made me almost desperate to know who he really was. A part of him felt the same, but most of him felt different. I'd never felt like this growing up with him. I never experienced this electricity between us that made me feel like I'd fall apart if I didn't hold on to him, but I don't. I don't touch him, because the fear in my heart keeps me on edge, at a distance, a few feet away from where he sat.

"My mother loves street food. She's the one who got me addicted to this."

"I didn't know that. She'd never mentioned that before."

"Probably because every time we went some place, your family had a private chef to cater to your every need."

"That's..." unflinchingly true. "Umm... how is she?" I grabbed the first piece from the plate, placing it on the small napkin. "And your father?"

"They're both fine. Happy in their lives," he watched me as I took a small bite and the texture is a little different than the ones the chef used to prepare. More crusty, maybe also a little softer. And the filling was so good, a moan escaped my lips. "Good?" he asked, his eyes filled with expectation as he waited for the verdict.

"I had no idea that this could taste good."

Lacing both hands behind his head, he observed me eating. Content. Satisfied. "Maybe because you haven't eaten anything the entire evening..."

"Probably. But I'm glad I had this."

"Now that you've been fed, I have to ask, is running away the best option? Is there no way they'll consider your choice?" he dared to glance back at me, his eyes uncertain. I felt poised on a precipice, standing on unfamiliar ground.

Being the object of his full focus made me feel like a deer in headlights. Taking a sip from the cup, I considered my words carefully. "They might, if I actually had a choice."

"Why don't you? Seems like that would be the easiest solution."

"The easiest solution would be to go along with what's happening," I murmured.

"What if you fell in love?" my face twisted, and I tilted my head to the side, swinging the remains of my drink into my mouth and threw the empty styrofoam glass in the plastic bag.

"I won't."

"You can't possibly know that," he groaned and dragged a hand down his face.

"Oh I know."

"You're not even going to consider it?"

I laughed this time, ignoring how something new stirred under my rib cage at the question. My eyes lingered on him for a moment longer than was entirely proper. I didn't like that. Truth was, I was thinking of what he'd said. Mulling it over.

True love.

Unrelenting, galvanized love. The type that put you off the world. In my world, true love was rarer than any supposed marriage alliance. In fact, there were only a handful of people I knew who even came close to it. People in my circle had an old adage that they only got married for three reasons: business, politics, or to prevent a scandal.

Just like I knew I was fated to be married off, I knew I'd marry someone for pragmatic reasons. There was no love story in my future. He cleared his throat, and my cheeks burned, so terrified was I that he'd somehow read my mind.

"Women like me don't fall in love Asfand. We fall into traps. We're lured in by sweet lies of comfort and smooth promises of importance. Then years, maybe decades, down the line we realize we're tethered to a stranger, the chains made heavier by things like babies, society and mothers-in-law with unhealthy obsessions with their sons. Some get divorced; most decide it's easier just to stay in that marriage," dragging in a lungful of air, my forefinger hovered a millimeter away from touching his. But at the last second, I stopped myself. "Not everything in life comes in neat little packages," heavy silence whistled in the car. I turned to him and smirked at his expression. "What? Too much?"

"What's the messy big package?" he barked out a laugh, though it wasn't one of humor.

"Working on it," as I said it, the realization of those words sank in. Endless was the silence that stretched between us, the only response that of the cars whizzing by, the sound sharp and staggered in the spring breeze. I continued to look out the window and he made no further comments. Instead, he just gripped the steering wheel like he was trying to strangle it while keeping intense eyes on the road. I wish I had something to say, something to break the tension and the wave of awkwardness.

"You never told me how you ended up at Mughal Co."

His head jolted back slightly. "You know why. Your grandfather asked me for a-"

"Yes you've mentioned that. But before that? Where were you?" All those years? After you'd left us? Tell me.

"London. Dad decided that I was to be enrolled at Eton."

I let out a low whistle. "Impressive."

He smiled guilelessly, his cheeks betraying a trace of his chagrin. "I enjoyed myself there, made some friends, got into Cambridge. Got my degree and got an offer from BlackRock."

"That's... wow," BlackRock and not Vanguard. Interesting.

"How'd you manage to stay in touch with Taimoor?" without my knowledge?

"I didn't, he tracked me down. Said he'd hired a private investigator. Your brother showed up to my dorm on a random Saturday afternoon," his eyes danced with mirth, his face about to break into a grin. "Just appeared on the doorstep, out of thin air, like an oversized avenging angel."

"Taimoor- wait, when was this?"

"My first year at Cambridge," that would be Taimoor's gap year. "I couldn't believe he'd made the effort."

I couldn't either. Seemed like my twin had been keeping a lot of secrets.

"He never said anything. All this time and he never mentioned that he was in contact-" I offered, my hands fumbling, unsure of what they were supposed to be doing. "I didn't know."

"We didn't want anyone to know. Besides, we'd only meet a couple of times a year..."

"Crazy how that worked out," a couple of times a year. Yeah. They'd excluded me. On purpose. For whatever reason. Sure, I'd been in the states at the time, pursuing my degree, but Taimoor could have told me. The three of us had been inseparable when we were kids. He could have told me he'd found Asfand.

"Life does have a way of surprising you," his mouth curved into a smile, and my breath caught as a bundle of nerves fluttered deep within me. Fucking hell, what was wrong with me? I was acting like a schoolgirl.

"It does right? Now you're here in the car with me, on your way to find my secluded brother who hates civilization and I'm going to get married in the next six months."

His brows found each other, creasing his forehead. "Stranger things have happened."

"For you maybe, unfortunately the fates have seemed to have cut my thread. I'm done."

"None of us are never truly done," the breaths stalled in my throat, dying out like the last sputtering of a broken car exhaust. My eyes cut to his. "Who're the fates to stop you?"

"I don't know why you've got such a strong belief in me," I sucked in a huge gulp of air, shaking my head and stopping any emotions before they really started. "I don't want to hide from fate. Nor do I want to run to meet it."

His jaw squared, eyes back on the headlights slicing through the dark.

"Fate is no match for destiny. You can change your fate, but you can't change your destiny."

"Okay Aristotle," dark eyes landed on mine momentarily and then dropped to my lips watching as my hair tumbled freely around my cheeks. He watched me for a moment, and I caught a flicker of something in his eyes. But then he blinked, and it was gone.

"That's all the wisdom for today. We're here," nerves curdled in my stomach and I spared a glance to my right, watching the newest addition in my life navigate his way through the gates and geared up for the upcoming fight. My anger at my twin might have dwindled over the last few hours, but that didn't mean he was off the hook once I showed up. In fact, I'd already compiled a list of questions I needed answers to - a list that seemingly grew with every passing minute.

Nestled in the mountains, morose, craggy with dormer windows and crooked little slanted roofs and odd bits of towers, like pointed noses, Mughal House seemed to peer down unhappily at us. It reared up, dark and cold, looking like it wasn't occupied. But that was the thing. When it came to the Mughals, looks were always deceiving.

I rubbed my arms trying to dispel some of the nervous energy, my muscles tensing into a painful rictus of dread as the sight ripped me back into the reality. Back where it was too cold and too dark and anything could have been hiding away in the shadowy depths of the night. Watching. Waiting.

Rumours ran from Mughal House to the surrounding residents, whispered by maids to helping hands, passed from the drivers to their wives, who spread them as warnings. No one had seen my brother for half a year. Waves of pebbled gooseflesh rose and every bit of me stood at attention as I noticed the burnished gates open, listing to the left as someone on the other side fumbled with it. My insides twisted beneath my ribcage, my fingers clutched the edge of my dress as the car turned yet another corner, my eyes scanning the overwhelming gloom.

I was finally here. He couldn't run away from me now. With my arms crossed over my chest, I kept my eyes on the main entrance. Worry struck my chest, but I pushed it down, hating showing any type of emotion or hesitation.

As soon as the car rolled to a stop, a broad silhouette exited the front door, his stride purposeful, eyes fixed on the car and its driver, a scowl etched on his features. His gaze settled on me, the intensity of his anger reaching me in waves.

Turned out my little brother didn't like to have visitors.

Too bad for him, he was going to have to deal with me.

"Hello Taimoor."

There's no excuse for the delay 🙈 But here's a shorter chapter to get you back in the mood.
After all, Taimoor's back in the fold.

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