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...
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
๑ 🥀 ๑
Zumar closed the door of her bedroom gently, the faint click was barely audible in the stillness of the house.
Her father was resting, tucked in with fresh sheets and the soft hum of medical equipment lulling the room into calm.
She had checked everything twice, maybe more—his oxygen levels, the IV drip, the positioning of his pillows. Yet the guilt still sat heavy on her chest, refusing to lift, as if it had found a permanent home there.
The living room was hushed. Dimly lit, nearly hollow. Except —Lucy’s bowl was full. She bent down, brushing her hand over the cat’s soft head. The Ragamuffin purred in appreciation, rubbing against her leg. She was getting used to the new presence.
Amaan had been here. Recently.
Her eyes drifted further, and there he was—at the dining table, head resting on folded arms, body curved with exhaustion. Fast asleep, or nearly, she couldn't say.
The lines of tension that usually lived between his brows had smoothed, his chest was rising and falling in a rhythm that matched the quiet around them.
Peaceful.
It was strange. Foreign. Like stumbling into someone else’s memory of them.
She walked closer, careful not to startle the silence, and slid into the chair opposite him. Then her gaze softened.
He looked younger like this, lost in the kind of rest neither of them had allowed themselves for a long time.
Zumar leaned forward slightly, elbows on the table, fingers loosely interlaced.
And she simply watched him breathe.
While she looked at him, the chaos dulled. The heavy, blaring noise that always rang in her ears—the voices of doubt, the weight of expectations, the constant, crushing swirl of guilt and grief—it all fell into a hush.
She sighed. A deep, tired breath that escaped from somewhere far inside her.
“When you tell me things like that,” she whispered, tilting her head slightly, her eyes still fixed on his face, “like how my smile lights up your day… and how in my eyes, you find solace.Words like that…”
He didn’t move. He was probably asleep. Tired after the long journey, the hospital trip and attending to the medics who were setting up Zumar's room with all the necessary equipment for her father.
She looked down for a second, fingers tracing the edge of the table.
“I’ll admit it, Amaan. They’re comforting. So comforting that I hate them. I hate them because they comfort me. Because they reach too far inside and touch the parts I keep hidden, locked up in places I don't even go myself.”
