The Girl who read His Scars

HAZEERA

My hair was having a "moody" day. That's the only way to describe it. On Tuesday, it decided to be perfectly straight, mirroring my need for professional order. On Thursday, it frizzed up like a wild, rebellious nest of curls. And today, as I stared at myself in the mirror of my tiny, sun-drenched Chicago apartment, it was stuck in a slightly wavy, chaotic middle ground neither here nor there, much like the state of my own heart.

"Fine," I muttered to my reflection, taking a massive, desperate sip of ice-cold, homemade lemonade.

The citrus tartness hit my throat, grounding me. "We'll just call it a Taylor Swift Folklore aesthetic and move on."

I grabbed my phone, opening Instagram to check the reel I had posted an hour ago. It was a twenty-second rant about how the noodle-to-seasoning packet ratio in instant noodles had drastically decreased over the last year. It was trivial, it was dramatic, and it was perfectly me. Honestly, the comments were already flooded with fellow noodle-enthusiasts validating my struggle.

I loved my little online corner of dramatic, innocent rants; it kept me grounded in a world that often felt too big and too fast.

It had been three years since I packed up my life in Karachi and moved to the United States. Reaching Chicago at twenty-five hadn't been easy. While most girls back home were pressured into marriage or forced into predictable routines,

I was busy saving every single rupee of my own money to fund my independence.

Now, here I was, chasing a PhD in Literature at the Yellowstone University in Chicago.

I had found my voice, but I still carried the quiet shadows of "daddy issues" deep inside.

My father's pride and ego had once filled every room of my childhood home, drowning out everyone else and constantly blaming us for his own failures. I used to stay quiet, paralyzed by his booming voice, but living here had given me the courage to speak up.

My phone suddenly buzzed, vibrating against the wooden table. A picture of a sleek, black car flashed on the screen. It was a text from Zohrain.

"Zee, I'm downstairs."

I took a deep breath, grabbing my bag. Zohrain Malik. We were distant cousins, but in the tangled web of our family tree, he felt like the younger brother I had been silently tasked to watch over. He had arrived in Chicago two months ago to study Psychology.

At twenty-one, he was a walking, breathing contradiction. Around his family, he was the ultimate quiet introvert a boy who wouldn't even look his father in the eye out of a suffocating, fearful respect. If he ever needed anything, he would beg his grandFather to ask his papa for him because his father's favorite hobby was humiliating him in front of everyone.

But outside of the family? Zohrain was a

different person.

He was 6'2", with messy dark hair, a wealthy background, and a deep, toxic insecurity fueled by the acne on his face and the trauma he couldn't outrun. He had been a playboy since he was fourteen, using girls as props to boost his fragile ego. Currently, he was dating a blonde girl named Lisa, treating her with the same emotional cruelty he had watched his father inflict on his mother back home.

Except with me. With me, he was just... Zohrain.

I walked down the steps of my building and saw his car idling by the curb. I opened the passenger door and slid in. The interior smelled like expensive leather and a hint of a cold, metallic scent.

"Hey," I said cheerfully, setting my lemonade in the cup holder. "You're actually on time for once. Should I mark this day on my calendar?"

Zohrain didn't say anything. He just nodded, his movements stiff as he shifted the car into drive. As we merged into the heavy Chicago traffic, I kept up the chatter, trying to bridge the gap of his silence.

"So, did you finish that assignment for your Psych class? I swear, if I have to read one more theory about repressed childhood trauma, I'm going to go insane. I think I've read enough of that in my own Literature course."

Still, nothing. No smirk, no witty comeback.

"Zohrain?" I prompted, turning slightly in my seat to look at him.

"Are you even listening, or are you in your own world again?"

My eyes accidentally drifted to his hands on the steering wheel, and the air left my lungs. His grip was a vice knuckles bone-white and straining against skin,

as if he were trying to crush the wheel into dust.

They weren't just shaking; they were seized by a violent, rhythmic tremor that traveled up his forearms. A thin, cold sheen of sweat had bloomed across his forehead, and his jaw was locked so tight the muscle pulsed in a frantic, uneven rhythm.

He was staring at the road, but his eyes were vacant totally zoned out, as if he were looking at something a thousand miles away.

"Zohrain, look at me," I said, my voice dropping the playful tone.

He didn't blink. He was hyperventilating, his chest rising and falling in shallow, jagged bursts.

"Zohrain, pull over. Now!" I said, my hand instinctively reaching for his shoulder.

He didn't fight me. His foot hit the brake, and the car skidded slightly before gliding to the shoulder of the busy avenue.

He cut the engine, but the silence that filled the car was louder than the city traffic. He turned his face away from me, staring blankly out the passenger side window. He was hiding. He was terrified.

"What happened? Talk to me," I pleaded, my heart hammering in my chest.

He remained statue-still, refusing to look at me, his insecurity about his skin and his perceived 'weakness' keeping him trapped behind a wall of silence.

But looking at his trembling fingers, the world around me faded, and a suffocating, vivid memory slammed into my mind.

Memory:

I was Twenty, sitting in the cramped, airless backseat of his father's heavy SUV back in Karachi.

The air had been stifling, filled with the smell of his father's expensive cologne and the stinging scent of pure, unadulterated rage.

Zohrain was sixteen, barely old enough to grasp the wheel for a driving lesson.

His father's booming, cruel voice had filled the car, screaming insults, tearing down the boy's confidence until he looked like he wanted to disappear into the upholstery.

I remembered how small Zohrain had looked then, his bottom lip quivering, desperately trying not to cry while his spirit was systematically crushed.

He was twenty-one now. Thousands of miles away from Karachi, from that SUV, and from his father. But sitting in this car, in the middle of a Chicago afternoon, the ghost of his father was still sitting right next to him.

The trauma hadn't traveled across the ocean; it had lived inside him all along.

"Zohrain," I whispered, the name feeling heavy on my tongue.

Without saying another word, I reached across the center console. I didn't care about his ego or his playboy persona. I just wrapped my hand firmly over his shaking knuckles. His skin was freezing cold, contrasting sharply with the sweat on his brow.

"I'm here," I whispered, squeezing his hand until the tension began to ebb, just a fraction. "He's not here. It's just us. You're

safe."

Slowly, the tremor started to die down. The air in the car shifted. For the first time, he didn't pull away.

He didn't mock me or snap at me. He just leaned his head back against the seat, his eyes still closed, and let out a long, shuddering breath. In that moment, the boy who worshipped ego and power was gone, and only the broken, scared child remained.

And I knew, in that silence, that I was the only one who could ever truly see him.