You're my dawn

17.Are you hungry?

Listening to his growling stomach, she looked up from his chest. “Are you hungry?” 

Instead of answering he looked at her intently for a few seconds.

She suddenly becomes aware of every fibre of her being. Hyperaware of the proximity and his penetrating gaze, she squirmed and unwrapped her hands from around him and slipped away from his embrace.

tucking the loose strand of her hair behind her ear she cleared her throat to bring him out of the daze he seemed to be in. 

“What do you want to eat?” 

He seemingly snapped out and averted his gaze. 

“Anything would do'' Saying he sauntered towards their room but she didn’t fail to notice the twitch in his jaw.

She wanted to comfort him and ask him to let it out; all his grief, worries and aloofness but they didn't share that level of closeness. 

She knew they still had their guards on. She wished for him and as well for her to shed them, someday, and be in front of each other bare of any semblance. 

Now that she knew, they both had only each other in the whole wide world; everyone else had their own world where they didn't belong; she was going to try to make a world for themselves, where they belonged to each other and be each other's home and as he said earlier, be partners for life, an invincible team.

The thought of them being together, growing old and learning to not just rely on each other and like but to love, made a beautiful smile appear on her lips.

Humming a tune, she strode towards the kitchen to prepare lunch.

 

***

He stood on the balcony, gazing down, absentmindedly. His brain was fixated on the image of his wife crying in his grief.

The last time he remembered his mother crying for him because he got hurt while playing cricket with the neighbour's kids. While trying to catch the ball, he slipped and scraped his knees and elbows. As he came home, wailing, his mother immediately sought the first aid box and started aiding him. While cleaning his wounds, he saw tears streaming down her cheeks. Such a sweetheart she was. He was just a four-year-old kid but he knew the reason behind her mother's tears. He knew he was the reason. From then on he stopped playing cricket because he was scared to get hurt and make his mother cry because he hated to see tears in her eyes. 

But today, as he saw Seher crying in his grief, he felt good. Was he becoming a sadist? How could he like her tears? He wasn't supposed to. 

But could he force his heart or pretend he didn't like it when he saw her sobbing in his arms for him? No, he couldn't. His heart drove pleasure from her tears because it was selfish and finding someone after his mother who could shed tears for him gave it a sense of belonging, a sense of being cared for, being understood and being empathized. Ah, human desires! 

After yesterday's incident, the memories of his mother had predominantly occupied his brain and maybe that might be the reason he started longing all the more for someone who could love him, someone to whom he could belong. 

After his mother's demise unfortunately he and his sister got entangled in their own battles and barely got time to be there for each other. 

He was happy for Hira, and after witnessing Hira's successful married life,  he deep down longed for a family too. He wished to fall in love, get married and have a family. Happily Ever After. But circumstances did not give him a chance to fall in love but he liked his wife until she accused him of infidelity. He couldn't sleep that night because he thought he had lost his chance of having a family weaved from the thread of love, trust and understanding. 

He thought he was going to be caged in a marriage where he could not even have peace, where his wife would find new reasons to fight. 

Yesterday, when he reached home and as his gaze fell upon her, he couldn't deny that she looked extremely ethereal and he wanted to keep gazing at her forgetting for a while that he was mad at her. 

He had found himself to be a grudge-keeper, he was not able to forgive or forget easily. He remembered he had stayed mad at Hira for almost a year when, on Tahmeena's allegation, she had come to his room to scold him for smoking and drinking. He did not do any of it but Tahmeena claimed she had seen him engaged in bad activities. Jafar had slapped him when Tahmeena presented false narratives about him. He had boycotted Hira for believing Tahmeena who had been hell-bent on making their life hell from day one. 

But as it came to Seher, he couldn't stay mad and after last night, when she took care of him and today when she cried for him, his heart which had lost hope for a beautiful married life, commenced to hope again. 

Maybe, his marriage wasn't in shambles. Maybe he too had a chance of having something like his sister had. Maybe. 

But if not, he knew he was going to be deep freaking shit. He had endured a lot in life, fallen a lot of times, and gotten hurt numerous times but every time he stood up, this time if the flicker of his hope extinguished, he knew he wouldn't be able to bounce back. 

Within the past 14 hours, he had realized that Seher, though, sometimes immature, owned a beautiful heart. The way she took care of him and broke down at his sorrow even when she didn't love him made him reach this conclusion. He wondered what she would do if she fell in love with him. 

Suddenly, he wanted her to love him desperately. 

He was going to work on it. He was going to make her fall in love with him and have someone in his life who could fawn over him. 

He sighed when he heard her calling him. 

"Coming," jutting his chin towards their room, he yelled. 

Taking a few deep breaths, he strode towards where his wife was. 

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