I'm sure you've heard a lot about unrequited love, but what if I say there exists an unwilling love, hidden somewhere between the echoes of silence and the whispers of the heart's secrets? A love that fights to stay buried, yet yearns to be discover...
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๑ 🥀 ๑
Adnan was nowhere to be found. Two hours had passed, maybe more. The walls felt tighter with every second. Shazal leaned against them, eyes tracing the faint light sneaking in through a rusted exhaustion vent high above near the ceiling.
Dawn was drawing near.
He bent slowly, pain tugging at his side, and reached for his shoe. A quiet click, and a narrow black case slid out from beneath the sole—cheap, worn, but enough. Inside it, a basic button phone.
He straightened, limping toward the far corner of the room. It was the only spot shielded from the door's line of sight.
There, hidden in the shadows, he sank to the floor and powered on the device. It blinked to life with a low whirr. His fingers moved quickly through the menu, scrolling to contacts.
He hovered over his father's number. His thumb paused. Then he moved past it.
He dialed Yusra.
The line rang longer than expected. Of course she wouldn't know the number. She'd be hesitant, wondering whether to answer. He stared at the old phone, every second stretching like thread pulled too tight.
Then—
A soft click.
He held his breath.
And then her voice. Low. Steady. Familiar.
"Would it boost your ego," she whispered, "if I said I recognised you by the way you breathe?"
His eyes fluttered shut.
Relief poured over him like cool water on burning skin. For a moment, he forgot the ache in his head, the weight of the silence, the fear.
He exhaled—finally.
And just breathed.
"God, yes. Yes, it would," he said, a tired smile playing at his lips. "Although I thought I was holding my breath."
There was a pause. A long, stretched quiet. But not empty. He needed her voice—needed it like oxygen. His body broken, his heart bleeding, every inch of him searching for the sound of her.
"Yusra," he whispered, soft as a prayer.
"Shazal..." she breathed, and the way she said his name—it cracked something open in him. "Shazal," she said again, voice shaking now, and he closed his eyes, jaw clenched, throat tight.
"Stop taking my name," he murmured, hands placed near his burning ears. "I'm not your strongest soldier, Yusra."
His voice broke halfway through.
"I never was."
And yes—his heart did skip a beat.
This was new. Very new. A part of himself he hadn't yet met. He didn't know what Yusra would make of it, didn't even know what he made of it. But there it was, bare and beating in his chest.
