Ryan hates nights like this.

Even more when he is just a fall away from escaping the fraudulent smiles of the people gathered in the rooftop ballroom. He walks straight to the bar, popping off the top two buttons of his shirt. He suddenly feels suffocated with her scent still lingering in his nostrils. The burning sensation of finding her with another man has his senses going rampage.

He takes a swooping look around the room, not hiding the distaste on his face for the charade, the rehearsed deal sealing conversations, fakery visible on the faces turning his way as he walks past them, not sparing so much as a nod. Why should he? He knows they don't give a fuck about him. They're pretending to feel happy for their boss and raise halfhearted toasts while they are actually enjoying themselves without him.

"At least, try to pretend you are enjoying the party." Matt joins him at the bar, waving at the bartender. Two glasses of bourbon slide their way, and he doesn't waste another second to gulp his drink down.

"You know I can't do that," Ryan says, his eyes flicking towards the glass door opening in the terrace where he left Shay with her fiancé. Fiancé. The word sizzles his brain, and he grits his teeth, his fingers vise around the glass.

"What? You can't pretend to acknowledge your staff." Matt scoffs, shaking his head. "Should I be offended? Because now I am one of them."

"Don't be dramatic. You will always be my friend first before anything else." Ryan slaps his chest with the back of his hand. Matt's his only companion over the years. They graduated from college together, and Matt ended up taking the job of his managing director, his right hand as he calls himself. He wonders how Matt will react if he mentions another one of his manic attempts to feel something, anything at all.

"Speaking of dramatic," Matt grumbles, his eyes turning towards a pair of toned legs strutting towards them. Ryan recognizes the woman flashing her toothpaste-commercial teeth, her pixie-short hair bouncing with each of her steps, six-inch heels clicking against the tiled floor in a sensual rhythm.

"If it isn't the man himself," the woman says, a thick sultry smile decorating her red-painted lips. Ryan almost regrets not jumping off the ledge.

"Ryan, this is Sienna Tahir." Matt fills in the introductory line as if Ryan doesn't already know her. He runs a hand at the back of his neck and subtly pleads Ryan not to mess up this unwelcome attention from the woman.

"Do I look regal enough for tonight's event?" Ryan lifts his bourbon to his lips along with a lazy smirk. The woman who doesn't stop calling him regal in every article she writes about him.

"Well, how can you not?" She doesn't let go of the subtext, maintaining her sensual composure. She leans on the bar top beside him, her dress brushing his. It hardly stirs any feeling in him except for a quick flicker of his jaw muscle tightening. He scoffs at her poor vocabulary, purposeful or not.

"Next time, try using some other words like pompous, majestic, otherworldly, etc.," he says, bending down enough to speak into her ear. "I might get impressed, you know."

When he lifts his head, however, his eyes collide with a set of brown eyes. Shay has walked into the room, but she isn't alone. Ryan's inside catches flame once again as he captures her fiancé's hand against her lower back, guiding her towards the bar. Their eyes meet, and they both maintain that stare, reaching deeper into each other's soul every passing second.

This time, it's not the guilt. It's years of longing encapsulating them together. The flashbacks reel around them, flooding them with each of the emotions from the beginning when they were not two but three souls, to the tragedy that broke them apart to this moment when fate has given them another chance.

Only now, it's too late. Or is it?

The silence between them remains intact, but their eyes speak for themselves. In those brown eyes, Ryan had once seen affection of the most primal kind. And now they look at him with grim darkness. But before they could delve any further into each other's souls, the said fiancé comes in between them. With his back shielding Shay, Ryan has no other option but to swallow down the frenzied emotions as the guy leans towards her.

"That seems like trouble, Ryan," Matt says from the side, his eyes looking in Shay's direction.

"Tell me about it." Ryan grits out, downing the Whiskey and groaning out his undying restlessness. If he doesn't get to Shay, his insides will turn into ashes.

To add to his undulating agitation, the lady beside him leans to his side some more. Sienna is a beautiful woman with a charm that lures any man in the room, but not him. The only woman who can tend to his anxious soul is with another man, and now she is storming towards the patio doors leading to the private lounges, away from the crowd. She brushes past him, leaving behind a trail of her fragrance, totally consuming Ryan.

On the way, Shay bumps into someone in the crowd and apologizes while wiping off the wine from her dress. Ryan is alerted to rush to help almost on instinct, but his body tenses as someone else walks to her instead. He watches her fiancé hold her elbow and pull her away from the crowd, his hold once again a little too tight around Shay for Ryan's liking. From the look of it, Shay doesn't look that pleased either. But for some reason, she puts up with it.

That's until her eyes catch Ryan. Her gaze hardens just a bit, then it lingers as if she's waiting for Ryan. Now it's Ryan's turn to respond. He has to choose his expression wisely. They're establishing a silent conversation here.

Ryan moves his gaze from her stern face to the hold of another man around her elbow. She listens to his eyes carefully. Shay hears him. Ryan catches the stumble in her breath as she pulls her arm free from her fiancé's hand and runs towards the restroom.

As Shay disappears from his sight, Ryan realizes how cold she has become towards him. Also, there are years worth of changes in their lives to catch up. And what confuses him the most is that he isn't okay with her moving on with her fiancé. Maybe, he isn't happy to see someone else taking Aarav's place, or maybe there's more than just that. Well, there is definitely more to that. For the first time in years, it is not about Aarav, it's about him. This entire situation between Shay, her fiancé, and him has nothing to do with his dead brother but everything to do with him.

"Sienna, my friend Matt here loves your work a lot. I'm sure he can keep you good company while I excuse myself for a second." Ryan looks from her puzzled face to Matt and winks at him before shuffling past them. "I will find you later."

That's a lie. Ryan is on his way to find the woman, who is under her skin. The scar running down his chin tingles with the memory of the night everything shattered, asking him not to chase something that's giving him reasons to stay.

"Forgive me, brother," Ryan says in his mind over and over again as he heads in the direction where Shay went a few seconds ago. He smooths the lapel of his suit jacket, runs a shaky hand through his black hair, and takes a deep breath to face her for the second time this evening.

***

Shay hates nights like this.

Why wouldn't she when everyone keeps getting a better look at her scars, trying to weave their tragic version of a story? But none of them has the power to see through the scars on her soul, except him.

She shouldn't have agreed with her mom. She shouldn't have said yes to going out with Arnab in the first place, not when her demons are still holding her soul captive. She shouldn't have accepted her mom's offer to get married and start a family as a way to move on. And definitely shouldn't have introduced Arnab as her fiancé to Ryan. Because he can see right through her and he knows she is far from moving on.

Every fiber in her being is humming a song she has been ignoring for years. The longing, the ache, the nightly ritual of staring blankly at the ceiling, everything seems to catch up to her. She knows it's stupid to keep holding on to the ghost of his lover. But the pain is still there. And she knows it's silly to wear the souvenirs he left behind. She knows it, but goddammit, she can't let go.

And now Ryan is here. He is here, and she can't stop thinking about how Aarav would've looked exactly like him, an epitome of raw masculinity, with sharp edges and the savage glory of a man. She can't shake off the images of that boyish charm in place of a broody scowl. She hasn't seen Ryan for seven years, and then she met him tonight, all built up into a hardcore man. He'd always been the bulkier, more rugged among the twins. Now? His polished personality took her by surprise. He's a tall, imposing man, his ink-black hair all styled to perfection, longer on top, and trims around the sides. But his eyes, his empty, sad eyes, are still the same.

Shay doesn't even understand how she isn't looking for someone else in him all of a sudden. He captivated her with his sad eyes and signature scowl. It stirred a memory she had been hiding in the deepest darkest corner of her mind.

Earlier, when she stepped back into the ballroom to wet her drying throat, she didn't know he would once again bump into her. How ridiculous? It's his initiation ceremony, after all. How did she miss this detail when she was first introduced to Arnab, the most eligible bachelor as her mother's friend likes to call him.

Shay wanted to ignore Ryan for the rest of the night, restricting him to her peripheral vision, praying that Arnab didn't veer to the side of the bar where Ryan was leaning against the counter. And god did he not look at a view to behold. The patterns of ink peeking through his shirt's top few buttons open.

Ryan wasn't alone. Shay couldn't stop herself from admiring the woman to his right. She was beautiful, complimenting him. Her face was as smooth as porcelain, at least not scarred like hers. No, she isn't ashamed of her scars. She doesn't want to think even for a second that she is any less superior than her. What bothers her is that the woman didn't hesitate to be near him. She didn't have a problem being close to him because she didn't wish to see someone else in place of him.

The guilt once again washes over Shay.

Shay watched quite curiously as Ryan dipped his head down to whisper something into the woman's ear in his deep alluring voice. The woman bit down her rich crimson painted lips hard and gave him take-me-to-bed eyes. When Shay's gaze shifts away from her face, she freezes.

Hypnotic, ink-black eyes stare right through her soul, challenging her to stop hiding her emotions, begging her to let down the guard. Those eyes are not of a stranger. They are her best friend's eyes. Someone she had needed all these years.

"Just relax," Shay says to her reflection in the restroom mirror. Her fingers tremble as she splashes water on her face and looks at her disoriented self. "It's just Ryan. You don't have to run away from him. Why are you getting nervous? It's fine. You're fine." She squeezes her eyes and places her palm flat against her thudding heart. Why is her heart beating so fast after years of calm?

She goes on to run her wet fingers through her hair to wash away the wine, cursing herself for being so clumsy. Her eyes capture the red marks on her upper arm where Arnab held her twice this evening. Each time she had the flaming urge to jab her elbow in his ribs. However, she's still trying to pin on the good qualities her mother has listed about him. She wonders how long until she loses her patience.

The door squeals behind her, and her body stiffens when her eyes meet Ryan in the mirror. She turns around involuntarily, a little startled by his sudden presence. Her hands fall to her sides, her lower back rests against the sink, and her exposed skin stays glued to the cold surface.

Ryan has an entirely different look on his face, intimidation and all that as he leans against the door. Shay tries to gulp down the edging emotions and gathers herself to leave. But her body remains frozen at its place.

"You shouldn't be here," Shay speaks in a calculated voice, weaker than she wants it to be. Ryan appears relaxed, owning the space as his own. He watches her for what feels like a very long minute and then approaches her with slow, heavy steps. Raw, unguarded ripples stir the air around them, and Shay breathes in the glory of it.

After years of cold waves, she experiences this feverish thrill in her nerve endings as Ryan stops in front of her, just a kiss away. Kiss? Why is she suddenly reminded of the unintentional kiss they shared? It's been seven years, but as his scowl darkens, she feels like it happened a moment ago.

He rests his left hand against the sink on one side of her and recovers a folded handkerchief from the pocket of his black dress pants. Without saying a word, he goes on to wipe her hair. Shay tilts her head up, up, up a little dazedly as his lips part. The angles of his face soften, and something passes through his black orbs. Something he wants to say or convey through his eyes but stops just at the edge. He blinks at her, and then a deep frown decorates his face.

"Shay." Ryan breathes out her name like a sharp strangling exhale of air, his breath a mix of alcohol and cool peppermint fanning too close to her face. Before she can practice this new feeling, his knuckles brush against her upper arm, snaring her eyes up to his.

"Why him, Shay?" He asks in a deep voice, but there's an almost too innocent drip to it.

Shay can't seem to come with an answer, not when his knuckles are running through the length of her arm, unguarded and wild. It's just a light brush of his knuckles, but that's enough to send shivers down her spine. After years of being stone-cold, her skin is tingling with the touch of familiarity. The question is - can she seek comfort without feeling the pain of loss? Not yet. "Tell me your dearest fiancé is not hurting you. I need to know."

When Shay looks into his charcoal eyes, she swears they're dilated and darker than ever. There are pure signs of rage in his eyes, the same she has seen many times when someone hurt her. But that was years ago when they were still friends. Shay refuses to go back to those painful memories, but every time she is around him, they get loose. So, Shay exhales a long-held breath and shoves against him. But he doesn't budge, enclosing her in his solid, imposing frame, his eyes doing their soul-searching thing once again. A muscle flexes in his jaw.

The doorknob rattles, pulling her attention off of his drowning self, and she realizes Ryan locked the door from the inside.

"I can't be around you," Shay says in a breathless voice, her face twisting in sorrow. "Arnab is waiting for me. I need to go." Her throat aches, her scars burn even more when her eyes capture the same ones on his skin. Shay cements her heart and gives an angry push to his chest when Ryan doesn't stop challenging her with his burning gaze.

She takes hardly two steps away when his hand wraps around her wrist, stopping her from running away. The pad of his thumb feathers over her racing pulse, circling, lingering, and forcing her to stay. Then he bumps against the bracelet, Aarav's bracelet, and his breath stops.

He yanks away his hold from her wrist, turns around to hold the sink, and drops his head, cursing under his breath. Shay watches his back, his hands stabbing through his hair and tension tightening his shoulder.

The feeling of loss surrounds her again when his touch no longer burns against hers. And that's the main reason why she walks away from him, on shaky legs, and Ryan lets her this time.

Shay isn't the only one struggling with the memories of her soulmate. Ryan seems to be equally haunted by the ghosts of his soulmate.

***

AUTHOR'S NOTE

Finally a late update, but I hope this chapter was worth the wait. If you are enjoying it, please add your comments and votes.

Stay safe!

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