Love Novel 123

The next day, I’m tidying up my room after a shower and before dinner. I grab a sweater I have on my bedside table and
in the process, my phone falls on the floor.
It flashes on and the numbers from the corner of the screen stare back at me.
My heart goes into overdrive.
They’re small, unassuming, but they define my entire life at this point.
February 14th.
I’ve been avoiding my phone all day for this exact reason. I didn’t want to be reminded. And now I’m here, in the
suffocating quiet, trying not to drown in it.
Burning rubber and gasoline.
The crunch of metal folding in on itself.
Flashing lights. Red, white, blue, like a strobe in the middle of the nightmare.
The images and memories bombard me, and I struggle to breathe.
I wrap myself tighter in the blanket I stole off the bed, dragging it with me like a shield as I step onto the balcony of my
room. The cold air bites at my face, but I welcome it. It’s sharp, cold… completely opposite to that day as I watched the
first responders check my family for signs of life.
I was hot that day, burning from the inside out.
The panic was too much.
I sit on the chair, knees pulled up to my chest, staring out into nothing. It’s so dark and without lights coming from a
large city, I can see the stars and the moon perfectly. It’s beautiful.
The tears come quietly at first, slipping down my cheeks without much fuss. But it’s the guilt that gets me. The tight,
gnawing weight in my chest that never really leaves, just burrows deeper on days like this.
I press my face into the blanket, trying to silence the sound that escapes me. It’s pathetic. I’m pathetic.
I don’t hear the door open at first. It’s the soft creak of the floorboards that makes me lift my head, wiping at my face
quickly, hoping I don’t look as wrecked as I feel.
“Alina?” Zaid’s voice is low, careful.
Relief floods me as soon as I see him. My body exhales without permission. Anyone else I might have faked a smile for.
Lied. But Zaid? I don’t have the energy. And something about him makes me think I don’t need to.
His eyes soften when he steps out onto the balcony, barefoot despite the cold.
He knows. It feels like he always knows what I’m feeling just by looking at me.
I don’t say anything; I don’t trust my voice yet.
Without a word, he crouches down and scoops me up, blanket and all. He settles into the chair with me curled in his lap,
his arms solid and warm as they fold around me.
I bury my face in his chest, letting myself melt into him, breathing in the faint scent of his cologne. It smells like
something safe.
“You wanna talk about it?” he asks after a moment, his fingers moving slowly against my back.
I shake my head. He nods and just holds me.
We sit like that for an hour and then I hear him breathe, as if wanting to say something. I feel his body tense under me.
Not in a way that makes me pull away, but enough that I notice. Enough that I lift my head, peering up at him.
“What’s wrong?” I ask, wiping at my face.
His jaw tightens as his gaze searches mine. He swallows hard.
“I don’t know if it’s my place to have this conversation with you,” he says finally.
I frown. “What do you mean?”
He shifts, sitting up straighter, bringing me with him. His hand curls around my thigh. His eyes meet mine, and I swear I
stop breathing.
I blink. His eyes, god, his eyes. They’re always intense, always burning with something intense, but now? It’s different.
He’s looking at me like I’m the only thing that’s ever mattered. Like I’m the only thing that will ever matter. Like if I
stopped breathing, he’d stop too. That if I disappeared, he’d burn the whole world down just to find me again. It’s not
just want, or lust…it’s need.
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It’s devotion.
It’s this raw, almost feral kind of love that feels like it could crush me if I let it.
And for a second, I don’t breathe. My chest is tight, and I can’t tell if it’s fear or something else twisting inside me.
Because I know Aiden cares about me.
I know Jake does, too.
But Zaid?
Zaid looks at me like he’d already chosen me a long time ago, and now he’s just waiting for me to catch up. And it’s not
subtle.
It’s consuming.
I feel something crack open inside of me when I realize it. Something dangerous. Because when I look at him, I feel it too.
And then my mind panics. Because what about Aiden? What about Jake? I love them, too.
Don’t I? Do they make me feel like this? Do they look at me like this?
I try to sort it out, but my brain shuts down, my heart stuttering as I press the thoughts away. I don’t want to compare. I
don’t want to weigh one against the other.
Zaid tilts his head, his fingers gripping my chin so that I look at him. “Alina?”
His touch burns me, and I struggle to speak. “Yes?”
He frowns, shaking his head. “Maybe we can talk about it another day.”
No. No. He can’t leave me alone with my thoughts. “It’s okay.”
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He blows out a steady stream of air. “I need to ask you something,” he says quietly. “But I don’t know if it will upset you.”
“Okay,” I whisper, my throat tight.
He draws in a breath. “Do you feel like… being with us is just a bandaid for the pain you feel after losing your family?”
My first instinct rises fast. Deflect, be on the defensive, bark at him. But I catch it. I catch it because he’s not accusing me.
He’s worried. For me. For himself. For all of us.
I force myself to exhale slowly. “What do you mean?”
He studies me for a second longer, like he’s trying to figure out if he should even say it. Then, quietly, “We’re all so into
you. Fuck, I mean, I’m so into you. And I know myself. I know I’m not easy, that I can be a bit intense-”
He catches when I lift an eyebrow and he snorts.
“Fine, really intense. We all are. Each of us on our own is a lot. Together? I feel like it can be overwhelming. And I wonder
sometimes if dating the three of us at once is… too much. If you like it because it keeps your mind busy. Keeps you from
having to deal with the stuff you should be working through.”
I sit with that. It hurts, yeah. But he’s not wrong. It’s not like I haven’t thought about it before.
I don’t say anything at first. Instead, I lay my head back on his chest and listen to his heartbeat.
After a minute, I murmur, “I won’t lie and say you guys don’t help me forget sometimes. You do. You make it easier to
breathe. But it’s not, it’s not just that. I like being with you. All of you. I like how I feel when I’m around you. I like who I
am when I’m with you.”
His arms tighten around me. “I just… You mean a lot to me. It would suck to come out this realizing that I cared more for
you than you did for me, or that you never cared at all.”
I lift my head again, meeting his gaze. “Do I make you feel like I’m using you?”
He shakes his head, no hesitation. “No. You don’t. But I think about it. We’ve all been through our own shit, and I guess I
just want to make sure that what we’re doing is good for you. That if it falls apart, you’ll be okay.”
I nod slowly, trying to hide the way my heart flinches in my chest. If it falls apart? He looks at me, waiting for an answer.
“I’m here because I want to be, Zaid. Because I want this. With you. With Aiden. With Jake. I don’t want it to fall apart.”
His throat works as he swallows again, but he nods. “Okay.”
I lay back against him, letting the silence settle around us again