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]
•...
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
• the first 1/3 of this chapter is heavily narrative and not dialogue (but please DONT skim-read because its important and portrays their shifting mentality) •
【 40.
Forty
Iqraar 】
▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄
[ Iqraar • confession/acceptance ]
▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄
ROSALINE’S HAND IS on the door handle, her fingers clutching the brass in a death grip, her palm shaking with both anger and disappointment, the tremors in her arm making the doorknob rattle too.
And then something happens inside her. Something she can only classify as instinct. As a gut feeling. She knows because the last time she felt something similar, it was in the interrogation room.
Clenching her jaws, she ignores the feeling. And then twists the handle of the door, readier than ever to swing it open and run out of there.
But the feeling comes back, stronger than ever.
She can’t describe it—but it’s a tightness in the middle of her chest. Not a rock, but a mountain. It’s the exact opposite of her insides being torn and pulled apart in opposite directions; this feels more like both sides of her chest are being pushed towards the centre, crushing into each other and crowding that part of her with a heaviness that she swears she can touch. A weight that takes her to the edge of throwing up—but not quite there.
It’s a terrifying sensation. Frightening enough to make her turn around with a hand still on the door handle, and spare Zach one last glance.
She bites her tongue, not trusting herself to speak the words sitting at the very tip of it; won’t you come after me?
He probably reads the unspoken words off her body—like he always does—but his stance remains adamant, his jaw tight and his fists clenched painfully stiff at his sides.
And then she realises… that Zach has always, always come after her.
Whether it was from the breakfast table to the elevators that morning at the hotel in Springfield, or following her out into the freezing snow when she declined the champagne momentarily forgetting she was no longer pregnant, or boarding a plane from his home to hers and flying across state borders after the interrogation.
Rosaline has always run, and Zach has always followed. Without hesitation. With no regards for the consequences.
She remembers sitting on a hospital bed once, angry at the world and everything around her. Remembers seeing Zach for the first time. “I wish you’d have just got on the damn plane,” she told him after he saved her life. “I wish it’d been you instead of my baby.”
