Betray Me Softly

18: Rejecting Him

-Tired, exhausted yet still so strong-

Lina

He called again and again. 

Often, there were accusations about why I wasn't coming to pay him a visit at the hospital. He was missing me...seeing those tears in my eyes hurt him. He told me that the nurses had told him what had happened...and he was sorry. Again, he wanted me to understand the reasons and claimed that it was just a bad dream, and nothing more.

I didn't respond.

A deep feeling hit me. Despite our divorce, I had still been clinging to his heart and, unconsciously, hoping to get him back. But the reality was that my ex-husband had fallen for two hearts, and I just didn't have the guts to accept that. All his claims, secrets and reasons had hidden the fact that he had fallen for her. The way he had called for her...that wasn't a protective cry...it was an agonizing scream of someone who had lost someone dear. 

I didn't want to think about it. I didn't want to even think about him now. My weak and naive heart was done still holding affection for him...I had been a naive fool to still have him torturing my world. 

My daughter...I would raise her on my own.  I couldn't wait to earn her back and be the strong mother she wants me to be. My world, everything was her, and I was no longer going to let Mehdi affect that. I was determined to leave that man in my past now. No more wallowing in self-pity, denying reality...and looking back at my past.

 I was in the present now, and it was about time I started looking at my present. Mehdi did. He broke my heart, broke our home because of his mistakes, yet he was still crying for that woman who he claimed to not love. I was his world, and I was paying the price for being his world. 

Damaged, used and broken...my treatment for allowing him to hold a home in my heart. 

At the restaurant, my day had turned aggravating and extremely awkward. After making that confession, Kivanc had grown so bold. I wanted to focus only on my daughter and our future now, and he had started so openly and crassly announcing his affection for me. It made everything so uncomfortable for me. 

I wasn't a person who enjoyed open announcements, and my ex had also been shy like me, so I wasn't really comfortable when a man was being so bold and loud about his feelings. I didn't think of him as someone being comfortable with expressing his emotions and confessing his feelings for a girl, given that he had a horrible experience with that, but I guess he was brave when it came to falling for someone. 

He would call me bella, a beautiful damsel in front of Dania, Hania, and Marina. He would stare in my direction, his attention on me being noticed by everyone. Once I accidentally slammed the kitchen door on his hand, and he started smirking about how he would even take a bullet for me. Hania, who, at that time, had been standing beside me, giggled out loud, but all I could do was subtly roll my eyes. 

I really didn't like being sweet-talked to.  

My heart couldn't understand how he had started liking me. Our personalities were so repelling, I had kept my distance and stayed reserved, so why was he claiming to fall for me? It didn't make sense. 

Liking me didn't make sense because I knew that I gave people too many choices to leave. In fact, Kivanc had so many beautiful girls fawning over him, so why go after the one girl who carried so much baggage and was visibly disgusted by his crass ways? Did scars attract scars? I didn't want to deal with anyone's tangled emotions now. 

I had started to find Kivanc as a reasonable man, but after that whole bullet incident and his boldness when it came to expressing his feelings for me, I just didn't know how to deal with him. He would openly ask Marina to not make me do so much work because he didn't like it...would receive disapproving looks for Marina when he would loudly talk to her about how beautiful my eyes were while keeping his gaze on me. All the girls would be there, and it would just be embarrassing for me.