dead girls don't love [dgdl]

chapter 26 \o

ASHNA COULD CITE SEVERAL such examples which denounce love to shreds of broken pieces, degrading and undignifying companionship and a name for sexual relationships that mocked love, which may somewhere really exist as love only, not as broken promises, twisted lies, toxicity, or unmatched feelings.

Odd as it seems, Ashna has always spoken against it, denied and mocked people when they talked about feelings and emotions of love, she was a believer of love in reality.

She may have not known what love was, but Ashna always knew what love was not.

She despised and considered love a myth, it was based on numerous incidents of broken hearts in love, because of infidelity, lies, or mere change of hearts.

She believed that love existed somewhere and it was most chaste and beautiful, because of the way she had loved people in her life. She never knew she would ever find it for herself.

Not ever did she imagine falling for a man. However, this man, whose eyes look at her with love, whose tall, strong figure does not scare her, maybe intimidate her a little; he who she thinks was her own, safe and protected in his presence; this man, who she befriended in unexpected circumstantial conditions, had become someone for who her heart beats.

Ivan is sitting on the backseat of the scooty of Ashna as she is seated front, parked alongside the road in the darkness of early night, away from the golden street lights shimmering; all around is lit by the headlights of vehicles, busy roads, and rushed people.

They have only been together for ten minutes, five of which were involved in driving up here. Ivan has come around the bypass, near her house as they promised to meet.

Ashna was relieved with her exams done, though the Geography practical was left which was scheduled fifteen days later. They did not go far, even when they both would love to accompany each other on sultry roads on dark-lit nights; it was late in the evening.

"What?" Ivan asks as Ashna has been looking right at him for seconds now.

"Nothing," she smiles, her voice low. She extends her hand to caress his cheek, "I just–"
Ivan stiffens under her touch, eyes locking with hers.

'I love you, Ivan.' Ashna bites back the words.

She swallows, looking away for a second before looking back at him and smiles warmly up at him. Ivan smiles back, eyes questioning her gesture.

Her eyes pierce his, looking at him lovingly and perversely, lowering to stare at his lips. 

Ivan has to swallow, body heating up with the growing tension between them.

When Ashna swallows a gulp down her throat, feeling her lips dry, Ivan feels a passionate urge to hold her head in his hands and pull her closer to him, body to body not an inch away and kiss her by drawing her lips in his mouth.

He braces himself, holding her hand on his cheek in his hand, drawing it near to his lips.

Ashna's lips part in a small gasp, with a blush tinting her cheeks pink as he kisses her palm.

He holds her hand in his, sitting with her helmet on his other leg. Ashna looks at him as she turned on her seat to sit sideways. Close yet so far away. "Ashna," Ivan says.

It was so soft that the girl whose name he takes could not say a word or question anything. She hums, a mere whisper, her heart beating at a paced rate inside her chest. They look at each other. A soft smile, filled with love, graces Ivan's face. And it was meant for the girl sitting in front of her, with the same love in her heart for him.