Written Among The Stars.

Chapter 13 - Sleepless nights.

It had been a week since the date night. Things were pretty much back to normal. She still hadn't returned to office, officially as the CEO's wife. She wanted to go back because then atleast, she would be busy and there would be less time to overthink. However, her mother in law strictly told her to relax for another week. Aaban had no choice but to give up in front of his mother.

The alarm rang at 7 in the morning. Haneen had decided to cook something sweet for breakfast today as she hadn't stepped in the kitchen yet so she decided to wake up early and started preparing the stuff.

"What are you doing?" Her mother in law entered the kitchen, making her startled.

"I was just making kheer [Sweet rice pudding] for breakfast." She replied, scared.

"Okay, but what's wrong with your face? Have you seen a ghost?"

"I was just scared." She was embarrassed.

Patting her cheek, she proceeded to do her work. Haneen laid down the table and waited for Aaban to come down. After what seemed like an eternity, he came down and without even sparing a glance, he left for the office.

Haneen's heart broke seeing his attitude. She had prepared it with so much love but he didn't even bother acknowledging and just ran off. It was useless to make any efforts for him since he never bothered about it very much including her presence in his life. He treated her like she was invisible or a nobody. He barely talked to her. He avoided any conversation. Haneen too had stopped trying to talk to him after a certain time.

Cleaning up the table, she went back to her room, took a novel and went to the balcony. It was her favourite leisure time because the view from her balcony was beautiful and she loved spending her free time there. It was a perfect location to have evening tea or coffee with your partner but it was just a wishful thinking for her for Aaban didn't even consider her a partner.

After that she rested for a while and came down in the evening since it was time for Aaban to come back.

"Haneen bachay, Aaban called. He said he was going to be late today."

"Oh." was all she could say.

If he was going to tell everything to his mother only, then why bother marrying someone and bringing them to their house? Haneen felt humiliated by his attitude. He simply treated her like trash and never bothered or cared about her feelings. He never even for once considered the fact that the other person was a human being with emotions too. He completely ignored the fact that she was someone's precious daughter who had spent twenty five years of her life treated royally and she had to give up every single thing including living with her parents to come here, only to be treated like this.

The past two weeks had made one thing clear to her that Aaban had a heart of stone and it definitely took tremendous effort to break a stone. Haneen would have been willing to make those efforts if she saw even a slight ray of hope but absolutely zero result made her rethink her decision twice. Was it even worth trying? She was so frustrated with his silent treatment all the time. She wanted to yell at him for being so callous and indifferent. She wanted to cry and shout at him. She wanted to take it all out of her system to continue functioning properly. But she did nothing like that. She just stayed silent as well.

But silence does more harm than good sometimes and it was exactly what was happening between them. Instead of coming closer, they were growing apart from the very beginning and it was just so hard to deal with.

On one side, she saw her parents who were an ideal couple. Then her brother and Hana. They were already so cute with each other. But Aaban on the other hand was just too cruel. She could never imagine Aaban loving her in the same way that Yousaf loved Hana. Although, she was happy for them, she couldn't help but feel a twitch in her heart.

Did she not deserve to be loved the same way as her? What did she do wrong in all of this? If Aaban didn't want to marry her, he could've said so. What was the need to marry her and then make her suffer this way.

As she sat on the dining table, waiting for him to come back, hours kept passing by on the clock and still there was no sign of him. She didn't realize when she fell asleep there, waiting for him but she woke up around 2 am in the midnight and found his car outside. She looked around and went upstairs to find him already in the bed, scrolling on his phone.

"Did you eat dinner?" She asked him, yawning.

"Already had it in office." He spoke nonchalantly without looking at her.

"I was waiting-"

"Did I tell you to wait for me?" He snapped back before letting her complete her sentence.

He was always like this. He never cared about her. Here, she didn't even have dinner waiting for him. He, on the other hand, didn't even have the basic decency to acknowledge her or ask her to eat.

"Why are you such a jerk to me always?" She broke down in front of him. Maybe it was because of the time that she felt so vulnerable or maybe it was the vent up frustration and anger along with the hunger but she couldn't hold it in anymore. "What have I ever done wrong to deserve all this?"

Her eyes held a lot of innocent questions as he looked at her for a brief moment. He felt uneasy, seeing her cry like that in front of him.

"Go and eat something." He told her.

"I don't want to eat. I want answers." She cried.

"There are no answers." He said and went out of the room. Wiping away her tears of defeat, she laid down and in a few moments, sleep engulfed her.

Aaban came back with a tray in his hand only to find her already asleep.
He went near her and tried to wake her up, gently shaking her.

"Haneen, eat something before you sleep."

"uhm." Haneen was in a deep slumber already.

Shaking his head in disappointment, he went to put it all back.

Deep down, her tears made his heart twist but he didn't want to show her or anyone else that she affected him this much.

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