Excitement was a feeling Haya had long forgotten, but today felt different.
Today she had no family parties and no police reports to file, she only had one plan: to spend the day with Zayan.

She dressed herself in the clothes she loved and loosely braided her hair, applying eyeliner and mascara, the only two things she could apply to her face right now.

As the car honked she practically sprinted down the stairs. Even her parents were pleasantly surprised at their daughter's attitude today.

"Hello!" She hopped in the car and he laughed

"You didn't even give me the chance to come in and talk to your parents." He complained but then laughed
"But it's worth it." He added and she grinned.
Tried to at least, her face still felt sore because of the stitches.

"So where are we going?" She asked.

"Nowhere crowded." He answered and she smiled.

She desperately wanted to get over her fear of going to crowded places, because this was the face she was going to have now for the rest of her life so she had to learn to own it.
But she wasn't ready to face that fear just yet. Baby steps.

He started driving and played some music. She beamed with joy as he played the three year old 'Coldplay' CD.

Finally, they stopped in front of a cinema which, obviously, was crowded.
She looked at him with fear.

"Don't worry, cupcake. You won't have to face people for that long." He tried to comfort her but it didn't help.

She shakily got out of the car and walked inside with her head down low. She got too much stares to handle and she clung onto his arm for support.

Maybe the stares weren't too many, but to her it felt like all the people were burning holes into her skin with their mere gazes. She felt like the center of attention of every person walking by. She tried to shut off her scary thoughts but all that did was trigger the thoughts further.

"Hang in there, cupcake. You need to be confident. I think you're beautiful." He said but she scoffed.

Still not convinced, her thoughts kept running.
Fortunately, her thoughts were interrupted by his voice.

"Excuse me sir, I need to see your tickets please." The man stopped them.

"Uhh well..."Zayan leaned forward and whispered something in the man's ear.
He gave him a curt nod and let us inside.

"I don't wanna see a movie." She insisted

"We're not going to." He replied.

Instead of walking to the hall, they climbed up to where the roof was.

"Why are we going to the roof?" She asked between breaths.

Her question was quickly answered as they reached the roof.
It wasn't a very large roof, at least the part in sight wasn't very large.

The city stretched out in front of them, shining as if a reflection of the starry sky. The blinking city lights fell short in front of the fairy lights that the entire roof was decorated with. In the middle was a round table with two chairs. On the other side was a rectangular table with food on it.
A speaker played music which was too low to make sense of but sounded melodious.
Everything seemed too much like a fantasy, as if it were a page torn out from the most cheesy yet beautiful of fairytales.

"The owner is a friend. Besides, the city looks gorgeous from here." He whispered as she admired the scene in front of her.

"Zayan...this..this is beautiful." She sighed.
It really was.
He grinned.

"You hungry?" He asked
"Very." She replied.

They put some food on their plates before sitting down.
"Lately everything has been about me. So please, tell me something about you and your family? What's new in Zayan land?" She asked and he laughed.

"Nope. Zayan land is boring as usual. My sister is still in England, it's her last year of university. And you met my parents a few weeks ago so you know how they are." He said

"Yeah. I actually talked to your sister a week ago, she called me." She said and continued "How's your job?"

"I actually took a few weeks off for you." He said

"I noticed. Thank you. For everything." She replied

They ate their dinner while talking about his life.
Before she could attack the dessert, he proposed that they remove the table and instead sit back to watch the stars on more comfortable chairs.

She agreed and so they sat down, staring at the sky, with red velvet cupcakes in hand.

"I tried to stop my marital rape." She said all of a sudden, which really threw him off as he sat upright in his chair.
She herself didn't know why she suddenly wanted to tell him everything, but she did so she was going with her gut.

"What!?" He exclaimed

"I'm sure you're familiar with the term. It first happened a few months into our marriage. I said no but Mohsin continued anyway. It was uncomfortable but I still tried to dismiss it as nothing, thinking it was just a one time thing. I was wrong, of course." She paused, only to find him with a look of shock on his face.

"Umm...do you need more cupcakes? Some water?" He asked but she laughed bitterly and shook her head.
"Continue, please. If you want." He added

"It began happening more and more in the following months. There were less times that I actually agreed to do something and more times when he did it with me reluctant. Eventually I lost interest in any kind of intimacy because what was even the point if it was going to happen whether I wanted or not. I refused to accept it as rape for very very long, thinking he was my husband and this was okay." She paused yet again, feeling pathetic and filthy.
It felt as if someone had thrown her into mud and she couldn't clean herself with any kind of water.
Only then did she notice the tears that covered her cheeks.
Zayan gently wiped them off, holding her hand in his.

"It took me a whole year before I finally came to terms with the fact that this was rape. The next year all I did was protest but he did it anyway. It was stripping me of my confidence, of who I was. I hated him with all I had. He was so mad about why I wasn't pregnant, but he didn't know I was on the pill. I couldn't have a child I didn't want, a child that resulted from marital rape, you know?" She didn't expect him to understand, she didn't understand half of it herself.
Surprisingly, no part of her felt sad, she only felt angry and incredibly stupid, she didn't know why, but she did.

"Yes, yes I understand, cupcake. I'm so sorry you had to go through all this." He replied, rubbing circles inside her palm.

"That day...he found my pill and that's what we fought about. We were obviously in a very bad place and he just went inside and brought out this bottle and just..just threw it at me." She felt her breathe choke. It felt like she was back in that room, like she was feeling the same helplessness, the same pain, the same anger.
She clutched his hand as tightly as she could, trying to take deep breathes.
"I knew we weren't in love, that we even hated each other. But I never thought he would do this, that he hated me this much. For a long while I thought that maybe this was my fault, all our fights. The moment he did this, however, I knew I wasn't the wrong one. I wasn't a picture perfect wife but I didn't deserve this either. I just didn't. And well you know the rest." She finished the tale, which to her felt like was an hour long.

Even though at first she felt annoyed at herself for ruining a peaceful moment with the depressing story, that emotion fell flat the minute she finished the story for it felt like someone had lifted a weight of a thousand kilos off her shoulder.

She expected herself to bawl like a baby but instead her tears remained controlled. She had lived it all so closely, and relived it in her thoughts even more closely, that now it just felt like a bad dream.
It didn't scare her anymore and it is only when you stop being scared of something, that you're truly liberated.

For a few moments, he just stayed quiet before he literally jumped forward and hugged her.

He hugged her so tightly, she felt herself falling short of breathe but she hugged him back, nestling herself inside his warm embrace.

"You're a hero, Haya Siddiqui. I'm so sorry you had to go through this alone or if you felt like you couldn't talk to me about this." He said, hugging her tighter and resting his head on top of hers. She just sniffed in response, never wanting to let go of him.

His embrace felt comfortable, safe. It felt like...coming home.

"It's not your fault." She said
They remained like that for a long time before she interrupted the moment.

"Nope. No. We have to stop with this silly stuff. I need to feel good." She continued.

"You're right." He let go of her, wiping tears of his own.
"Let's dance." He pulled her up.

The previously melodious music was now upbeat as they began dancing.

She laughed through her tears, the same tears which soon began disappearing and were replaced with a happy gleam in her eyes. Making her go from being teary eyed to laughing with mirth was a thing only he had the power to do.

He held her hand, spinning her in circles before they collided and instead of letting go, she put her arms around his neck and he put his arms around her waist.

"You know that day at the hospital, you were right. That wasn't you in the mirror, that was just a weak and tired girl but whatever she was, she wasn't ugly. You should know that I still thought you were beautiful, even at your worst." He said

"Oh come on, you're just saying that to make me feel better." She scoffed and looked away, avoiding his eyes.

He held her chin between his fingers and made her look at him.
"Am I?" He asked with certainty.
And she knew he wasn't.
His eyes, laced with truth, were enough to answer all her questions.

He stared at her with an unrecognizable expression for a few minutes, which made her blush. For once she was glad for the bandages, because he couldn't see her cheeks turn crimson

She carefully looked at him, as if absorbing him as he was in this very moment.
From his black mysterious eyes, to his neatly combed hair. From his mouth that kept twitching upwards as if he couldn't handle the happiness inside him, to the smell of his signature perfume.

It felt like a dream, he felt like a dream.
One of those that you don't want to wake up in the middle of.

She expected him to say something any minute now, instead he just put his forehead against her. They both closed their eyes, sighing in a sort of contentment.

They swayed to the rhythm with their eyes closed and although it should've felt weird, it felt completely normal. Like it was a feeling and a closeness they were used to.

"You knew, didn't you?" He asked like he was scared

"Knew what?" She inquired.

She had an inkling of a suspicion about what he was saying. But she had spent almost her whole life ignoring the signs, she wasn't just going to accept it because of a few emotional moments.

"That.." He gulped "that I was in love with you before you married him"

Zayan Sheikh wasn't a very courageous man, yet at this moment he ignored the butterflies in his stomach and tried to face what he knew was going to show up again: his feelings for Haya.

It took him 26 years, 10 months and 12 days to finally tell her how he felt and the feeling was so strong, it still made his knees buckle.

For a brief moment, she considered denying it.
Straight up lying to his face. However, she couldn't do it, not to him, not again.

She had ignored the signs when he had eaten all the cupcakes she had made with salt in them and praised them too.
She had ignored the signs when he had gone shopping with her instead of her female friends.
She had ignored the signs when the only person he was looking at, at their first boy-girl party was her. She had even ignored the signs when he had told her he didn't think Mohsin was the right man for her and she had refused to see beneath the surface of his weak words.

She couldn't deny it anymore, not when he was looking at her like this.

She sighed
"Yes, I knew. I knew all along"

It took her 26 years, 10 months and 13 days to finally acknowledge what she had known all along.

"Then why didn't you say something?" He asked, his voice dripping with hurt.

She knew why she hadn't said anything.
This wasn't something she was confused about.
Love had always scared her, it had a way of ruining things and her friendship with Zayan was too precious to ruin just because of a thing as doubtful as love.
She felt something for Zayan too, always had, but she wasn't sure it was love.
She had never even delved too deep into the feelings, scared of what she might discover.
Scared of discovering love, to be more precise.
When this weird, unidentified feeling had started getting stronger and her parents put forward a secure and sane proposal for an arranged marriage, she said yes without another thought.

What she felt with Mohsin was temporary attraction, which wore off the minute he didn't hear her say 'no'.

"I was scared. I didn't want to lose you." She answered truthfully.

He just remained silent in response, looking crestfallen and holding her even close. As if he was scared she would disappear the moment he let her go.

What she felt this morning and especially right at this moment, the butterflies in her stomach, it wasn't excitement.
It was something else. Something she had never ever experienced with anyone else other than Zayan.
Something dangerously close to love.
But she wouldn't acknowledge that, not yet.

"I'm sorry." She said.
Sorry for not being able to give him his answer even when she knew what he felt.
Sorry for leaving him hanging.
Sorry for still refusing to accept her feelings.

She stood on her tiptoes, holding his face and kissing his forehead, letting her lips linger there, savoring this moment with him.

Their precious little moment was soon interrupted by her phone ringing.

On the other end was a male voice, giving her the best news she had heard in a while
"We have arrested your culprit. Mohsin is now in police custody"