(Manik)
“Why do you care for me so much?”, she asked sitting in front of me and I had no answer, just some minutes ago I confessed my feelings, and calmed her when she cried, I couldn’t even bear a single tear in her eyes and now I don’t know what to say. “Umm because I m a doctor, I will care for my patient of course, and…”, she cut me in between. “Cut the crap, what’s the real reason? No one cares too much”, she said. “But I care for you Nandu, I really do, I don’t know when where and how I fell in love with you, I am not saying the girls like you who get raped they don’t deserve love, they deserve love the most, this doesn’t matters, you have a beautiful heart and that is what matters”, I said and she got quiet, maybe thinking something.
“Who will love me so much like you do? Its just that I can’t trust anyone after that incident”, she finally said breaking the silence. “Take your time, even if you don’t accept my love, no problem”, I replied. “Do you have any hope that we will be together?”, she asked looking down. “Maybe yes, maybe not, but promise me one thing that no matter what happens, we’ll always be friends?”, I asked looking directly in her eyes. She nodded in positive. “I promise we’ll always be friends”, she said giving me a tiny smile, I smiled back. “Let’s eat something”, I said. “No I am not hungry”, she said and climbed the upper bed and was about to fall, I held her. “Be careful, if you’re so sleepy that you can’t climb, you can sleep on the lower bed, I have no problem”, I said. She came down and slept on the lower bed. I also slept after having something.
Next morning when I woke up, I heard heavy breaths and I climbed down upper bed to see if Nandini is OK. I saw a figure near her strangulating her while she struggled, I picked the lamp from the bedside table and hit it hard on its head and whoever he/she was, went unconscious. I removed the mask from his/her face and it was Trilok. I was really angry that he can fall so low, I looked at Nandini, she was sitting on the bed staring at Akshat.
(Nandini)
He tried to kill me, wow, just wow, I wanted to kill him too, that pig has to pay for all this. Manik called police and they came and took sir from there. I went to Manik who was roaming here and there in the room. He stopped roaming when he saw me. He had anger on his face. We kept looking at each other for sometime. “Thank you for doing so much for me, I really lo…”, I said but stopped in between realizing what I was going to say just now and looked down.
“You really what?”, he asked teasingly. “I really…”, I again stopped. “Really?”, he said repeating my last word trying to help me with my words. “Like you”, I blurted out and he frowned expecting something else. “Thank you”, he said and went giving me a last gaze.
What could I do? How could I have confessed what I really wanted to say? I can’t, I just can’t, tears welled up in my eyes as now I also can’t stay away from him.