by Nikita Singh
Another week passed, bringing no news of Akriti. Siddhant was doing worse than ever. He was barely getting any sleep, he was sleepwalking through his job, giving up important cases because he lacked confidence in himself and had no appetite. It had come to a point where even his parents – the last people he would expect to have a clue about his emotional state – had noticed that something was off.
Some mornings, he could barely make it out of bed. He was crippled by constant terror. It had been a month since she’d been gone …
How could no one know anything? Why was no one else worried? She had been away from the hospital without any information for a month, in which time she hadn’t reached out to anyone at all. His cause for alarm was valid.
Siddhant had thought about going to the police several times. Should he speak to Akriti’s stepmom before going to the police station? Since she was Akriti’s only relative, she must be the one to …
Siddhant paused.
When Akriti’s stepmom had come to Delhi after the car crash, she had gone above and beyond to protect Akriti. She’d covered the damages to their cars, begged and pleaded with Priyesh not to file the FIR, posted Akriti’s bail and been by her bedside the entire time. She herself had admitted to him that she cared about Akriti deeply and wouldn’t let anything harm her.
If Akriti really was missing for a month, how could she not be panicking? How had she not called the police herself?
She knows where Akriti is!
Siddhant picked up his phone and called her. This time when she didn’t take his call, he called again. And again. And again. He refused to be kept in the dark any longer. After several calls, he texted her.
Is she okay?
He waited with bated breath for her response, which didn’t come. He resumed calling her repeatedly, throughout the day. In the end, he concluded that she must not have her phone with her. How crazy would he look when she returned home at the end of the day, and found thirty-seven missed calls from her stepdaughter’s ex?
Feeling stupid, he texted her one last time before leaving for the police station.
Sorry about the calls. I’m really worried about Akriti. I don’t think she’s okay, so I’m going to the police now.
Fifteen minutes later, on his way to the police station, when he checked his phone at a red light, he had a text message from Akriti’s stepmom.
She’s making progress.
Chapter 22
Siddhant felt a rush of relief course through his veins. She’s making progress. She was with her stepmom, and she was doing better. His hands were shaking too much for him to keep driving, so he pulled over to the side of the road and rested his head on the steering wheel.
She’s making progress.
It took him several minutes to calm down and absorb that nugget of information, and realize how it affected various aspects of his life. He could let his anxiety go. He could breathe freely again, sleep again, think again. And once he could think again, the first person he thought of was Maahi.
Without consciously deciding to do so, he found himself driving to her house. He was beaming when he rang the doorbell, but it was Laila who opened the door.
‘What’s got you down?’ Laila raised an eyebrow sarcastically.
‘Hi Laila! How great is this evening?’
‘Clearly greater for you than for me. Come in,’ Laila said, walking back into the living room where there were piles of documents spread out on the floor. ‘We’re currently buried under this heap of paperwork from Roast House, which we have to get through by tonight.’
Siddhant wasn’t listening. Maahi was sitting on the floor with her legs crossed, her long hair a mess, a focussed expression on her face as she studied the paperwork. When she looked up and saw him there, her face changed. She got up quickly and asked in a panicked voice, ‘What is it? What happened? Is Akriti okay?’
Siddhant had barely opened his mouth when she spoke again.
‘Has she come back? Do you know where she is?’ she asked frantically.
‘No, I—’
‘Then I have nothing to say to you. You have to leave,’ Maahi said firmly.
‘But listen to me—’
‘No. It was wrong of me to get involved with you when I knew you had a girlfriend. And now she’s been missing ever since you told her about us. No, no, no. You have to go. Go before we make the situation any worse.’
‘Maahi, I couldn’t reach her, but—’ Siddhant tried to tell her about the text message he got from Akriti’s stepmom, but Maahi talked over him.
‘Fine, if you won’t leave, I will.’ With that, she disappeared into her bedroom.
Once she was gone, Siddhant looked at Laila, who had been watching their exchange quietly. She seemed hesitant at first, but then said, ‘I agree with her. She doesn’t want to be the other woman. Who would? She deserves better.’ As an afterthought she added, ‘No offense.’
‘None taken. I agree. She’s not the other woman. She’s the only woman,’ Siddhant said. ‘I heard from Akriti’s stepmom. Akriti’s making progress.’
‘Oh, that’s wonderful! Should’ve led with that.’
‘She wouldn’t let me speak!’
‘Yeah, well. She’s been struggling with this a lot. Seeing you again after the break-up brought up emotions and regrets and all that. Then she realized that you’d moved on with someone else. Then you were in that car crash. Then she became the other woman and the main woman, upon finding out about this, went missing. Phew! I’d be freaking out too,’ Laila said.
‘She felt emotions and regret when she saw me again? When she saw me with Akriti that day at the parking lot?’ Siddhant asked.
‘You didn’t know that?’ Laila looked puzzled. She said, mostly to herself, ‘Wait, was I not supposed to say that?’
Siddhant experienced another rush of emotion. He felt light-headed with happiness, and muttered, ‘I need to talk to her.’
‘Good idea. I need to shut up anyway,’ Laila said.
Siddhant knocked on Maahi’s door before pushing it open. She looked up at him from her bed, and it brought back memories of the last time he was there, when she’d kicked him out. Before she could say anything, Siddhant said, ‘Akriti’s making progress.’
Maahi’s open mouth, clearly planning to say something else, paused. She blinked and asked, ‘What? What does that even mean?’
‘That’s all I know – that she’s making progress. Her stepmom texted me. See.’ Siddhant walked up to her and showed her the message on his phone.
Maahi’s body went limp with relief. ‘Oh thank God,’ she said, hiding her face in her hands, breathing deeply. ‘Thank God she’s okay.’
‘This is probably not the most romantic way to say this,’ Siddhant said, sitting down next to her on the bed, ‘but I love you, and I was hoping you would take me back. Please and thank you.’
‘Huh?’ Maahi looked up from her hands.
‘I’m serious. I’m in love with you. Always have been. And I don’t want to waste anymore time not being with you.
‘For months I was unable to take charge of my life, make my own decisions – decisions for my own happiness. I was failing terribly, with Akriti, in providing what she needed. And I was so focussed on making sure she was okay, that I forgot about myself and what I want. It’s been clear to me for a long time now that I want to be with you. I love you, Maahi. And now I finally have the freedom …
‘And it was you who helped me see that I wasn’t free. You came to the hospital and asked me the hard questions that I needed to ask myself. You were right – I wasn’t free. It was easy for someone like Priyesh, on the outside, to say that I should leave her and move on but when you’re involved in it … you can’t. I genuinely care about her, and didn’t want to cause her anymore pain than she’d already endured. I couldn’t just leave her. There’s a good human under all of that … that craziness. And it wasn’t her fault, it wasn’t her intention to hurt us. I understood that. And I wanted to h
elp that human, and to do so, I had to overlook the behaviour, set it aside as a mere symptom.’
‘You’re a good person.’ Maahi was watching him with pride in her eyes. ‘But I wanted you to see that you can be of no help to others, if you don’t take care of your own self first.’
Siddhant took her hands and brought them to his lips. He kissed them and said, ‘Thank you.’
‘Shut up! Don’t thank me!’ Maahi said. Her eyes were shining with tears when she rested her forehead against his and whispered, ‘You have no idea how horrible it was for me to see you in that hospital bed. I was so scared I’d lose you … even though I’d already lost you …’
‘You never lost me,’ Siddhant said firmly. ‘I should never have let you go in the first place. It was the dumbest thing I’ve ever done.’
Maahi was shaking her head against his. ‘No, we needed the distance. We broke up for a reason. We had issues that we needed to resolve before we could be with each other. Now that I’m saying it, I wonder if we should’ve made one of those cheesy pacts they make in movies – where they decide to take a break, do their own thing, but fix a time and a place to meet each other in the future and see how things go.’
‘Knowing that we would get a second chance in the future definitely would’ve helped. It was so hard to be without you. And you know what’s funny? When we broke up, we were so certain that it was the only thing to do. I needed to devote time to my studies and work, you needed to devote time to your new business and get over …’ It pained Siddhant to even think of Kishan’s name. He tried to sound nonchalant when he said, ‘What’s the update there, by the way?’
Maahi smiled, but said sincerely. ‘Didn’t think about him once. He occupies zero per cent of my headspace.’
‘Right. Zero is good.’ Siddhant tried to hide his relief before continuing, ‘Anyway, so as I was saying … we thought we had to break up. But the more I think about it, the more I’ve realized that that’s a bag of trash. The timing will never be perfect!’
Maahi nodded slowly. ‘You’re right. When we bumped into each other again, the circumstances were the opposite of perfect. Certainly not the right time.’
Siddhant pulled away and looked at her beautiful, distressed face, ‘Maybe this time, we don’t let timing or circumstances determine our destiny. I know the circumstances aren’t ideal right now, but they might never be! And that’s not reason enough to keep us apart.’
Maahi was quiet, as if mulling over what he was saying.
‘I never stopped loving you,’ she said finally. ‘I fooled myself into thinking I’d moved on, drowned myself in work, but I always thought about you. In the year that we were apart, I thought about reaching out to you so many times. But I stopped myself every time … because I had done you wrong. It was my fault we broke up, and I was pretty sure you hated me.’ Maahi’s voice got smaller towards the end.
‘Hated you? I could never hate you!’
‘But I … I ruined everything. Yes, we had other problems. We were both in a major time crunch, we were both stressed out – and because of that, we let our relationship become … ordinary. It wasn’t special anymore. We took each other for granted, stopped putting any effort into us. But I put the final nail in the coffin … when I let Kishan kiss me. I broke your trust. I was disloyal,’ Maahi said, her expression pained. She looked away from Siddhant. In a soft, low voice, she asked, ‘Will we ever be able to get past that? Right now, we’re feeling all these emotions, we’re excited about having each other back, but what happens once the honeymoon phase ends? What happened, what I did, it’ll always remain … Will you ever be able to forgive me?’
Siddhant sat back, resting against the headboard of her bed, as he collected his thoughts. He spoke slowly, choosing his words carefully. ‘I’ve had a lot of time to think about this, Maahi. Relationships are messy. Love is messy. Just because our brains decide that two people have separated, doesn’t mean the people involved will immediately stop having feelings for each other. When you talk about being disloyal … I never thought of you like that. I’ve always thought the exact opposite, actually, that you’re fiercely loyal. You protect the people you care about, you go out of your way to help them … you have very strong loyalties.’
He paused. It still wasn’t easy for him to think or talk about Kishan. Eventually, he said, ‘When you broke up with Kishan, you tried so hard to move on and immerse yourself into the new life you’d built that you never really got over what happened with him. There was no closure, as they say. So when he came back, there were mixed feelings, confusion,’ Siddhant shook his head. ‘Whatever you want to call it. I don’t know. All I know is that if you were disloyal, you would’ve tried to hide it from me. Instead you told me immediately. And that’s a sign of trustworthiness.’
Maahi sighed deeply. ‘I was so upset with myself for letting you come over the other night. I didn’t want you to betray Akriti’s trust. I’ve been there, and it is the worst feeling in the world. I didn’t want you to feel like that.’
‘With Akriti … it was different. I know relationships have rules, but kissing you that night … it didn’t feel wrong. Not for one second. It felt like the only thing that was right.’
‘But it hurt her to find out about it …’ Maahi was clearly still struggling with this.
Siddhant didn’t want to say anything bad about Akriti, so he tried to explain it in a respectful manner. ‘Yes, it did hurt her. But it wasn’t because I kissed you. It didn’t have anything to do with you, or even me. It was because I left, and I told her that it was over … she would’ve been angry regardless. Because I left even after she’d played every card to ensure that I would stay. It was about her ego, her pride, her stubbornness.’ Siddhant sighed. ‘If you zoom out of the situation a little, you will see that in the long run … if you and I are meant to be together – if she was just a chapter and you are the book – then kissing you that night was the right thing to do. I don’t regret it.’
Maahi looked into his eyes, a slow smile spreading across her face as she said, ‘I don’t regret it either.’
‘Good,’ Siddhant said, planting a kiss on her nose. ‘So, let’s do it again?’
The sound of Maahi’s laughter was heaven to his ears, before he drowned it in his kisses.
Chapter 23
If Siddhant had expected that knowing Akriti was making progress would help him forget about her and move on, he was wrong. The three words Akriti’s stepmom texted him weren’t enough to keep him from worrying about her. He still woke up in cold sweat, he still found himself wondering what making progress meant.
A month after the text message from her stepmom, Akriti still hadn’t come back to work. Medical residents in no part of the world could take that kind of time off. At least not without life-or-death reasons. Was Akriti’s situation life or death?
The question haunted him. He tried frequently to reach out to her, but so far, his attempts were met with dead silence. Ensuring Akriti’s well-being was important to both Siddhant and Maahi – not only because they felt responsible for her pain in some way but also because they believed that she was a good person, caught in a bad situation.
Then, one day, Siddhant came home to find Akriti sitting at the kitchen counter, just like the last time he had seen her. She was wearing blue jeans with a white T-shirt. Her hair was pulled back and she wasn’t wearing any make-up. A long-stemmed white rose lay on the counter. The most striking thing about her appearance was her smile, which he’d only seen on very rare occasions. This time, finding her sitting there by herself, waiting for him to walk in through the door didn’t, somehow, feel creepy at all.
‘Akriti,’ he breathed, surprised. She looked good – happy, healthy.
‘Hi, Sid,’ Akriti said. She got up and held out the white rose to him. ‘Peace offering,’ she explained.
Siddhant took the rose from her, still in shock. ‘How are you? How have you been?’ he asked. ‘I tried to call you.’
Akriti laughed, a light, playful chuckle. ‘I know. A couple of times.’
Siddhant felt embarrassed. He must’ve called a hundred times, if not more, in the two months since she’d left.
‘Careful, Sid, if I didn’t know better, I might think you liked me or something,’ Akriti said. Her smile dimmed slightly when she added. ‘But I appreciate the persistence. You didn’t give up. I thought you’d be so glad to be rid of me, you’d never look back. But you surprised me. You really did care, huh?’
‘Yes. I still do. And I’m sorry for the way things ended. I never meant to hurt you in any way.’
Akriti held up her hand. ‘No need. If someone needs to apologize, we both know it’s me.’ She motioned to the couch. ‘Should we sit? I want to catch up.’
Siddhant sat down, setting the rose on the centre table.
‘There are two things I need to do,’ Akriti began. ‘First, I need to apologize to you, for what I put you through. Some of the things you said that day … I was so stupid not to have seen what I was doing to you. Once I calmed down, and thought about it, I realized that you were right about some things. I … I’m not proud of trying to emotionally blackmail you into staying with me. I was just so terrified of being alone … When you said it was over between us, all I could see was darkness, and I panicked. I’m so sorry.’
Siddhant nodded. ‘It’s okay. I understand what you were going through, how you must’ve felt.’
‘Look at you, still sparing my feelings.’ Akriti smiled gratefully. ‘Which brings me to the second thing – I need to thank you for everything you did for me, despite everything I did to you. You never stopped seeing the best of me, and giving me the benefit of the doubt, no matter how much I pushed you and wrecked your life.
‘Oh God, the car crash … I can never apologize enough for that. I thank God every single day that you made it to the other side okay, and that Priyesh wasn’t hurt … When I think about how much worse it could’ve been …’