This part is really freaking raw!

The confrontation sequence is beginning, and I want to say that with the amount of deep-rooted, unprocessed grief that exists on both sides, there's more than just one conversation needed to even understand their issues (more revelations on this in the subsequent updates as they process it).

I've made the update dual POV so you guys can see the differences in outlook to the same situation.

In saying that, the pacing of the story is going to accelerate henceforth as we're reaching the final ~35% of the book. I won't be rushing anything but every snippet and every POV might show you some growth from the characters which will interlace with the past as well (some pain some happiness you know? :") and there will be time skips.

Enjoy!

⭒

Nandini

I gripped the bars of the terrace railings tight, afraid of collapsing at the sound of his weakened voice. Underneath us, the arena continued to bust its tunes, as if ironically celebrating our grimacing reunion.

Almost hiccupping a breath to keep my composure, I spoke to the stars ahead of me. "This might be the first time in seven years you're seeing me but I... I've caught glimpses twice already in these last two weeks. And both times I could not muster the courage to face you. This is the third instance, I'm taking no chances." Even the thought of turning around to catch one brief look of him shuddered my guts.

His kada struck something, alerting me that his hand rose in the air while his boot made an advance. "Nand –" He began and I palmed my ears shut, letting one of those tears that held on to dear life slowly escape.

"Don't. Please, don't make it harder for me than it already is."

Some divine grace stopped him from uttering my name, because if it escaped his lips, I would have turned to putty on the spot.

His footsteps paused some place diagonally behind me, several metres away that was for sure.

"I'm listening..." He assured.

I deeply sighed before I narrated what poured out of my heart in a flurry. "The first time I saw you two weeks ago, you were walking barefoot on the footpath with Cabir by your side. I went numb for a few seconds watching you, because the Manik I knew would flinch at the thought of such middle-class acts." The image had been so crisply engraved in my mind that it had taken me a solid few minutes to register the man I had seen was actually Manik, not a hallucination just because I had been stuck in his city. "I suspected something must have gone terribly wrong in your life, but did not allow myself to think about it – or you – any further."

He hummed in a low achy tone, so as to notify me that he was still there, listening intently.

"That same night, you came in a car and parked under the windowsill of my childhood room... you were in the distance, away from direct public view, but you were there. I hid behind the curtains terrified at the thought of being spotted. I don't remember how long I stood there frozen, inching between coming down to see you and staying locked up in my room. Like the coward I was." I scoffed, wiping the valleys of my eyes. The last thing I wanted was for him to know through my croaky voice that I had been crying because of him.

Seven years later as well.

There was a long pause, before I could resume. "It seemed like you came to talk to me about something, but as you mindlessly waited without hope until four in the morning – your bedtime, you hadn't looked up a single time at me... it was as if you just knew I wouldn't be there anymore." I heard a mild sniffle, which instantly died when my head flicked sideways.

Was he okay? Did he even want to hear this?

When I didn't say anything, he responded meekly, "Yeah, I thought you would never return."

The confession pricked. Almost whining, I held back a sob, "Yet, you came... that broke a little part of me that thought I could make peace with you."

"And then today... today while you were on stage, you scanned the crowd and when your eyes landed on me, you looked at me like your whole life has fallen apart and you just wanted someone to understand you. To feel what you were going through. As if you were all alone in this world." I could no longer hide the visible distress and it showed as my dialogue rolled into wails by the end of it.

Even after all those years, the idea of him solely having his own back broke me into little pieces. The girl who wanted to be with him, by his side for the rest of his life, somehow could never come to terms with this shocking nightmare that was his reality.

He had instinctively hurried towards me, but halted in his steps when my palms swat my cheeks, and the backs of them cleaned the drips around and down my chin too.

"You know, all these years, I have been fighting fate in its plans to confront you... I've cut off from my friends, abandoned half the family I have left in this world, moved to a city that was once home but means very little now and... did my part so that anything, which remotely reminded me of you, was out of my life."

"I had already lost a huge part of my life when my parents passed, and the remaining few parts left of me I had voluntarily surrendered to keep myself sane." And those stood as some of my biggest regrets in life. "Some essence of Nandini Murthy was fragmented and forgotten in that childish resolve, and I grieved the consequences of those choices."

Part of me nearly stood beside myself, stunned by the gravity my confessions held... such self-awareness was uncanny even to myself. Many of those truths I was too afraid to confront on my own, those truths which even my pillows or my diaries could not stand a chance to hear, I was telling the boy who wrecked me into shards. Somehow, an innate calmness saturated me with every phrase, or rather every pause I took, as if I could share those things to anyone else in the entire world but it didn't matter.

The only person my heart cared to split its grief with was the boy who caused it.

"Then Mukti came to me when I was at my lowest, and the selfish parental instinct in me – that chided me for crippling my own self-worth – couldn't say 'no'." My wobbly lip was seized between my teeth to stop it from uncontrollably shaking, just like I was as I burst into quiet streams of tears. "I just couldn't."

I walked along the railing, retreating from his space while he followed almost locked in a trance with me. "It was never my intention to keep your sister away from you, and I know you're furious at me for doing that to you... for taking away the one person who thoroughly understood you." He hissed as if the memory was a horrible one to even process, and she was the one who had caused such a reaction to it. "For that I'm very sorry."

He had not said anything for a few minutes, like he did not want to accept my apology. It was a silent taunt, that the apology meant absolutely nothing, because I very well knew what I was doing when Mukti came along. It was like Nandini Murthy wanted to hurt him where it hurt most, by taking away what meant the most to him, wasn't it?

I shook my own head to the accusation. "Whether you believe me or not, that is the truth, never did I expect her – or anyone else for that matter – to ever pick me over anyone else." When my own boyfriend said he would not do that for me, how could I expect that from anyone else?

He stormed towards me, unfiltered in his fury. "Yes, yes I am fucking enraged, but not because you took her away. No. That was her choice, I know that, but you..." He pointed, some metres away but at my forehead, thoroughly pained, "...part of you only accepted her because she gave me up for it. You wanted to be someone's first choice, and you knew I couldn't give it to you, isn't it?" My glimmering eyes widened and I mindlessly blinked, trying to comprehend if I was hearing it right.

Manik scoffed, "What, why do you look surprised?"

"How could you even think that about me?"

He closed in, taking one commanding step towards me as I clutched the railing behind, afraid of breathing in the same air he breathed. The black suit he was wearing was a spectacular fit on him, and he almost rocked the colour... after all, he was made of that colour.

None of the boyishness I fell for remained on his countenance. His neatly trimmed beard was no longer sparse around the lip area, and his shoulders – now very obviously broader from working out – were carved and gloved by his blazer.

"You know I have seen a side to you nobody else knows. Just as you have seen mine." His gaze was dark and drilled into mine with a certain demonic intensity. Then, as if it was a matter of fact, he callously uttered, "In a relationship, there are certain things only the two people involved know about each other. You can hide it, run away from it – trust me, I've tried it all – but that just is how it is."

⭒⭒⭒

Manik

My hands flew by my sides in the air. "Every person in your life somehow knows the effect I had on you, I know that, I read the journals you wrote about us. I didn't mean to, part of me didn't know who made it happen but... I did." She gawked at me, wondering how I could have gone through them... the private encounters she detailed in it about her and her teenage boyfriend.

I was not planning on ever telling her about them. In a way, that book had become my safe haven, my private space between my teenage girlfriend and I, that I knew the Nandini Murthy before me had long forgotten and moved on from. She had even haunted me time and again in my daydreams to remind me of it – the possibility of a never.

"Whether you wanted to process what had happened, or wanted to reaffirm to yourself that those feelings were real, I won't comment on... because that is your life, you should be able to choose what you can do with it. But you instead showed them parts of me that I only trusted you with, that I shared with you because I... I liked you." Deliberately emphasising the past tense, I sought comfort in embracing it. The past that could not be changed was the present I was living with, and possibly the future that I would hold on to. No explanation or reason was necessary.

Nandini diverted her gaze to the floor, hiding a fresh batch of tears that coated her orbs as her bangled hands brushed her hair behind her ear. How could she look away?

I snapped my fingers before her, drawing her attention back to me. She had to look into my eyes as I asserted it to her. The gravity of her actions had to sit with her. "I didn't and don't want to tell anyone else anything about us, between us, because I don't think it's anyone else's business... nobody needs to know what happens between a man and a woman in private, but you made our relationship everyone else's business but mine."

She rapidly blinked, unable to take the blame of that accusation on herself.

"That was after you left me!" came her scream, as two bangled wrists bravely shoved me back.

I immediately cornered her, grasping those wrists and caging them behind her, sandwiched between my body and the bars behind. "And that makes it apparently okay?"

Intimidated by my tone and my words, her jaws moved to say something but while she mewed, I caught a whiff of her characteristic scent that took me seven years back in time. My eyes instantly softened at the fragile girl stuck in my arms unable to understand what the pull I felt for her was. She was mildly resisting, but there seemed to be some exhaustion in her features.

I heaved heavily and leaned back, observing the gorgeous woman she had become. Much of her baby fat was gone, and what remained was concentrated in her cheek area, plumping her face with innocence. A quick glance traced the full curves of her breasts and hips that were directly in my field of vision. Eager to feel her warmth on me, I yanked her and the softness of her flesh thumped into ribs, snatching the air from my lungs.

Fuck! I was supposed to be angry at her, not get turned on by her?!

Thoroughly irritated at the action, she scrunched her eyebrows as she looked at me, nearly one foot shorter than me and her eyes flickered. Was that a symbol of mild longing? Before I could even realise, the emotion disappeared, and in its spot came agony and frustration.

"Well, I couldn't be like you and hold everything in, Manik. You had broken my heart." She wriggled in my grip, trying to get out of my hold.

My heart stopped at Manik.

For the first time in seven years, she had said my name with some amount of emotion. The previous time this same evening when she had taken my name, it was bland, apathetic, detached. There was no feel to it. But now...

"Say that again." I demanded. My hands promptly released her wrists and sought refuge along the sides of her spine, just above the waistband of her pajama. Nandini's jaw widened but before she could register what I said, my palms gripped her flesh there, and I seductively murmured over her dazed face, "You know why I'm asking..."

Reflexively, she moved her head to the side almost upset that I had not taken her seriously. Her hands came between us to separate herself from me. "I won't. It's getting late, I need to go –" I gripped one of her wobbling elbows and drew her in.

"You're not going anywhere, not until we are done talking. You've waited seven years for this moment. Now is your chance, and mine. Yours first, then mine." The tone I used was a tell-tale sign that I was not ready for any negotiations on the topic.

And it seemed like Nandini was not willing to back down that night either.

She pulled out of my grip and side-stepped out of my hold. "The reason I came to talk to you is..." Her parted lips restlessly shook to draw and release breaths quickly. "I don't want to continuing hurting you or your sister because of the choices I unknowingly made, and neither should I be a stopping factor between the two of you."

"You can't make that decision now after all the damage has already been done... just like how I can't take any of the pain I caused you back. But the reality of that situation is I didn't understand what it took to handle a relationship, and you based your entire life around me in those eleven months you knew me. We were teenagers that time, we didn't know any better." Nandini stared at me questionably, unclear of where I was taking the conversation. "Now we do."

Her head shook violently in disbelief. "I don't want a relationship with you."

I glanced at her like she had descended from another planet, and as her words dawned on me, my fists steeled at my sides. Even though I had told that to Cabir, that I wasn't looking to start anything with her, and I had somehow convinced myself of that stance, hearing that she didn't want me anymore was a different kind of blow. Especially after what I had read. What I had felt. What I had seen.

She of all people rejecting me... no.

No fucking way.

She apologised for taking Mukti away because my sister was the only one who truly understood me, but that apology was completely unwarranted. Because the woman who saw a side to me even my sister didn't know about was her.

I would have never fucking admitted it, not even today if Nandini hadn't said those dreadful five words – and shoved me out of her life like the last eight years of us meant no fucking thing to her.

There was no woman on this planet who knew me better than her, she knew that... and she still said that.

"Why the hell are you here then, huh?" I shouted, several decibels beyond her anticipation which shocked her. She stared down at me as if I was the same man who grabbed her some moments ago and nearly kissed her. I waved between us. "Why are you making these elaborate confessions if you don't have the guts to do anything about it?" She gritted her teeth and then ceased it.

Nandini couldn't even look me in the eye, probably thinking about how several moments like the one she spent in my arms some seconds ago were elaborately detailed in her journal for the whole world to read while I cherished it where it belonged. In my mind, in my heart, in my body and my soul.

"Because it's not just about me anymore." She blurted, "I can't imagine my life without Mukti in it, so I can't sacrifice her the way you thought you could sacrifice me for Dhruv. I'm sure she would not appreciate that kind of a favour."

I felt sick to my stomach at that reminder specifically handpicked to strike a nerve within me.

So what if that thought – of her having a better life with my best friend – had crossed my mind? In hindsight, it would have been a fantabulous idea given how fucked up everything finally ended between us, so how was I wrong to think that?

Besides, the reality and fact was that I couldn't go ahead with it, right? I could not physically stand the thought of my best friend sweet-talking to her, bunking class for her or stroking her with that intention, neither did I actually give her up for him.

She continued, unfazed. "Neither can I be in between the two of you, tensing your bond. Which leaves it to our equation. Like you conveniently portrayed, I singlehandedly caused years worth of wreckage, it was all my fault and nobody else's..."

"That was not what I meant."

"No, you're right. There were two people in that relationship, but my stupidity alone has created so much trouble for you, so it's only fair I pay the price for it. That's why I have made a decision. I'll tolerate you in my life, like an acquaintance."

Acquaintance?

Acquaintance.

That was a truce between strangers and friends; neither of those extremes were endurable for me, let alone a happy-medium.

I clenched my teeth, beyond gutted by the suggestion, but perhaps I could make peace with knowing until when the torture tantrums would continue. "For how long?"

"However long it takes for the bond you lost with your sister to return. For that, I take full responsibility."

Fuck! I flung a foot at the bars on the terrace, sending a reverberation beneath us.

"So, this is it then?" I agitatedly took a step towards her.

"I don't feel comfortable with someone being this close up in my personal space." She hurried four steps back, putting a hand in front of her.

My veins went cold at the sight of her retreating figure, that discarded me in my attempts to come to a better compromise, and the ground slipped beneath me when she spoke her monologue as if she had not been interrupted at all. "I'm sure it must be no problem for you to see me in that light, since you had no part to play in it at all."

Nearly ripped raw, I murmured, "Nand –"

"Let's stop this here, Mr. Malhotra. It's been a long night and I really think I should be with my family right now. This must all be very easy for you to overlook given your involvement, but my relationship ending was not one isolated incident for me. I've lost multiple friendships, my Ammamma... and I've spent so much of my life preparing for this moment and this still is... the scariest thing I've ever had to do. I'm sure you can at least sympathise, if not relate." She passed a small disingenous smile and turned on her heel as she headed towards the terrace door.

The scariest thing she had ever had to do was to walk away from me?

She was leaving. She was actually leaving me behind. All alone, with nobody in this world to understand or acknowledge my side of the story.

"Nandini... you remember you said a while ago you can't be like me." Nandini stopped but did not turn. I stumbled towards her, filled with irrevocable angst, meeting her halfway. "Today you've proven your own words wrong."

The version of Nandini Manik feels betrayed him is the Nandini he already broke up with. 

The version of Nandini that is hurting because of Manik is the Nandini that dated Manik.

Both sides of the same coin, with different interpretations of it.

Please vote comment and share your thoughts :")