Her head spun after listening to his unexpected answer to her question. Her eyes narrowed and her jaded brain failed to find to right word to articulate her bewilderment. The root of her nose and her eyebrows approximated, and she had forgotten to breathe for a few moments of disorientation.

"You...you knew it?" she asked, disbelief lacing her shaky whisper. She trained her blurred vision upon his slumped form beside her. An almost imperceptible nod that followed her question made a puff of exasperation escape her constricted chest.

Her eyebrows curved into tall arches and her nostrils pinched. She scrunched her pajamas between her fingers. "And you still let me go?"

The steady wind disrupted the stillness of the artificial pond in the backyard. The rustling of the leaves and splashes produced by the careless jumping of the fishes in the pond added to the anticipation that plagued her mind.

Her wary mind, marred with the scars of his betrayal, refused to accept the possibility of an affirmative answer, and her beknighted heart, which once housed an infatuation to the man, swayed to the tremulousness of his eyelids.

"Yes. You knew the truth about my past when you took that decision, and hence my reasons. I had decided if my words could not hold you back and if my actions failed to corroborate with my words in your eyes, I would not besiege you. That would make my love some impenetrable fortress holding a prisoner of war, which was far from what I had wanted."

A sardonic stretch of lips and a capricious twinkle in his eyes had opened the dams of her lacrimal glands. "Which was? What did you want?"

Her breathy voice, not bereft of compassion like he had grown accustomed to over the past few weeks, compelled him to face her. The stray curls of her hair danced to the gusts that carried the soothing fragrance of the jasmines.

An ardent and audacious desire to tuck those locks behind her ears had consumed his heart more times than he could recall. To caress her jaw, gaze into her mesmerizing eyes, and forget his worries in the light of her bedazzling smile, the one she had forgotten and the one he could not, was a dream he had dreamed far too often with his eyes wide open.

Alas, like several of those wishes buried deep within a heavy heart, that wish would remain unfulfilled. "It was not capture I desired, but convincing you of my love. I didn't want to take you as a prisoner, shackled with my obsession, but as the queen who reigned my heart through her benevolence."

Her nails dug into the webbed spaces between the fingers of the opposite hand, and her chest rose and fell like a ship wading through a tempestuous ocean. A lone drop of lacrimation rolled down her warm cheeks and onto her intertwined fingers in her lap.

"Yet you threatened the life of everyone I held dear when I learned the truth about your facade. How do you expect me to believe anything you said?" she asked, and a derisive glint shined in her glistening eyes.

Vikram placed the plate between them and rested his elbows against his knees, shaking his head in despair. "You are right. Then why do you think I let you go?"

Shikha's eyes rolled back into her skull and she resisted the urge to slam her palm against any surface she could lay her hand on to vent the frustration coursing through her. "I don't know! Ego?"

Vikram's head rotated to face her. A flicker of pain flashed in his stormy eyes and his lips bowed his chin. "Ego?"

"You were sure I would choose you and it would satiate your ego if I ran into your arms out of my free will, wouldn't it?" she asked, scoffing at him.

"I guess you aren't wrong. It would please me beyond description if you chose me out of your free will, Shikha, but I don't know just ego could explain that."

Shikha buried her head between her palms and the dull sniffle does not escape the sharp ears of Vikram. "Yes, I threatened you. Because abandonment terrifies me, Shikha. My father's abandonment of my mother for another woman, and her abandonment of her child left scars deeper than time and experience could heal."

His throat went dry and agonizing pain shot through him as though powder from glass had found its way into his throat and turned his head away from the woman, who cast an incredulous stare in his direction.

"I still took that chance because I did not want to hurt you anymore than I already had, Shikha. The mere prospect left me twisting and turning in my bed every night till sleep took upon me and I drifted in slumber."

Vikram let out the breath he had held without his knowledge. "It was a tough choice, but between letting you go and hurting you again, I would choose that anguish every time. Because I love you, Shikha! I know you don't believe it, and I understand your reasons for that, but it does not change my truth," he said, offering her a tearful smile.

Shikha stifled the sobs that threatened to pour out of her chest. Five years ago, the innocent and altruistic Shikha Agarwal would jump in joy at the confession of love she had just received, but she was not that woman anymore.

The same man, who had bared his heart to her, had trampled upon her innocence and shattered her altruism before snatching her ability to experience joy. She almost chuckled at the irony before she bit down on her lips to prevent the sobs trembling her from escaping her lips.

"I am sorry about the insecurities that plague you, Vikram. I cannot promise you anything else, but I can promise you this. I will not abandon your side. Not again, and not after everything you have done for me so far or my gratitude will down me in its depths."

A tiny smile stretched upon his lips and the twinkling stars reflected from the thin film over his eyes. "Well, I will hope that someday it will not just be your gratitude that stops you from leaving."

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