The Enchantress |COMPLETE| MaNan Fiction

8. Time and Tide

A/N : Hola readers. hope you're doing well? Thank you so much for pouring in the love consistently on this 'hatke' story! Each word you write makes me want to write more on this fandom! 

Regarding the chapter, let me tell you, it's going to pick up immense pace from hereon! So gear up my folks & prep yourself, it's going to be a bumpy ride! ;)

Happy Reading!

***

Nandini:

I never thought I was a believer of true love, I was a staunch believer of reality, practical life, always a 'what needs to be done' person over a 'what ought to be done' person. I have never even reacted like a lover, I never confronted my husband for infidelity, never even questioned my sister for her treachery, I was a scorned woman, but I knew duties and performed them to the best of my abilities. I had made peace with my disability to love or even fight for love, thinking I didn't have it in me.

Years later in my life, I realized that it wasn't true, I didn't confront my husband or even try protecting my relationship with him because I had never truly been in love with him in the first place. Perhaps it was due to this self-ignorance that I had caught myself by surprise, much later in life, after Manik and my encounter, when I found out about Manik's closeness with Aliya. during their lunch date, on his yacht.

It was at Aliya's 'Sangeet' ceremony that was held one day before the wedding when Aliya and Manik performed a couple dance. It was the first time I felt irked; still oblivious to the possessive side of mine, I waved it aside thinking it was only a dance, it was supposed to look intimate, and of course there was nothing intimate in their relationship. I knew my half-sister was shrewd, she knew she was entering a love-less wedlock, but what did she care, as far as love was concerned, she had found it in my husband and she was only looking for a trophy partner now. As much as that thought tormented me, I was still at peace, it wasn't a fresh wound, it wasn't new, and I was used to living with it by then.

It was a strange moment in my life, when I got to know about Manik and Aliya's closeness, by fluke. I was only passing by Aliya after her dance performance. She was crowded by her friends, and they were teasing her about her visible intimacy with Manik. It annoyed me a little that it wasn't only me, they were close enough for even others to notice too. However, what blew air out of my gut was her response to her friends. Her sly, manipulative, devilish wink saying, what her friends saw was just a 'trailer' she had filmed the full movie with Manik on their yacht date previously!

I hadn't realized that I had stopped walking; it was a deja-vu so powerful that I had to struggle to keep my balance to continue standing. I felt a myriad of emotions hitting me all at once, there was defiance, outrage, hurt, pain, anguish, angst, jealousy, disappointment and at one point even numbness. I felt like I was existing at an alternate realm at the same time, and strangely, a few lines came to my mind, lines I had written in my first novel, the novel where I had put my heart out, my life out, the novel that was more close to my reality than I ever was aware of, at that point of time; also my only novel that tanked.

"She realized that she had never given up on hope of love. Even when her world stood completely still, she was a believer. She always was, only now she could feel it deep within her bones too. A quake was on its way." ~ Voice of the Ocean, Nandini.

I could no longer deny the obvious. Standing amidst a crowded hall with his 'Sangeet' ceremony going in full swing, hearing from his fiancée that he had moved on as we had planned and found love in my arch nemesis, I had hit a realization that I knew was going to alter the entire course of, not only my life, but also my whole family's – that I, Nandini Murthy Khurana, had finally fallen in love for the first time in my whole damn life – and I was in love with, not my husband, but my sister's fiancé, my best friend's younger brother – I Nandini Murthy Khurana, was in love with Manik Malhotra.