When Hate & Love Collide- Part 2 (You and Me #13)

Qubooliyat—when the soul says yes.

Arsalan
They say love unfolds through seven – the spark of attraction,Uns – the thread of attachment,Ishq – the fire of love,Akidat – the reverence of trust,Ibadat – the devotion of worship,Junoon – the frenzy of madness,And finally…Maut – the surrender of death.But what do you call the feeling that exists before even the first stage of love?
A feeling that isn’t attraction, nor attachment— Not even a memory. Just an unnamed, indecipherable pull that exists before you even understand its purpose.
Sometimes, the soul whispers what the heart isn’t ready to “Something is coming for you.”
I walked away— Not just from the altar, but from her… From everything we could have been. I shut the book on our story before it ever had a chance to begin.
I. Ruined. Us.
I had her.
I lost her.
And every choice I made after that only made it worse.
I broke her.
I broke myself.
And then—
I had the audacity to fall in love with her… too late.

Complicated, isn’t it?
Now that I finally see her—truly see her, she’s ready to walk away.

I married her to punish — To hate!!
But life has a cruel sense of irony because what I buried… came back blooming. And with it, a truth that shattered everything I thought I knew.
Turns out, my story had an epilogue too— One that ended in a life-altering discovery.
“I married her to ruin her.
I stayed to ruin myself.”

Minha
They say love has seven stages but what about heartbreak?
Does it have stages, too?
Because I think I’ve lived them all.

First came the attraction.
That undeniable pull—dangerous, beautiful, foolish.

Second, the dream.
The soft maybes, the what-ifs I never dared say aloud.

Third, hope.
Fragile but lingering. The kind that clings even when it shouldn’t.

Fourth, ruin.
Sudden. Shattering. And entirely silent.

Fifth, the ache.
Slow. Constant. The kind that makes forgetting impossible.

Sixth, anger.
Not just at him—but at myself, for letting him matter that much.
And seventh… acceptance.
Not of what we were,
But of what we’ll never be.
Or so I thought.

And now—after I’ve stitched my heart back together in silence, thread by trembling thread—he wants to rewrite us. As if the pages he once tore can simply be rearranged. As if ink doesn’t stain, and my scars are nothing more than rough drafts waiting for his edits.

But I’m not the girl he left behind.
I’ve learned that healing demands sacrifice—and the cost of my peace is him.
This isn’t a fairy tale. This is heartbreak carved into memory, stitched into skin. This is what remains after the silence settles and the damage is done.