MODERN CINDERELLA

CHAPTER - 35

Aahana slowly opened her eyes and it was all blurry for her. She could see a familiar ceiling with lots of lights, but couldn't figure it out in that moment. She moved her head to the right and saw a silhouette of a person, somehow familiar. She got up from lying while holding her head with right hand. Her head hurt very much. 

Nick turned his head hearing the rustling and saw that Aahana was trying to get up. He rushed to her side. 

"Aahana, don't get up. Lay down." He told quickly.

Aahana looked at him with her big eyes, trying to recognize the owner of the voice. After some seconds her focus was cleared and saw that Nick was in front of her. She turned her head to see the room and recognized that this was Nick's cabin. 

"Wh-what am I doing here? How have I come here?" She asked looking at Nick.

"You fainted at the cafeteria. I brought you here." Nick answered while helping her to sit properly on the couch and he himself sat on the chair next to her. 

"I fainted?" Aahana asked in disbelief.

"Yeah. The doctor checked you on early . He told that you have some fatigue due to lack of sleep, hypertension and overwork." He sighed, then continued; but this time his voice was more serious than before. "Again. Why Aahana? Why can't you take care of your health? Last time was my fault, I admit. But this time.. what do you blame to?"

"You, of course." She whispered so low that didn't reach to Nick's ear.

"What? What did you say?" He asked confusedly.

"Nothing.... By the way why are you here?"

Nick gave her a look that clearly said 'Really? '; Aahana noticed that and defended herself.

 "No, I'm not saying that you can't be here.. I know it's your cabin. What I meant to say is that you were pre-occupied with someone. So, you shouldn't come with me. You could tell someone else..." Then she remembered that Steve was there with her, so she just mentioned him. "Oh yeah, Steve was there with me. You could tell him to co---" She stopped after seeing a glaring Nick. He changed his expression really quickly that Aahana couldn't hold them properly, so she asked him directly, "Why did you glare at me?" 

He didn't expect her to ask him directly about the glaring, so he was surprised at first, then denied it. "No. When did I? I didn't."

"Yes, you did. Just now you were glaring at me." Aahana retorted.

"Whatever!" He shrugged. "By the way, you didn't answer my question earlier. Why didn't you take care of your health? Why are you doing overwork yourself again? I know you like to help others on their work, but don't overwork yourself. You have to let them do their own work. If you always help them, they will dependent on you with every little things and take advantage of you." He explained.

She understood that on her own, but she couldn't say 'no' to anyone. But this time she wasn't tensed because of work, rather with Nick. "But this time it's not for the work... I am worrying about something else." She looked at him once and lowered her eyes immediately after making an eye contact with him.

From her lowering gaze, after the immediate eye contact with him, he figured out that Aahana's worries had connected to him. She was worried about him. That one thought brought so much delight in his heart that he couldn't express it into words. It was a first for him that someone was worried about him. But his heart dropped low immediately at the thought if he was the reason of her trouble. Was any of his action hurt her? He thought of the previous days, trying to find which action of him worried Aahana so much that she had collapsed. But he didn't find any; because from the past couple of days he had been avoiding her. Yes, he was avoiding her... could it be? No, no.. it wouldn't be or would it?