His Inconvenient Bride | ✔️

| xlii: happy place |

It hurt me that I was building the palace of my happiness and dreams over her dead ones. The thought of that burdened me so bad.

What was difficult? The fact that Ruhi and Pranav were separated when they were in love or the fact that I would have never met Vihaan?

Sometimes, people hold themselves guilty for things that weren't even their fault. They think that maybe if they weren't doing this, things would have been different. Hence, they hallucinate or in simple words, dream of situations with slight altercations where they weren't doing things they were doing originally, to ease their guilty conscience, those were the words of Aadya Anand, when she had explained to me about the change in the nightmares without her knowing that it was about me.

And now I get to know why.

Naive.

Always fooling people.

These words were always constant in my head and I never understood what they meant.

But now I do.

I fooled them since it was Ruhi they killed and not me.

And with that, the first drop of tear fell out of my eye. There was no voice, just silent tears that didn't stop coming out of my eyes. It was as if my tiredness was condensed into a deluge of rain.

Everything hurt.

Every cell of my body hurt.

My chest tightened as my heart clenched in pain. It should have been me and not her. Maybe, things would have ended right then and there. Maybe the killer wouldn't have gone killing other girls.

Or maybe Ruhi Parekh trusted me that one day, that one fucking day I would bring her to justice.

As the thought crossed my mind, I sat up straight and wiped off the tears from my eyes.

I thought.

I thought hard.

There was something in my missing memories that made me so hysterical when she was dying and that effect stayed even after she died.

Something that changed me that I can't remember.

It was about time I did something.

*   *   *

I was helping Mom with dinner. The beans were cooked and so was the dal, the only thing that was left on the list was rotis. With the belan in my hand, I rolled it over the dough, flattening it, shaping it into a circle. My one hand was already working over flipping another one of the roti on the pan, whereas the other held the roti that was about to go into the pan.

As I chucked another roti into the pan, I heard heavy footsteps filling the kitchen.

I knew it was Vihaan.

My senses were most active when I hear something rustling or someone walking behind me. It was difficult for someone to sneak up on me since I always knew who it was, just by hearing their footsteps or smelling their scent.

In Vihaan's case, it was his footsteps.

A pair of arms slipped around my shoulder blade to the lower base of my collar, pulling me in. I closed my eyes and let out a soft breath as I sighed when I was pulled into his arms. I let the tension seep out of my body as I let myself sag and lean against him, still continuing with my work.

Vihaan's nose was nuzzled in my hair as I felt him inhaling into my hair. It was an intimate gesture and I hadn't gathered how quickly we were comfortable in it. It was just his arms around me and I felt nothing but comforted like he genuinely cared for me.