The first time Ayaan Carter met Lina, she was standing at the top of their staircase in a too-big hoodie, clutching a stuffed rabbit and looking like she might bolt at any second.

She was three. He was five.

She had just lost everything. He didn’t understand loss yet, but he knew how to share.

From that moment on, Lina became part of their family. His “sister.” Everyone said so—neighbors, teachers, uncles at the masjid. “Masha’Allah, they’re like twins.”

They weren’t.

As children, they were inseparable.

She wore her hijab like armor; he became her sword.

She was quiet; he spoke for her.

He was bold; she grounded him.

But by the time they turned 14 and 16, something dangerous had started to bloom. A look held a second too long. A hug that lingered. And silence… filled with things they couldn’t say.

Because Lina wasn’t his real sister—but she might as well have been.

“We can’t do this,” she whispered one night in the treehouse, the place that had once been their escape.

Ayaan looked at her like she’d just torn a hole in the sky.

“Do what?” he said, voice trembling, even though he knew exactly what she meant.

“Feel this. Want this.”

She was crying.

He wanted to wipe her tears.

He didn’t.

“Lina,” he said, carefully, like her name was sacred. “You’re not my sister. They just say that because they don’t know how else to explain us.”

“But Allah knows,” she said, eyes dark and sharp. “And you know what that means.”

That stopped him cold.

Ayaan was always the confident one—the captain of the basketball team, the boy everyone smiled at. But not with her. With her, he was always a little off-balance. Because she wasn’t just another girl. She was his Lina. And wanting her wasn’t simple. It was haram, or almost. It was messy. It was dangerous.

But God, it was real.

So he made a choice that night. He left.

He stopped coming to the treehouse.

He stopped walking her home.

He stopped looking at her.

Lina thought she hated him for it.

Until years passed. And she was 18, standing at her high school graduation, when she saw him again—taller, broader, beard coming in, and looking at her like she was the moon and every prayer he’d ever made.

Their parents had no idea about the storm that used to live between them. To them, they were just family friends. To the world, they were “basically siblings.”

But standing under the stars that night, as fireworks lit up the sky, Ayaan said quietly:

“I asked Imam Haris. About us. About what’s allowed... if we aren’t blood.”

Lina’s heart stuttered.

“What did he say?”

“He said… it’s not haram. If it’s marriage. If it’s love.”

He took a step closer.

“And if you still feel what I feel—then I’m ready to stop pretending.”

Her breath caught.

“Even if it breaks everything?”

He touched her scarf like it was something holy.

“I’d rather break rules than break us again.”

And just like that, the treehouse promise they once buried—came back to life.

There were two things Ayaan Carter never said out loud.

One: He was in love with Lina.

Two: He hated himself for it.

He stood at the edge of the basketball court behind the masjid, watching the boys from youth group play with sweaty enthusiasm and loud jokes. He should’ve been out there with them—he used to be. The team captain, the funny guy, the older brother everyone looked up to. But now, every bounce of the ball just echoed the same thing inside his chest:

You are a hypocrite.

He was twenty years old. A pre-med student. Hafidh of the Qur'an. The “good son.”

And hopelessly in love with the girl who sat across from him every day at dinner—the girl who everyone thought was his sister.

Lina.

His Lina.

Even her name felt dangerous now. Like it would burn his mouth if he spoke it.

---

He used to think love was something pure. The kind that made your heart feel warm. The kind you made du’a for at night. The kind that was halal.

But what he felt for Lina?

It was twisted in shame.

Laced in guilt.

And laced in something deeper, something he couldn’t name without blushing or breaking.

Because every time she smiled at him, it felt like drowning.

And every time she called him “Ayaan bhai”—like she'd done since she was six—it made him want to run.

Not from her.

From God.

---

He walked home slowly that night, hoping the cold would numb him.

The house was dark when he entered, except for the kitchen light. Lina sat at the table, a mug of chai steaming in front of her, her face glowing with the soft golden hue of the bulb overhead.

She looked up.

And everything inside him cracked, like it always did when her eyes found his.

“You’re late,” she said quietly.

“I stayed after Isha,” he lied. Mostly.

She nodded, but he could tell she didn’t believe him. She never said it, but she knew something was off. Knew that ever since her smile started curving differently, he stopped looking at her for too long. Knew that every time she touched his arm, he flinched like it hurt.

Because it did.

“Want some chai?” she offered, gesturing to the kettle.

He shook his head. “No. I’m good.”

She stared at him for a beat too long. Then said softly, “Do you hate me now?”

The words hit him like a slap.

“What?” His voice cracked.

“You avoid me. You barely talk to me anymore. You act like I did something wrong.” Her hands were trembling slightly, though she tried to hide it behind her mug.

Ayaan took a step forward, then froze. He couldn’t be near her. Not right now.

“I don’t hate you,” he said, too harshly. “It’s me.”

She scoffed, hurt. “Right. It’s you. That’s what people say when they want to leave.”

“You think I want to leave?” he snapped, voice rising. “I wish I could leave! I wish I could erase everything in my head and just go back to being the brother you think I am.”

Her face paled.

The silence that followed felt like a wound opening between them.

“I never asked you to be my brother,” she whispered.

He looked at her. Really looked at her.

The girl he’d grown up with. The girl who used to chase him in the backyard with a garden hose. The girl who cried when he taught her how to ride a bike and she fell.

The girl who wasn’t his sister.

And the only person he’d ever truly loved.

“I know,” he said finally, voice hoarse. “But I did. I made myself believe it. Because it was easier than facing the truth.”

Her lips parted, like she was going to say something. But nothing came out.

So he turned and walked away.

---

That night, he curled into sujood on his bedroom floor. Not for show. Not for peace.

But because his chest physically ached.

“Ya Allah,” he whispered, forehead pressed to the carpet. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me. I don’t want to feel this. I didn’t ask for it. Please… take it away.”

But the only answer was the sound of his own heartbeat—broken, pounding, and still whispering her name.

Lina.

---

The next day, he didn’t eat breakfast. Couldn’t.

Instead, he walked. For hours. Through side streets and down alleys he hadn’t seen since he was a kid.

His feet stopped at the old bookstore near the masjid. The place he used to go when he wanted to hide from the world. Inside, he found a worn copy of a book of Islamic poetry. He flipped it open.

A single line was underlined in red ink by some stranger:

“Sometimes the test is not in pain. It’s in forbidden sweetness.”

He shut the book and walked out without buying it.

Because he didn’t need it.

He already knew the taste of forbidden sweetness.

And it wore a hijab and lived down the hallway.

---

End of Chapter Two

The treehouse used to be hers. Theirs.

Now it was haunted—with memory, with silence, with his absence.

Lina sat in the corner where she used to draw as a child, knees pulled to her chest. She had come up here to scream, to cry, to do anything that would stop the ache inside her.

But when she heard footsteps on the ladder—soft, hesitant, familiar—her heart leapt and her stomach sank.

Ayaan.

She didn’t turn.

He climbed in slowly, hoodie hanging off one shoulder, face shadowed and breath short.

She waited.

He sat across from her, resting his back against the wall like he used to, but everything felt different now. Tense. Unsaid.

Finally, she broke the silence.

“Why did you leave me here?”

Ayaan blinked. “What?”

“The last time we were up here. You said nothing. Then you vanished. Like I meant nothing.”

“I didn’t vanish,” he said, low. “I ran.”

“Same thing.”

He looked at her for a long moment. “I was afraid.”

“Of me?”

“No.” He swallowed. “Of what I feel for you.”

The words slammed into her. She exhaled, shaky, unsure if she heard him right.

But he kept going.

“I tried to pray it away,” he said. “I tried to fast. I read Qur’an, I made du’a, I even asked Allah to replace it with something easier. But Lina…” His voice cracked. “It never left. It only got louder.”

Tears welled in her eyes.

“Ayaan—”

“I’m not your brother.” His voice turned sharp, desperate. “I never was. They said we were siblings, but my heart never listened. Not when you were twelve and you fell asleep on the couch next to me. Not when you were sixteen and wore your first black abaya and I couldn’t breathe because of how beautiful you looked. Not even now.”

Lina’s lip trembled.

“I thought it was haram,” she whispered. “I thought I was disgusting for feeling the same.”

Ayaan shook his head quickly. “It’s not haram to feel, Lina. That’s what the Imam told me. We’re not blood. Not fostered. We’re mahram only by assumption—by how the world sees us. Not by what’s real.”

She stared at him, speechless.

“I love you,” he said softly. “I think I’ve loved you since I was fourteen. Maybe earlier. I just didn’t have the words back then.”

Lina moved slowly, crawled across the wooden floor to him. She sat in front of him, knees touching his. Her hands trembled as she reached up and touched the side of his face.

His breath hitched.

“Say it again,” she whispered.

“I love you.”

She leaned forward, forehead against his. Her scarf brushed his jaw. For a moment, all the noise of guilt and shame faded.

And then—he kissed her.

Not out of desire. Not recklessly. But like he’d been holding his breath for years and only now remembered how to exhale.

Soft. Short. Trembling.

Lina gasped, pulling back, heart racing. “We shouldn’t have—”

“I know.”

“Then why—”

“Because I wanted to remember it. Before I let it go again.”

She stared at him.

He smiled, brokenly. “I’m not touching you again, Lina. Not until I can do it in the open. In front of Allah. I want to fix this the right way.”

Her chest ached.

“You mean… marriage?”

“Eventually. When we’re ready. When our parents aren’t blindsided. When your wali approves. But I’m not hiding anymore.”

Lina’s throat tightened. “You really think they’ll let us?”

“I think Allah already did.”

And in that moment, she believed him.

Because the pain between them had never come from the feeling itself.

It came from the hiding.

The pretending.

The lies they told themselves to keep the peace.

But now they had truth. And that was a start.

---

That night, she didn’t cry herself to sleep for the first time in months.

Instead, she wrote in her journal:

> “He kissed me. Then promised he wouldn’t touch me again. That’s how I know it’s love.”

---

End of Chapter Three