Rekindled | ✓

Chapter 35. Giving Up?

Inaaya shook her head again, this time more frantically. "This is bad. I can't— I can't— I— no," she exhaled. It felt as if she was talking to herself, fretting out. "I can't tell. He can't know. He— he— shouldn't have been there. I— I can't face him. This is bad. How could he be the same person? How could it be him? It— "

"Inaaya," Maya cuts her off with her stern voice. "You're panicking. What is that he can't know? What are you hiding?"

"Nothing," she says, sobering up. "I just... don't want to talk to him."

This gets on Maya's nerves. "And how are you going to do that?"

She blinks, looking at her with guilt pricking at her insides. She hated troubling others and she seemed to be doing that repeatedly. Pulling them and then, pushing them away. "I— I don't want to. I don't want to do anything with him. Just— just cut him off from my life."

At this, Maya couldn't help but let out a sarcastic chuckle. "So, randomly you decided you want to cut him off and that's it? Do you think it's that simple?"

Inaaya didn't understand.

"The guy came to Cambridge for you, has been doing everything that he can just to earn your forgiveness, doesn't complain about you being so goddamn difficult and you think it's easy to get rid of him?" She raises a challenging brow and a shudder rakes through Inaaya's body at how mocking her words sounded. "Do you really believe he'll give up on you?"

She swallows. It was true. There was a rare chance that Ayansh would back off just because she pushed him away and thinking upon it, made her feel sick because truthfully, she didn't want him to give up. But she was too adamant to accept that. Having no words to reply, she gets up on wobbly feet and picks her bag.

"Inaaya, I need answers!" Maya yells when she sees her going towards the passage.

"I want to sleep, Maya. I'm sorry." She murmurs without turning back.

Her mind races through an innumerable number of moments and the irony of it crashes down upon her all at once because how can the same man save you and then, make you want to die as well?

——

Ayansh laid on his bed, his back resting against the headrest, his hands idly switching on and off the lamp on the nightstand, brightness and darkness filtering in the room in alternate manner.

He felt numb, aimless even and the small voice in the back of his head tempted him to give up, tried to convince him that it wasn't worth it, that in the end he would be left heartbroken than ever. He wanted to laugh at it, at himself for even letting such thoughts get harboured in him in the first place. Wasn't he aware of the innumerable consequences that would've been born after he came here? Didn't he want to try despite the thread of despair that always hung around him, haunted him? Then what made it different now?

Ayansh sighed loudly and switched off the lamp for once and for all, the room getting sunk in pitch black darkness. He took his phone and after a lot of contemplation dialled a number.

"Hello?" The man on the other side picked up the call after quite some long rings, his voice groggy.

"I'm sorry for disturbing your sleep." Ayansh says in a small, apologetic voice.