Sorry for the late and irregular updates but some serious sh*t is going on in my personal life and I'm not even able to concentrate on my studies so yeah I'm not able to write anything for now.

Hopefully, things will get over soon and I'll be back on track but for now I won't promise anything.

Also, thanks a lot for being patient with the story and me.

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Happy reading!

Note- The chapter is unedited.

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|Anything less than hope would have been just another half-hearted compromise cus' the foundation of their love had always been trust|

by medicallymessedup

•present•

I wasn't slightly shocked right now. Maybe because I saw this coming earlier from the first day itself when I agreed to jump into this half-hearted proposition for the sake of my family or precisely for my father who has never been the Papa I longed for as long as I can remember. I was meant to be deceived by people not just because they're too good at manipulation but also because I was a fool that needed to be fooled around again and again.

"Why didn't you say anything, madam?" The old guard uncle's question reached up my ears and I could sense displeasure in his tone for the way I acted dumbly a while ago. "You didn't have to listen to anyone talk nonsense like this. If you had answered him back, he would not have had the courage to be disrespectful to you."

A bizarre laughter bubbled up in my chest. I could bet my life that if by any means my father would've heard this then he surely might've disowned me on the spot. No explanations. No chances. Absolutely nothing.

A stranger who I've known for just more than a month wasn't very pleased by my action of not standing up for myself while the man who was my father has always wanted me to stay mum and accept the faults that weren't mine. He would expect me to stay voiceless in the name of his pretentious reverence.

God! How ironic is my fate!? Kyuki mujhe khud yaad nahi hai ki mere apne baap ne meri itni fikar aakhiri dafa kab ki thi!

[Because I myself don't remember the last time my own father cared for me so much!]

"Anjaane mein kiye gaye kuch galat faislon ko bewakoofi samajh kar bhool jana hi thik hota hai, Uncle. They're not worthy of our time and peace of mind." Though there are just too many such mistakes I made in my life. I regret them enough to not fall for them again. The intensity of the fire of my regrets burned my eyes as I worked hard to keep them at bay. "I am really thankful for the concern you showed." I managed to croak out but like always I don't know how to channelise the anger that I was feeling with myself. How can I stay mute even after all the nonsense I heard? How unbelievably detestable I am as a person!? God!

["It is better to forget some wrong decisions taken unknowingly as stupidity, Uncle."]

The overflowing dam of my year old mastered control was on the brink of breaking every imposed barrier holding it back. I didn't want to be seen. I wanted to get away from the prying eyes. So, I rushed inside the mansion unable to withstand the strenuous acid poured on me to rouse my already igniting wounds. Aakash was brutal with his words and clueless about what his detrimental accusations could do to affect my lucidity. He called me an opportunist, a gold digger and what not-!!

A painful but livid sob soaked in anguish broke out my lips regardless of my effort to cover it within my palms. Why? Why? Why? Why me? What did I do? Why was I always blamed for being the wrong one when I was not? Why was my innocence never enough to make them believe in me? Why did I ever deserve this unfair cruelty?

The will to sustain my breakdown broke just like my knees that gave up somewhere in the middle of the central hall and stranded me to be objectified by many other individuals who thought of me as a vulnerable opportunist. I know it wasn't true. None of their blames were and I was groveling hard to make myself understand the same but it was easier said than done. I was again failing in this test of keeping up myself before anyone else.

I was imprisoned by my own devils for years but I do not want to give up this time. I wanted to fight. I wanted to fight for myself.

"Ruchi!" The voice that unknowingly pacified me each time rang through my ears.

Oh! How could I forget that returning back here was my only resort. Should I be calling myself pathetic for coming running back at the same place from where I abruptly left away that day.

But wouldn't I be lying to not admit that this one-month old place felt closer to me than the house where I was born and brought up into, where I spent my entire childhood but could never live it up to the fullest, where I wasn't welcomed by my own parents. Even if I was still a stranger to the palace I got married into, the walls of this house made me feel cozy and gave me an unusual sense of warmth. It was the cocoon that I won't shy away from calling my home even if it belonged to me for namesake. Because, right now I needed the nest that wouldn't shy away from shielding and protecting me from the lurking dangers.

"Oh my Lord! You came back."

I was sure that I was imagining it. He couldn't be here, not when I needed him but also did not want to appear spineless in front of him.

He too did this to me afterall.

"Ruchi!" The voice neared me while I rubbed my face aggressively to wipe away the traitorous tears which gave nothing but my stigma that I was abandoned and all alone.

"What's wrong, Ruchi?"

I am wrong. I am the wrong one here.

"Look at me, Ruchi!" His firm voice came and I couldn't prevent myself from looking at him. My heart squeezed witnessing an old set of emotions swirling in his orbs that rarely anyone had possessed for me. He looked at me like I was his entire world that's shrinking away from him. And, it made me feel both conscious and significant for once.

I don't know if what I saw was real or a facade? Was it a passing phase or just pity for me from another person?

Or was it his guilt? My husband's unseen guilt?

"What happened?" He asked, bending down on his knees to match my eye level. He removed the tears away from my face which didn't stop itself from ruining his dedicated efforts.

"Gauri Didi, get me a glass of water." He called out in urgency.

He held my palm and rubbed circles on it when I grew anxious watching the crowd around me and unwantonly clutched his hand tighter.

I do not want to be a laughing stock in front of them. They all must know about the scene from two days back.

Aryan took the glass of water from Gauri Didi and pushed it near my lips. His eyes nudged me to drink while I hastily sipped on the much needed fluid wordlessly.

I'm pathetic!

I'm pathetic!

I'm pathetic!

The voice in my head echoed.

"Everyone leave for their chambers right away. I don't want anyone here for the rest of the day." He ordered in a taut voice and all of them left the living room while Aryan was still rubbing my wrists in a palliative manner that fanned my burning heart.

"Tell me, Baby!" Aryan cajoled, "What's bothering you?" He inquired softly as if I was a child who needed a careful approach to deal with, "You trust me, right?" He pleaded as if I was his broken anchor. "Then tell me, please."

Amateur tears moistened my dazed lashes once again after listening to him along my maverick eyes that darted down towards the deluding snapshot of our entwined hands.

Why? Why was he showing me this concern? Who was I to him? Why would he pretend to care for me? I was a nobody in his life, right? He shouldn't care about me either then.

And, trust? What does he even know about trusting him? My heart trusted Aryan Mallik like the remaining half of my own and he still had doubts in his head? Had I not trusted him then would I be here to hear him out for once?

Trust builds long before the onset of love in one's heart. If love was the sky of the soul then trust becomes the foundation of its sky.

And Aryan Mallik owned both the hamlets in my tainted soul.

"I do." I forced through my dried lips wishing that it reached him at the right time.

I wanted to leave him like my parents left each other but I wanted to hear it from him too. I needed the truth and none but him could give me that.

"Then whatever it is, good or bad, right or wrong, share it with me." A half-breathless murmur of granite and commitment left his mouth, "I promise you that I'll make it right." The ardent passion in his eyes matched his promise but only if he knew.

"Ruchi!"

"You can't." My voice turned hoarse with fragility seeping through my words.

"You have my word." He insured me with staunchness, "I'd do anything that makes you feel happy or even manage to bring a smile to your lips. I don't believe in boasting Mrs. Mallik but I want you to know that you've got no idea what I could do for you." He daunted while I stared in his eyes like a catastrophe. Maybe this was just a pleasing nightmare. It too will fade like the last one did. As always, my starry dream will dissolve into the crashing tides again. His words, his promises, he himself will crush my aspirations very soon. But then, he seemed real just like my feelings. I was really being delusional once again? Wasn't I? "The trust you show me will be repaid with interest. I mean every ounce of it."

"Can you hurt someone and erase the hurting at the same time, Aryan?" My tears betrayed me but luckily my faithful pain didn't. It was there. It was respiring within me. It doesn't leave me even when I want it to. It stays as long as it wants. It's the most trustworthy companion I could ever have. "Tell me!!" I demanded. "Can the complaints be resolved when you weren't even behind its cause? Can you ever please those who think you have never been enough? Can you make everything right when all that it has ever been is to be wrong?"

My voice begged to cease but my mouth was advancing without a leash for the very first time, "Leave the rest. Let's just talk about us!" I prompted. "Our compromised marriage was a consequence of our one act. Had I not kissed you that night would you ever have come behind me? I understand that I wasn't the best choice for a lifetime because I was an option for you as well. I was fine being a replacement as long as I wasn't being played. But tell me honestly for once. I cannot give you what you want but could I ever be alone enough for you? Or will you need other women to keep you entertained on the side as well?" I grabbed his shirt to support my shattering will. "Tell me!! Will I ever be enough for you? Or do I have to be in the habit of catching you with different partners each time? Tell me, Aryan Mallik!! Tell me!!" I screamed to be heard by him.

Silence. He gave me silence again. All he gave me was his pin-drop silence. His veiled orbs were dark, darker than I had ever seen them. I don't know if it was due to my volatile words or his gaze had always been this searing. I don't know because I never saw in them before with such urgency and desperation. His acrimonious silence was deafening to my ears and scalding to my gut.

Wow! I'm so lucky!

I won't even get an explanation for his deed now which was the only thing that I returned back for.

I spent two fuckin' days abominably and struggled to cope up and come into terms with the forthright plausibilities of what my eyes saw.

It all seems like a waste now.

My projections seem a waste.

The love I ardently craved for now seems a waste.

An outrageous chuckle left my lip as if mocking me for my superficial stupidity, "I got a well-deserved answer in your silence." I remarked. "It actually redefines my worth in your life and also in my 'this' unfortunate lifetime."

I vainly stood up to gather my chunks of self-respect and to leave but the tug on my arm was so lightning fast and overthrowing that I was certain that it was an earthquake ousting me. My body was in the air for one second and the next second I was pressed against his vibrating chest.

What does he want to do now?

Hasn't he already made my position in his life clear?

What's more left to see?

"Leave me-e!" I fought but he had his unmoving iron-like grip fixed on me. "Aryan, let me go." I growled. "Don't stretch this meaningless relationship anymore."

"Shut up! Shut up! Just fuckin' shut up!" A cold, hard and frosty inferno was his prevalent characteristic but surprisingly it didn't faze me except that it rekindled my pith to get away from him, "You don't know a fuckin' thing, Ruchi! Nobody more than me wants you in their life. I want, no, I fuckin' need you to become my life!"

"Yet you choose to lie! You chose to cheat! Out of all the people, the last thing I wanted from you was to-" I don't know from where, how and by whom was my temper coming from but the storm raging within me was unstoppable. "catch you cheating-"

"I didn't, damnit!!" He repeated daringly, "I didn't cheat on you, Ruchi."

The ferocity eclipsed my rationality and I pushed him away roughly that knocked him off his feet, "It doesn't change the truth. Does it? Your parents saw you with Geetika-"

Before I could've even completed it, I don't know what got into him that he grabbed the back of my head and slammed me against his chest. He ceased my hands with his free arm and levered my head to look up into his grounded eyes while I yelled at him maniacally to set me free.

"You're there too, right?" He asked, "You saw me too. You saw me with Geetika, right?" The bitterness crept into my mouth hearing it from his mouth, "What was I actually doing?" He didn't stop, "Was I caught being indecent? Was I all over Geetika-"

"No! No! No!" I broke in a stupendous roar, "You're not doing anything like it. You weren't fuckin' her or remotely touching her even!" A helpless anger simmered into me. "You know what?" Hot tears sprung my eyes, "All of it stings a lot more than just cheating because I fuckin' don't have a valid reason to hate you." I was sick and tired of the restraints imposed on me. I was forced to feel things in a way around people and Aryan was the only one who made me feel normal. He made me feel myself in such a manner that I was wholeheartedly myself. "Unlike me the ones who saw you there were certain about your infedility but I just fuckin' can't accept it!!" I admitted it honestly. "I am finding reasons to justify your actions." But since that night, I'm being pushed to watch him not in the same light that beaconed my tunnel of darkness but a bulldozer that dumped me more into the ground. Everything given, I still can't believe anything or anyone. "I'm pining over an unseen hope in my faith in you. I'm hoping for the unfortunate."

"Why?"

"Because I still believe that you can't do this to me." The strings of our compromised fate turned out to be stronger than what I expected. I wasn't the blind believer who trusted everyone in the past but the woman who loved this man a little too hard to let go of him for what I'd be spending the rest of my life in denial and regrets of not demanding the truth from him himself. "The Aryan I know can never choose to kill me like this."

The man whom I fell for wasn't close to being a coward.

The man whose eyes brimmed with the promises of a lifetime wasn't a liar.

The man who I think feels for me more than what I do was nowhere a cheater.

"Then hear me out just for this once, wife." In this moment, I could purely gaze in his non-existent heart that I thought wasn't supposed to be seen by me ever but he had sincerely, wordlessly and unbelievably laid it out in front of me, for me to feel it beating exactly the way it was in the rough ridges of my palm. "Married or not, conscious or unconscious, with you or without you beside me. I never cheated on you. Not in the past, in the present or ever in the future." Every word of his was so furiously truthful that I couldn't breathe for a minute. I let it sink. I allowed it to get inked in my blood, in my mind, in my heart, in my soul. Everywhere that made me, me. "Never bring that vile thought to your mind, Mrs. Mallik. I'd prefer to kill myself rather than being accused of that heinous crime."

The cracks in my heart didn't repair themselves immediately but they're saved from bleeding any further for inappropriate excuses. My soul was soiled but somehow prevented just in time from being reduced into ashes and my tormenting thoughts were finally put to rest after an agonizing period of doubt.

His forehead came to rest on mine and I dropped my every chaotic inhibition all at once.

He wasn't a cheater. He can never be one to break us apart. If the forlorn chapter of separation ever comes in between us then it won't be this man ever but me who'd be the ultimate villain of our story.

Lots of Love,

ANKITA