Road to Jannah

Chapter Twenty • Explosions

A/N : I'd like to announce that there are only five chapters remaining to finish this book and I feel obliged to warn my readers that those chapters (including this one), are not for the faint hearted.

You wasted all that sweetness to run and hide, I wonder why? I remind you of the days you poured your heart into, but you never tried. I've fallen from grace, took a blow to my face. I've loved and I've lost, I've loved and I've lost.

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~ J A N N A H ~

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The riskiest gamble I've ever played in my life brought me here, to Ahmad's arms and I didn't know whether I was winning but I was sure that this isn't what it felt like to be losing. Holding him, I just let everything I've been carrying around for the past week and a half, out. The bone crushing guilt, the regret, the confessions, everything and for it, I was expecting an outburst.

His anger or atleast something that would repay the brunt and cold shoulder I've been forced to give him but when he returned my declaration of affection in the same tender way of passion he always has, my love for him peaked to such a height that made me surrender my entire body and soul to him.

When he held me with just as much need and desperation I had held him, I thought that this was when that scene from every romantic novel and movie would come to reality. It was when we'll get to experience the heat of desire every hero and heroine had experienced. It was when we'd merge into one, Ahmad would make me his and I would surrender every single treasure I ever had and had preserved, willingly to him.

But Ahmad never did anything except keep me cradled in his arms; one tucked under my back and the other resting over me. His hands never wandered to go discover any unclaimed lands I'd easily let them conquer. They were completely still as his comforting embrace shielded me from the torture of all the events that occurred over the last eleven days. All they did was protect me and it was then that I knew though the stakes were high, I had undoubtedly emerged as the winner of this gamble.

That though I know what I had to pay for this stunt was my family's anger and broken trust in me, I was willing to pay that hefty price. I had run away  from the torture of all the events that had happened in this past week. Abba fixing mine and Faisal's wedding date on the 2nd of November, barely two weeks from now and all the extreme measures taken to convince me of Ahmad's shrewdness and miscreant ways.

Abba had prohibited me not only from contacting Ahmad, but from stepping a single foot out of the house till after the wedding and Faisal comes to whisk me away from my family, away from everything that makes me happy and to the hell of the life we were supposed to live together.

I have tired of trying to prove Zuzu wrong, of trying to make her see that she doesn't have any solid proof of blaming him. That three years ago, she had been drugged and though she did wake up to see Ahmad beside her, it doesn't make him her culprit. That she should have given him a chance to explain and all those years ago, she should have dug deeper into the matter instead of running away from it and jumping to conclusions, then maybe then, everything would have been sorted out.

Though we had shared the moment of grief with them, her parents had never allowed us the rest of the information. We had known that a misfortune had befallen Zuzu but know one knew more than that. Aunty Rakkiya and Uncle Bashir took it upon themselves to hide the particulars in a bid to erase the memory and lessen the chances of their daughter being stigmatised. I never knew a day would come that that that accusing finger will be pointed to Ahmad.