@sapphiresnow_ : Here you go , another part but I am not sure if this is what you wanted to read ,but this is the idea that came to my mind and you can't blame me for that .

Also to other readers  this isn't the contest entry , the entry was just the previous update . This one , I wrote because someone asked for a second part .

Ten Years Later

Keerthi Singh, walked inside the house that had been her home for the first eighteen years of her life, when every pair of eyes in the house turned towards her, she wanted to turn away and run from them .

Yet she stood still rooted in her place, until she heard the familiar voice of her brother calling for her. She made herself look away from those faces and focus on her brother, the reason she was back inside this house in ten years.

Ten years, she waited for her father to have a change of heart and bridge the difference between them but it never happened not when she dared to disobey him at every turn .

" Your dad didn't mean to hit me, he is so frustrated working all day and when I make mistakes ,it makes him angry, " her mother words,  echoed through her brain as the memories of her past flooded through her mind.

The times when her father got angry with her, the times when she felt his fists on her, and the times when she cried herself to sleep. Because there was no one to help her from the pain .

Yet he looked so fragile now, that she wondered how the same face had been enough to induce terror in her mind for a long time, as a doctor she had seen lifeless body countless times.

Still seeing her father's body was a different experience as she continued to stare at him for a long awhile before the first drop of tears fell. Others assumed she cried for her father, but she cried for the girl she had been who was always so scared of him .

When the tears stilled, her heart stilled as well from the memories that wrecked chaos in her mind, the knowledge he can no longer hurt her took roots in her mind, then she walked away from the house once again having made peace with her past .

Heavy footsteps followed her as she turned to see her brother, sometime looking at him, makes her afraid as well because he looks too similar to her father and yet he had been the first one who made her believe in herself .

" I won't stay Avi, " she spoke up, because her father doesn't deserve her grief or tears.

" I know di, I just wanted to know if you are upset with me for staying with him, " her brother asked her instead .

" Yes, I was upset at first, but I am also grateful that it had been you with him than me, he always loved you in spite of everything ," she answered back .

Keerthi often had found it hard to accept that her brother had found it in him to forgive their father, but rationalized that he had never known their father's fists or disapproval.

She would never blame her brother, for staying in touch with their father. Because her father always adored his son and had been a good father to him even when he was the opposite to her, while her brother moved out of the house after college, she knew he visited once every week to check up on their father.

And her brother moved back to the house last year with his wife Roshini, when their father got sick. She understood him because the only reason their had been any tension between those two was when her brother decides to stand up for her .

" Thank You for coming di, I will call you later , " her brother spoke up,  and hugged her before heading back inside the house leaving her alone .

****************

There were days when she wished to come back home and lie down on her bed, but today wasn't that day as she walked into her empty house.

She had tried to ignore the loneliness by working all the time and yet at times like this in the stillness of the night, she can't run away from the truth.

Usually on a night like this she would visit her brother, and those nights stopped when he moved back to their father's house . She missed her brother and Roshini, the only person who she thinks of a friend, but more than them she missed her niece Kavya , the little one had been the perfect cure for her loneliness .

Her sister in law had often brought the little one to her house, but still it wasn't enough to erase the loneliness. As she settled in her favorite couch with a book, she tried valiantly to get herself lost in an alternate world, but ended up starring at the same page for over an hour .

A knock to her door made the book fall from her hands, she didn't have any friends and she was sure her brother wouldn't have been able to visit her this soon .

As she went near the door, she took her time to check the door camera and found a familiar face starring back at her, a man she didn't want to see tonight not when she was feeling vulnerable

She wanted to pretend like she didn't hear the knock and go back to sleep, hoping he would leave on his own but given the fact she knew him it wasn't likely . So she made herself open the door with a glare.

" I brought Pizza, " he spoke up, as he walked inside the house, as if he belonged in the house.

" Leave  Navin ,  I am fine, " She answered back, as he made himself comfortable in her house.

" Wow , is that how you treat someone who drove straight to your home after ten hours in surgery, " he answered back,  as he took a big bite from a slice of Pizza and her tummy rebelled against her, as her hand stretched out to take a slice of her own.

" I didn't ask you to come, " she answered back , and she would never ask him .

" Yes, you wouldn't because Keerthi Singh, never needs anyone right ," he asked back, she didn't have the strength to fight with him tonight, so refused to comment on his choice of words.

" It has been ten years ,Keerthi . How long will you let them hold you back," he spoke up, as if he understood her .

" Just because I wouldn't fall in love with you, doesn't mean I am still hung up on the past," She answered back, even if it wasn't the truth.

"This isn't about my confession, this is about the fact, you are still scared to trust men, I admit you didn't have great example in your life, but I have been your friend for ten years, can't you find it in yourself to trust me, I am not asking for a love confession Keerthi, just talk to me," he spoke up,  and she could see that he was concerned about her just like he had been the first time they met which was ten years ago .

Navin's mother was her divorce lawyer, and he had been around when she walked inside her office bruised and in tears, as she pleaded with his mother to get her divorce from her ex husband .

She had no money of her own, so offered his mother ,her mangalsutra as well as every jewelry she had as payment because she refused to wear it anymore, if it bounded him with the monster ,she wanted to use it to get her freedom back .

And Navin's mother not only helped her get the divorce she needed without taking a penny from her, but also helped her find a place to live. Because her father refused to allow her back inside his home and she had been the first person who offered to help her continue her studies .

Since her son was in the same college, she asked him to look after her even when he was younger than her by few years and he had been doing so ever since .

To him, she was his friend and to her, he was just a colleague nothing more and yet no matter how distant she had been towards him or rude sometime, he chooses to ignore all of them and always stayed right by her side.

" He got married again, and has two kids and living much happier and yet you are stuck with this loneliness," he spoke up, at her continued silence as if she could ever forget it .

When her father forced her to marry him, she feared that he would be just like her dad and instead found someone totally different. The first year of their marriage, he treated her like a princess and she was lured into a false sense of security and love that began to crack soon

At first it had been the small complaints like the food was too cold or too hot , that the shirt wasn't ironed properly and so on and she began to believe it was within her efforts to rectify but nothing she did satisfied him until she learnt he had found someone else.

Then he began to blame her for everything ,as every day he compared her to that someone and found her lacking , the verbal abuse turned physical soon that she felt trapped without a escape.

Until that one night when she lost her child, she didn't knew she was carrying. It had been the final straw that made her walk away from the marriage and he went on to marry that someone else after killing her child.

She didn't know she was crying until a pair of strong arms wrapped over her, and she felt safe in his embrace as she cried for everything she lost .

To the outside world Keerthi Singh was a doctor who always had a smile for her patients , because they had never seen behind the mask she held on for so long except him .

" It going to be alright," he spoke up,  and she believed him. Just like she believed him the first time they met ten tears ago.

" My mom will help you, she is a good person," he told her back then,  and when her world was falling apart, she needed to hear those words .

Keerthi knew it won't be easy to open up her heart again, but she was going to try just like she did everything else in her life, one step at a time. Because Navin was right, that it was time for her to live her life not bound by her past .

And so she talked with Navin that night, just like he wanted and found herself confiding in him everything about her past that she never voiced out before until now and he listened as promised .

And it took her another three months before she dared to ask him on a date as her plus one for a party she was invited too , a small step and three weeks later, she let him take her out on a first date .

But it took him another two years to convince her to marry him , and she did once she realized it was never too late , to fall in love .

********

The End