___________________________________REHA`S POV___________________________________-
I saw him two months ago. Just a glimpse, in the reflection of a café window, in the quiet tension that followed me like perfume. A shadow. A presence. My stalker.
But I didn't flinch. I was used to it. My father has always kept an eye on me, men paid to protect me, to guard me like a secret the world couldn't touch. I thought he was one of them. Silent. Watchful. Commanded.
But I didn't know he wasn't here to protect me. He was here to steal me.
And the night he finally stepped out, gun raised, eyes cold — I didn't scream. I froze. Not from fear. From recognition. The kind you feel in your bones when fate stops pretending.
Yes, I was afraid. But fear was a useless luxury. "Should I run to Yash, to a life where love came with contracts and conditions? Or should I walk into the fire with this man whose eyes warned me he could burn me… but might be the only one who'd never lie about it?" I asked myself.
I chose the fire. Not because I trusted him. But because his danger felt more honest than Yash`s safety.
I didn't know what he would do next. But I knew one thing — when he looked at me, he wasn't just calculating. He was terrified. And not to be caught. Not of my father's wrath.
He was afraid of me. Of what I might see in him. Of what he might feel for me.
And that made him dangerous in a way the gun never could.
Honestly? When I asked him his name… I genuinely wanted to know.
Not just out of fear, not out of panic. I wanted to know who he was, this stranger who had watched me for weeks, who now sat beside me with a gun tucked somewhere close and silence even closer.
In the car…He didn't look at me. Or maybe he did. I don't know. All I knew was that my eyes couldn't leave him.
There was something about him, something impossibly still. He wasn't nervous. He wasn't reckless. He was… calculated.Cold. Like a man used to control and silence, like a man who had killed both noise and emotion a long time ago. And yet… something in him felt unsteady. Like he wasn't used to being seen.
I tried to read him, trace his expressions, find cracks in that flawless, frozen exterior. But I couldn't. And that terrified me more than the gun. I've studied psychology. I can usually see what's hiding behind people's eyes. But with him?
Nothing. A perfect void.
He was unreadable, not because he was empty, but because he had perfected the art of hiding. And still, I couldn't stop watching him.
"Why wasn't he looking at me? Was he avoiding me? Or was he too afraid that if he did look, he'd lose something he couldn't afford to?" I mumbled.
And he looked at me, "What`s with you, can`t you stay silent?" he said again in that cold voice and those eyes, it scared me.
I was falling into him, wordlessly.
He didn't speak much, only spoke to shut me up, and then dead silence again. Didn't glance. Didn't move. And yet… something in his stillness screamed louder than a bullet ever could.
Maybe he was afraid, too. Afraid of what I'd see if he met my eyes. Afraid that I might already see too much.
At night,
The room was dark, lit only by the blue flicker of the city bleeding through the window blinds. I lay still on the mattress, my back turned to him, pretending to sleep. But I wasn't. I couldn't.
How could I sleep when he was in the same room? When he was so close.
He sat on the edge of the chair across the room, elbows on his knees, head down — a silhouette carved from silence. The gun lay on the table beside him, like a pet he trusted more than people.
I shifted the slightest bit, just enough to see him through half-lidded eyes.
God.
Even like that, under fractured light, wearing yesterday's bruises and bloodstains, he looked like danger personified.
His shirt was loose, sleeves rolled up to the elbows. The veins along his forearms caught the light when he moved. His fingers tapped once, a nervous tick he'd probably never admit to. There was a scar just beneath his jawline. A thin line. Clean. Old. Someone once tried to hurt him there.
Someone failed.
His jaw clenched slightly, like he was grinding down thoughts he'd rather keep buried. And those eyes… they weren't soft. They weren't meant to be. But they searched the floor like they were chasing ghosts only he could see.
He looked like the aftermath of something tragic — and the warning of something worse.
And yet, I couldn't look away.
How does a man like that exist? So composed, so controlled… and yet so haunted?
I'd seen pretty faces. I'd even love one. But his wasn't the kind of face you loved. It was the kind you remembered, long after you should've forgotten. Masculine in the most ruthless way. Cheekbones sharp, jaw set like a blade, lips unsmiling — like the world had taken too much from him too soon, and he never bothered asking for it back.
He doesn't smile… because he doesn't believe he deserves to. He doesn't speak much… because too many words in his past have left scars.
And maybe, just maybe…That was why he couldn't look at me. Because something about me pulled at a thread he'd sewn too tightly. And if he ever let it unravel…
I wouldn't be the only one ruined.