Wherever You Go

Chapter 12

The marriage registration goes without a hitch, apart from the tension and awkwardness between the parties who were getting married, which was quite evident. On the short ride back home with Yagiz Hazan was finally overwhelmed with the enormity of what she had done. She did not feel any guilt about not telling anything to her mother or even Ece. Her mother was at fault in this as much as the rest and she has controlled her life enough, however justified her reasons were. She will never ever be her pawn again. 

She didn't even care that in all possibility in several months time she will be a divorced woman or the fact that she will be uprooting her life to a foreign country, when the furthest she has been even in Turkey was to Izmir. But now it is hitting her like a ton of bricks that how she has imposed on his life. Even if she has been unaware of it for most of the time, she has always made his life complicated and even difficult not to mention the current situation existing between them which is actually really tragic. 

She has virtually cornered him and imposed on him to take her with him, which now she feels will make him hate her more. In her desire to be with him and protect him she has not thought anything about what tagging alone with him will mean to his life there. How is he going to explain this? There is only one thing to do, that is to not to bother his life in anyway and to somehow build a separate life of her own. That way she can still be near him but not to be a burden on him. 

Hazan realized that she did not know anything about his life in the US. Yagiz has told her bits and pieces about his early years and according to what Farah has said from time to time she understood that he has business commitments there. Her pulse quicken when she remembers Farah. Of course Farah will be there. Though now Hazan knows that there was nothing between them and Yagiz brought her as a pretend girlfriend to divert attention . But Hazan has been with Farah long enough to know and realize that she loves Yagiz deeply. The familiar way she touches him and deals with him drives her insane. Hazan realizes that Farah earned that right after being with him since they are 14 years old, but she knows that Farah was not pretending when they were acting like girl friend and boyfriend. Despite all her doubts Hazan feels glad to leave all this chaotic mess behind. It is so fetid and convoluted that even a straight forward man like Yagiz was compelled to pretend something that was a lie.

Yagiz looked at Hazan sitting next to him in the back seat of the cab. He has unknowingly just climbed on to the back with her rather than get in the front like he did yesterday and this morning. Maybe his subconscious made him do it, given that they had less than one and half hours together. This was giving him a total déjà vu of the one hour they spent before she was planning to go away. Except that this time instead of laughing and eating with him she was sitting as far away from him as possible and her eyes were tightly shut with her fists balled at her sides. 

He didn't know what she was thinking so furiously in her crazy head. Maybe she is regretting this after all. This marriage thing has to mean something more to a traditionally brought up girl like her and she has to feel some guilt or even regret about what she has done. Yagiz feel a strange pinch in his chest when he thinks that she must be regretting this. He cannot help it. He knows that it was him who rejected her this time. As everything in his life right now, he is questioning her loyalty. Whilst he still loves her, he cannot comprehend that how her love can be genuine if she kept such a life changing secret from him for months. 

Despite everything, he has been loyal to her, even if it killed him inside to do it and most of the time defying his family to do it. He had put her first, listened only to her, given her all the allowances in the world, even when it was evident she was hiding things from him. In his life absolutely no one, not even Sinan, has received so many chances from Yagiz. He is usually a single chance person. It is like rubbing salt in his wounds that she kept this secret along with Sinan, her mother and Hazim. Infact Kerime is better than them in her own twisted way. She at least wanted to expose the story and put an end to it. 

He sees that they are getting close to the apartment. Now that they have got married and documentation obtained, Hazan doesn't need to come back to the apartment with him. He could get down and send her home in the cab. He is 5 minutes away from the airport and after getting married while she waited inside he has already spoken to his lawyers and instructed on the visa application process. But God help him he wanted her with him even if it was a minute, even to fight with her and hurt her and himself more. Yagiz has long stopped being surprised by the magnitude of stupidity and defying rationale one can experience when they are in love, but acting in this manner even after all the incidents that followed still amazes him. He slides a little closer to her and softly calls out her name. She doesn't respond, still deep in her thoughts.

Hazan feels warm fingers on her arm and her eyes fly open , looking directly into Yagiz's eyes. His eyes do not have the usual calm and collected and shuttered down look, but are full of emotions that she cannot read or understand. It takes a while for her to understand that he is talking, or rather whispering, to her.

" We are nearing the apartment. You can go home in this cab itself. I will get down and go" he says and sees her eyes flash fire. But when she speaks her voice was soft and timid.

" No I will come up if that is ok with you" she says like there is an option for him to say it is not ok. Whilst he is relieved that she is coming, Yagiz is also apprehensive and afraid. He feels like that they are dancing around a deep precipice and the slightest upset of the balance can send them crashing down to peril. With his life in US already stretching empty and dark ahead of him, he doesn't want to be tortured by her memories further. But it has always been the same. Him wanting to stay away from her but failing spectacularly every time. Him knowing that it is going to end in further pain but as always unable to send her away.