She looked around when she finally got her lips out of his, trying so hard to suppress her smile. "I hope no one sees this, let's get in." She looked inot his eyes while endingher sentence and Al-mustapha fixed his gaze on her. She looked like something he had been looking for, all his life. Something he really couldn't think of now, but he had surely been looking for her not even knowing he did.

She got down from the car and waited for him to come out, he did and they walked side by side, in uttermost silence to the building. They stood at the junction leading them to their separate chambers and Fatima Zarah looked at him with a smile. "I'll freshen up and rest for a bit, see you later." He nodded his ead, despite having this urge to not let her leave. He wanted to have her by his side for the rest of the day. He wanted to play this dangerous game wholly.

She smiled dismissively at him and walked up, bringing her phone out of her bag to dial Abida's number. "Please send Jannah to my chamber, I'm back." She said and ended the call. Don't turn back! She warned herself, and she was glad that she didn't turn to look at him despite sensing his eyes on her back.

Jannah entered her room a few minutes after she had entered and she went forward and hugge Fatima Zarah, "Aunty Fatima Zarah..." she trailed off and laughed at herself. Fatima Zarah's name had always been long and sounded funny to her whenever she called her with Aunty Fatima Zarah even though she had asked her not to bother using the Aunty, she is free to call her with just her name. "Good evening, it has been a long day, right? How was the palace?" Even though Jannah didn't know what Fatima Zarah did to make her have a beef with Mama Fulani, she knew they weren't walking on the same path.

"It was messy, but beautiful. I didn't know it would turn out this way." Fatima Zarah said with a faint smile on her lips, while she turned to give Jannah the chance of helping her out of her thobe. She did and they sat down on the resting sofa. Fatima Zarah had never had a sibling, but she loved and saw Jannah as though she was a sibling of hers. And right now, she needed someone to talk, maybe a bestfriend; and she didn't have one.

"What's happening? You are down." Jannah asked carefully, it was long since she had seen a carefree person like Fatima Zarah. She was so bubbly and so full of life.

"Al-mustapha is getting married, probably in a month or less." This was more addressed to her than Jannah, because she needed someone to tell her this so she will come to the fact that he was truly getting married, again. While his first marriage wasn't even working out. Okay, maybe before the last few hours, yeah. Now that she had seen how beautiful the soft and amazing side of Al-mustapha was, she wanted him all to herself even though she knew it was a game. The dangerous kind of game.

Jannah had her hands over her chest and her eyes bulged out like a saucers. "He's getting married? To who?! Oh my god!" She exclaimed, extremely shocked. The way she sounded shocked made Fatima Zarah laughed, and it was such a beautiful feeling having something to laugh at while everything was trying to weigh her down.

"Do you know Rahma? The royal gem, the one I've told you abaout? Yes, she's the one he's getting married to, Jannah." Fatima Zarah didn't like the horrified look on Jannah's face, it made her think of horible scenarios that only made everything much worse than it was, for her.

"Do you love him? I bet your heart is hurting so much, right?" Why did Jannah choose this questions of all questions in the world? It was straightforward, because she knew the answer to it even if she was to be woken up in the middle of the night. But then she didn't know the answer the second question. It was simple yet the most complicated question she had ever heard.

She shook her head sideways then nodded her head. She slightly screamed out of frustration and palmed her face, "Urgh! This is the hardest question thrown at me, Jannah. That's why I don't want to talk to Ammi first before talking to someone, because I need to figure out why I'm feeling the things I'm feeling first." She was in so much confusion that she had to stare at Jannah for a few minutes, unable to take her eyes off as if she was getting the answers off from her eyes.

Jannah chuckled, "May be you don't know you do. Or there's something about him that you don't want to share that's why you're jealous of her? Or should I say you're jealous over him, yeah, that's more like it."

Fatima Zarah nudged Jannah at her shoulders before she heaved a sigh. "I don't love him, I definitely don't. But yes, there are things I don't want to share, Jannah. A lot of things about him. Like when he smiles, he usually don't smile but wallahi when he does it fades away everything that is glum around. It makes him look dazzling and he doesn't even know his smile is that perfect. His eyes, I love-no, I like the mahogany colour of his eyes. It's just the perfect shade I've ever seen on anyone. Sometimes when he looked at me for a long time he unnerves my soul and my heart begins to melt as if he eyes were fire and my heart; a butter. Slowly melting. I like it when he stands by my side or in front of me, the way his height hovers over mine is just the cutest and most beautiful thing I've ever seen. But most importantly, this-I can admit I love it, because I truly do. I love his beard, I love it to the point that I can't even have the right words to tell you how I feel about his beard. I just love it. And I can't bear it to share all that with her, his morning voice; no, his voice in general. His laugh, even when he fights, it's just something to look at. Especially times he thinks he's angry or he's supposed to act like he's angry while he clearly isn't, ouch! It's the cutest thing to watch."

Since she started talking, Jannah had been intensively looking at her face as if she was saying something that would change her life forever, and when she was done, there was a smile playing on Jannah's lips even though a frown had already adorned Fatima Zarah's face. Thinking of the possibilities that in a mean time, Rahma will share all this with her and they might become her favorite too, just imagine!

"All I heard here is 'I love him' carefully stacked and hidden in each word you've uttered, Fatima Zarah." Her words stroked at Fatima Zarah's heard and she kept shaking her head sideways as if to avoid her own ears from hearing what Jannah ahd just said. There was no way she was going to love him. She might admit they were playing this dangerous game they both had themselves indulged in, but there was no way she would fall for this. Definitely not her, Fatima Zarah Tambuwal.

"Your words are too heavy, Jannah! I don't love him, and you know that."

Jannah chuckled before she nodded her head, "Okay, how about this, you love Al-mustapha Muhammad Maccido, but not the physical him? Just the name and the beholder of it, but if he's to stand before you right now, he isn't the person you love, You love the inner him, his soul, his heart, just not the physical him."

Fatima Zarah abbruptly stood up, shaking her head violently. "Go, I need to take my bath and think this through. But one thing is solid, I don't love Al-mustapha Muhammad Maccido, with all that he is and more." She thumped her feet on the floor and walked over to the bathroom without sparing Jannah another look. Now that she heard these words coming out of Jannah's lips, she knew for Ammi; it would be worst.

She striped off her clothes and began taking a hot shower, just standing there in the jacuzzi without doing anything. She wanted to refresh her mind from all that chaos, she knew she didn't love him and Jannah was delibrately putting those words into her heart because she wanted her to. She had once mentioned that she would do whatever she can to make them live like a normal couple, that girl is crazy.

"Just admit it, Ya Fatima Zarah! And we'll talk about the Royal gem later!" Jannah yelled from the room and Fatima Zarah despite having her heart thumping widely, she heard the sound the door made when she went out of the room and closed it behind. No, you don't. You can't love him, Fatima Zarah. She nodded her head and brushed the thought off her mind.

❀

The living room was eerily silence, and it was the same with the dining area. Even though she could take a proper glimpse of the tv from where she sat, it was bored to her eyes. She had never realized having dinner alone was this boring except today. Like she had been doing this alone for the past one month, sometimes she even had her dinner in her room while chatting on her phone, watching, talking with Jannah or something. Even on days she had it alone, it was never this boring and empty. All thanks to the thoughts trying to rip off her heart by force.

She brushed them all off and began nibbling on her food, she wanted ice cream. All these ice creams in her fridge weren't appealing her eyes, she wanted something fresh and new. She was eating silently while thinking of the best way to quench her cravings, because she was too exhausted to drive herself to any ice cream parlor now. What would she do now?

Then came a soft kiss planted on her care neck and she didn't know when she inhaled a sharp breath. She had never imagined to be kissed on her neck, never in her whole life. And just like the women acted in books she had read and movies she had watched, hers was even more than that. She turned slowly to look at him and he had that devilish smile she had just spoke to Jannah about. She smiled back, a bit shaky though.

He was about to sit down when she stood up, "Are you hungry please? As in that hungry?" she asked, and he followed her with a gaze that painted his confusion perfectly.

"What do you mean?" He asked, and she knew he didn't mean it in a sarcastic way, he truly didn't understand.

She moved closer to him and stared into his eyes, "I mean it, Al-mustapha. Are you hungry that you need to eat this dinner or we can just leave without you eating? We can have some desserts when we're back."

"Leave where?"

"I need an ice cream, and it's urgent if I don't take it something bad might happen to you. You'll take me there, right?" She stared at his expression and he reluctantly nodded his head at her.

"Get your veil, let's leave. But what's the worse that might happen if you don't have it?" He innocently asked.

"If I was pregnant, I might lose the baby. But for me..."

He cut her off, "Since you're not pregnant, I'll just kiss you and it would suffice, right?"

He did kiss her, a soft short kiss that felt like a touch of a feather on her lips. She stilled and that was when she realized how close she had moved to him and backed off. "I don't need to get my veil, let's leave." She said and walked off.

She was wearing a bou-bou gown and her head was wrapped in a veil. She just unwrapped it from her head, revealing her hair and began wrapping it all over her face.

"Wait! Don't!" She stopped right in track and flashed him a confused look, what happened? Had he changed his mind about taking her to the ice cream parlor or what?

She waited until he came over to where she stood and his height hovered over hers just like she told Jannah, and by Allah she liked it maybe much more than she had told Jannah. "What happened?" She asked, and Al-mustapha smiled, shook his head before he took her hand off the veil; revealing her hair.

"I just wat to see your hair, I've never seen it. And it has never occured to me that I've never seen it but today," he said, while admiringly looking at the edges of her hair beautifully laid on her forehead. So black and shiny and he felt an urge to see the length of her hair in full. "Can I?" he asked, while his hand was already at the back, having a hold of her ribbon.

Fatima Zarah was tongue tied, she kept staring at his face while he admired her hair, and when that question came, she had to nod her head without even knowing when she did that. She felt as he slipped her hair off the ribbon and a gasp escaped his lips. She didn't want to miss an expression of his, that was why she fixed her eyes intently on his face and he had his eyes fixed on her hair. She wanted to make sure it was him, he wasn't changed.

"It's long, and it's beautiful." He whispered, barely audible but audible nonetheless. He wavered his fingers into her hair and strokes it while feeling its slippery texture on his hand. "How do you take care of it? And it smells..." he brought forward a chunk of it to his nose and sniffled, inhaled a deep breath before he muttered in a whisper-like voice, "Heavenly. It smells heavenly, Fatima Zarah."

She didn't like the feeling his hands were making on her, his whispering voice, his height hovering over hers, his mahogany eyes, and she thought of the best way to end this moment. As much as she liked-no, she loved this moment, she had to end it unless she wanted to begin walking on the path of failure. To lose wholly in this game. Their dangerous game.

"Women have hair that smell heavenly, and I'm not one in your eyes. Should we leave? I might have a baby in here that wouldn't love to be miscarried." She was so fast at talking, taking her veil from his hand and she realized if she tried retriving her ribbon back it would take them long, so she took his hand in hers and guided them both to the parking lot, in an absolute silence.

They sat down in silence and Al-mustapha drove out of the house. She briskly glanced at him and he had put on her ribbon on his left hand as though it was a bangle. First, they parked in front of an ice cream parlor and he looked at her. "I've never had an ice cream before, but Faruk always makes me stop here when we're running an errand together. Should we go in together?" What she realized was, Faruk was someone he had close to a friend in his life. And it was such a sad thing, even though she didn't have much friends herself, but atleast she knew how it felt.

"Let's leave together then, but I have to get my ribbon back." She motioned for her ribbon on his wrist and he looked at it before he pulled it out.

"Turn, I'll put it on you." She was hesitant at first before she turned around and he slipped her veil off, making it rest on her shoulder. If he kept doing things like this to her, she didn't know what would happen. And if she was brave enough to bring an end to last time, she was sure some time she wouldn't even have that strength.

He packed her hair into a messy bun and put her veil back on her head before they both walked out of the car. This was the first time they had ever gone out at night, together. And the ambiance tha sorrounded Bauchi was beautiful, truly magnificent. The wind was a bit chilly to compensate for the sunny day. She smiled at him faintly and they walked in silence, side by side to the building.

She turned to look at him before they entered, her vibes coming at the sight of different ice cream flavors. "I've choose the best flavors for you, and I'm sure they'll become your favorite."

"On a scale of 10, how sure are you?" He played along, with a smile on his lips and his eyes fixed on hers, so he could clearly know her expression before replying.

"I think it should be 9. Come on, you can't even doubt the ice cream queen, can you?"

"The only flavor I'd love is this." He pointed at her lips and today her blush instantly painted her cheeks.

"Wait!" he chuckled, pointing at her cheeks. "I've noticed you hiding this numerously, what is it? Atleast for today it's prominent for me to ask about it."

She knew he didn't know, and her telling him the truth will expand his mindset on things. "It's called a blush." She tried to sober up from the sentiment and his eyes were just distracting. "Stop giving me that look, Al-mustapha!"

"What?" he laughed, "I'm just trying to understand more."

"Your eyes are distracting." She protested.

"But I want to stare at your lips while you speak. I love the way your lips curve and roll words out." And another blush crept out, even more clear than the first.

She hid her face in between her palms and Al-mustapha laughed before he hugged her, "I think I get its meaning and when it actually creeps out, because it seems to always steal its way out. Don't bother about explaining it anymore." She rested her head on his chest and could clearly hear the way his heart beat as he laughed. On the list of her favorite things in him; his heart beat should be the first. She loved it, there was no other way to say it. She just loved the way it beat.