It's a fact that you can't help who you fall in love with. And for Rosaline Davenport and him, it definitely shouldn't have been each other.
Because, sometimes, love stories have blood on them.
[warning: this is the mother of all slow-burns]
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REPOSTING because i added a small a/n at the very end of this chapter that i think some of you should read (:
a little confused as to why some of y'all were taken aback with Zachary not being the biological son. it was mentioned in his introduction in "Chapter 01: Shehzada"
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【 12.
Twelve
Muskuraahat 】
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[ Muskuraahat • smile ]
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THE CAR PULLS up at the entrance of the hotel, and Mehreen Hawthorne claps her hands together, the sharp sound snapping the thick silence amongst the trio standing out in the January white.
“Alright then,” she sighs loudly, before turning around to face Zachary and taking his hands in hers, looking at him with pleading eyes. “Take care of yourself. And, I don’t know if it may help, but maybe try visiting your labs here? A little work might give you some form of distraction—a productive one, at least.” Zachary knows it’s her way of telling him she’s afraid he might go down a destructive path instead. “Take care of yourself, Zach, please. Please. And if it ever gets too much, we’re just a four-hour plane ride away. Say the word, and we’ll be here. I promise.”
“Okay,” he murmurs, offering her a tiny but broken smile and lifts their enjoined hands to his lips, kissing the back of her palm. “Go safe.”
She gives his hands one last gentle squeeze and then turns away, walking across the driveway of the hotel entrance and climbing into the car that’s waiting.
Zachary stands still by his father’s side, suddenly very self-conscious and his shoulders grow tense. His eyes start burning holes right through the metal of the car in his line of sight.
He doesn’t know if he should say something, or if he should let his father initiate whatever it is. Maybe neither of them are going to say anything at all—but that twists Zachary’s chest into knots. He can’t afford to part on unhappy terms, not anymore. Goodbyes mean something else entirely these days.
Zachary never understood the gravity of a goodbye before—now he does. Now that he wishes he got to see Dahlia and bid her goodbye before boarding the plane that brought him here, to this city. Going separate ways at the end of the day where loved ones are concerned has never felt so final, so perishable. As if a simple goodnight can be the last for the rest of your life. As if a ‘see you in a while’ can also mean seeing the person in a body-bag or in a coffin.
