Twice Upon Qadr - A Shot At Love **EDITING**

Chapter 32

Salaam everyone!

Only two weeks until the launch of our paper! InshaAllah we need to meet before Friday to iron out all of the details so the design team can finalize everything. I can only do Tuesday or Thursday after Maghrib, so please let me know which one works for all of you.

Brother Houssam, I have attached the remaining questions that I need to complete my interview.

Barak Allahu Feekum

-Hana

Hana reread the email, pressing send before she could change her mind about including the interview questions in there. She had decided that she couldn’t meet with him anymore, and even emailing him by themselves was too much. At first she had been hesitant considering both Hisham and Kalthoum were on the email list, but this way there would be no questions about what was happening between them. Kalthoum had made a remark the previous night about how close she was to Houssam, and while her friend tried to pass it off as a joke, Hana knew her well enough to realize that she was serious.

After answering another few emails, two of which were more rejection letters from a newspaper and magazine she had applied to, she pulled up her article on Houssam, rereading the paragraph she had written that morning.

While Houssam has international fame, is recognized wherever he goes, and has six MVP titles to his name, he never forgets where he came from. Where he started. His heart is always with those that he loves, and he even recalls the toughest moment in his life was when he had to leave Santa Barbara for LA, leaving behind his family and his friends.

‘Every single person that you meet, whether you’ve known them your whole life, or just met them, brings something to your life. But it is those people, those who loved you before you were famous, who cared for you when you were just an annoying punk who babbled on about his dreams, it’s those people who you carry fully in your heart, even if you are miles apart.’

She quickly closed the computer as she felt the prickling of tears behind her eyes. She had been trying so hard not to cry ever since finding out about him and Kalthoum. But their fight seemed to push her over the edge, and she had cried for the past two days. She knew she was being stupid, after all they had had no relationship for her to mourn. It’s not like they had been together and broken up. He had never loved her, and yet she had a hole inside that felt as if he had torn his love away. His words swam around in her mind, taunting her even days later.

Why can’t you for once just open up!? I’m trying! I really am, but it’s like you don’t care! I’m done making an effort.

But perhaps it was his last words to her that had made her heart crack.

I’ve spent the past eight years trying to figure out who in my life was fake and who was real. And I never ever saw it coming that you would be one of the ones that turned out to be fake.

Ya Allah.

Those words had hit her as hard as if he had struck her with his own hands. Even though being around him hurt her to her very core, she had let him in. Granted it wasn’t as much as he had wanted, but it was more than she let anyone else in, and the fact that he had dismissed her so easily, was hard to accept.

It had taken everything in her power not to burst into tears in the middle of Kareem’s room. When he had said her name, her heart had begun to beat so fast that for a second she had been worried she was going to have a heart attack. But thankfully she had managed to get to her car and park down the street before she began to cry.

She was jolted out of her thoughts by her phone indicating she had a text, and as she opened it and saw a text from Kalthoum, she stifled a groan.

Hey boo!