Bekaraan [Limitless]

6. Daughter

"Today you are you. That is truer than true. There is no one alive, who is Youer than you."

—Dr. Suess

The sky was a deep shade of blue with stars peppered like ornaments in a deep sea. The cold moon shimmered through the creak of finely parted curtains, glinting against her eyes, amplifying the brown swirls in them like a scorching desert.

She didn't want to think about it, but she was. She didn't expect it at all, but she'd be lying if she wasn't relieved. Maaz Jahangir had been a guy who had been in her life but was never a part of it. He'd be there often but always stayed in the shadows. He wasn't someone she liked thinking about but would end up doing that often— for all the wrong reasons, at that.

Hate is a strong word, but hate was all she had known since the moment she had opened her eyes. Hate was a potent part of her upbringing, so it wasn't rocket-science she had felt only that emotion towards Maaz the moment she had first batted her eyes on him, like a glow of sunrays coming under the surveillance of a winding dusk that is soon to follow, wanting to swallow the brightening light it exudes.

She was a midnight sky, and he was a bright sun. Their destinies didn't lie with each other. They were meant to be apart— destructive to each other.

The memory of their first meeting was still afresh and as vivid as a day in her mind. That aura which screamed freedom, that walk which was a testament to the respect he had always received without demanding, and that commanding and rigid tone that breathed he was used to being listened to and getting what he wanted; it had all but pushed her wrong buttons.

She was envious of him.

But now as she rested her head against the headboard with her book cradled on her laps, her attention was nowhere on the pages and the world that breathed through those words. As she read through them, the words held no meaning, her focus only on the man lying beside her with his face towards her and eyes closed in a deep slumber.

She craned her neck towards him and looked at him from beneath her hipster glasses which she'd wear when reading and coding. The dark coast of his stubble carpeted neatly and trimmed across the expanse of his face, stopping below his high jutted cheekbones. His face was devoid of any discomfort, which she now realized wasn't because he didn't have any, but because he was good at concealing it. Never in her wildest dream could she have thought of him being denied his passion. And never in her stars could she have imagined her being the reason he pursued it again.

She remembered how seeing his photography blog would always make her feel— that awful feeling it ignited within her, telling her of her own shortcomings and things she could never achieve. And now, to think she was the reason that blog even existed was aching her heart but for all different reasons.

Without knowing, she had left such a big mark on someone's life.

His life.

But that's the crux of our lives. We never know the difference we make in someone's life. How the smallest action of ours can have the greatest impact.

Her conversation with him in the balcony had relaxed a great deal in her. There was a weight in her chest that she felt had been lifted off. How was he so easy-going? So understanding? How wrong had she been in reading him!

She stared at him for a long minute, and then a twinge of guilt surged through her, seeping into her bones, and leaving her nerves in disarray. While she was in his house as his wife, the only resident of her heart was no one other than Bilal.

And this was wrong. So abashedly and utterly wrong, being someone's wife but having another one in her heart.

She didn't want to be in this relationship. She wanted the one she had fallen for, and he was surely not Maaz Jahangir. She made a mental note to clear it out with him. Shayla wasn't alive anymore for him to back out from this unwanted relationship. But Bilal was, and she couldn't live with someone while having another one in her heart.