Silent Hearts

29| Twenty-Nine

But then, I saw love,

Deeply hidden in his eyes.

* * *

Nandini ran to her room, closing the slightly ajar door behind her, halting, resting her back against it, her chest, a wave of ups and downs, her breathings barely normal, as fast, as trembling, her lips twitching at the corners, a smile daring to lit up her face, mind racing with thoughts of numerous kinds, a person, a man with unruly waves, a man with passionless eyes, a man with a soft, caring heart, a man with naught but a mystique that surrounds. . . Tushar Chatterjee. That man reigned all over her thoughts.

Slow, careful steps led her to the dresser towards the right, as she stood before the mirror, peering at the woman with scarlet cheeks, a woman with a burning mind, a woman with a racing heart. Nandini looked at herself. Her cheeks felt as if they were set on fire, burning, tendrils of hair fell to her neck, tracing by the sides of her cheeks, something he had caressed moments before, and the hue on her cheeks seemed to heighten as the picture of his hands situated on the hollow below her face, by the sides of her neck, his head tilted towards her, flared before her eyes. . . oh, her eyes! How they glistened.

Yet, not with tears. But with. . . what? She couldn't dare ask herself.

As the images of that certain man of her late-night dreams came knocking down at the window to her heart, Nandini knew she was in too deep, just as her eyes began twinkling, resembling no less than the freckles of stars all over the blackness of the sky, her heart pounding unreasonably against her chest, breaths heavy with the emotions that clouded her vision, her mind, her soul. Something had changed, and she could feel it deep down. And, just then, a tug at her heart whispered the traces of passion she had left behind, a long, long ago. Quivering fingers halted barely an inch away from the left of her chest, eyes sealing for the next little moment, the heat seemed to rush to her frozen hands before she found herself placing it just where her stony, scarred heart sat.

The faint thuds of it aroused the tingles in her arms, goosebumps enveloping her skin at the thought of him, her eyes flickered down to her parted lips when she remembered how his obsidian eyes never left them, how they drifted to them time and time again, how they darkened as if they had far more depths to discover. Nandini tumbled over her balance, her arms pushing ahead, palms falling straight to the wooden table, her body leaning.

❝Oh, Tushar,❞ she breathed, feeling the tunes to his name rolling off her tongue, ❝Why do you make me so weak? What's all this that I am feeling?❞

A time ago, as Nandini could remember she had felt something akin to these emotions she was feeling now, she had felt such flutters in her heart a long, long ago, the tingles in her body whenever she. . . Everything had been experienced by her years ago, but then, something happened. Something that left her in shreds, her heart in many, tiny slivers of pain and remorse, regret that tore her soul, and she was left abandoned, emptied, and with nothing to call hers. She was left barren, deserted. When there was nothing to be called hers no more, nothing that remained beside her, something started to grow inside her.

Something unfurled inside her soul, the roots of which dissipated into every bit of her skin, pushing past her pain until she felt it all. Felt it wound her. Over and over again. Again.

It was fear. Fear it was that rooted for her, the fear that crippled her, benumbed her until she could feel nothing but it. She was thrown into a lane full of her fear to ever see the light, to ever care, to ever look at herself, into herself, to ever feel the flutters of emotions, or to ever, oh, ever love. She couldn't. She couldn't love anymore. She was burdened with the weight of guilt, the regret that gnawed at her heart. Nandini Roy of that time was emotionless, fearful and full of hatred.