You call this fate?

Chapter 50

It took them fifteen minutes to come up.

The stillness of the room was daunting. I could feel an almost living pulse in the air—or perhaps it was just my heart beating out of my chest. I positioned myself such that a long couch came between me and Zayn. This, after several adjustments and minute twists of the torso, left me sitting on an overturned laundry basket in the shadows of the door. Yet in the corner of my vision a couple of black-clad legs stuck out from behind the sofa, seeming to grow bigger by the second.

The gun wouldn’t leave my hands, my fingers refusing to uncurl from where they wrapped around the grip in pale digits. My index finger still dusted the trigger, as if anticipating the next time I would have to pull it.

I waited.

I did not hear their arrival, in either the sound of their voices or the patter of their running feet. Sound was starting to filter through my ears, assuring me that said ears—more importantly, the left—still functioned, yet the words did not seem to hold any meaning. It was too soon for that.

When the door burst open and Alex rushed in, he did not see me at first. The door opened directly to where Zayn lay before the dressing table—the first thing my fiancé saw when he opened the door to my room on our wedding day was the body of the man I had murdered. He didn’t look at it for long.

His head twisted this way and that, eyes worried and lips thin. His movements were almost jerky, as if he couldn’t concern himself with grace anymore. I could see my name on his lips. Tasha and Christopher spilled inside behind him, like the faithful cavalry. I hoped the girls were safe with Granny.

He found me soon enough, sitting on my basket in the corner, in my torn and bloody wedding finery with a gun clasped in my hands. My eyes were only for him. I couldn’t read the expression on his face.

He raised a hand, calming, as if approaching a wild animal. I watched with interest as he stepped closer and sank to the floor. His hand, light as a feather, touched my frozen fingers. “Zara,” he said, and this time I heard him, albeit through a loud whine that left me thinking of static on a radio. “Zara, give me the gun, love. Everything is alright now. You’re bleeding. Let me take care of this.”

I looked down to where his fingers gently probed mine, trying to make them loosen. He pulled them apart and my death-grip broke. My limp hands fell in my lap as he collected the weapon and flicked it across the floor in one smooth motion. I watched it slide under a table.

“Zara,” he said again. His looked pale, scared. There was a slight tremor in his hands. His nostrils flared. “Zara, you are okay now. I am so sorry, Zara.”  

My brow furrowed. He placed a hand on my shoulder, fingers brushing my neck. His touch was faint, as if he was afraid I would turn away. But I was having none of that.

I slid off the basket and threw my arms around him, burying my face in his suit jacket. He froze for a moment, then pulled me to him with such strength I felt it in my bones. He settled on the floor and drew me onto his lap, settling his face in the crook of my neck—on the safe side. His shoulders shook and chest heaved, breath coming in ragged gasps.

“Oh, Zara…” he said, fingers moulding to my back in a grip that would have hurt in any situation but this. The pain in my neck was finally starting to register.

I pulled a hand free to caress his hair. “It’s okay,” I said. My voice sounded thin and plaintive in my ears. “Everything is fine.”

I cannot say for how long we sat there, wrapped in such an embrace. Time did not mean much in our little bubble, only the touch of the other, only knowing that we existed and were alright. Nothing else mattered.