HIS INNOCENT SINNER

6. Wedding Invitation Card

Laying on her bed, Aahana had buried her head in her mother's lap. Tears were silently rolling down from her eyes and she didn't even know why they were not stopping. Everything seemed to settle down but what she had witnessed today, it had shaken her till her very core.

Her insides were still shivering with fear. The fear of what if he wouldn't have taken back his complaint? The fear of what if his manager, Sameer, wouldn't have come there on time when he was standing so nearer to her where the warmth of their bodies and the essence of their breathings were colliding with each other? What would have happened if....?

Dozens of questions were roaming inside her head but at the same time, it was hurting her too. The pain of seeing her father crying, begging to him just because of her. That pain was killing her alive because for once she could endure him harming her but she was not capable of bearing him or anyone hurting her parents in any way but today, she had to see tears in her father's eyes and his joined hands in front of him which had shattered her heart brutally.

"Hana, stop crying, my baby," her mother uttered, sensing she was crying again. She had been crying continuously since the second she had returned home this afternoon from her father's workplace. She even skipped her college and her mother knew exactly why. Aahana's father had already called her mother and had informed her about everything that had happened today at his workplace and it turned her mother extremely worried for her child because she knew how sensitive and amiable Aahana was. Her daughter might portray like she could go against the whole world but at the same time, she still got afraid just by finding herself under a stranger's presence.

"Please, don't cry, my child. Everything is fine," her mother assured her while wiping her eyes and face with her palms but something inside Aahana's heart was not calming down because with every passing second that emotion was turning more and more barbaric and she didn't even know what it was. She had never felt like this ever before. Was she afraid, anxious or hurt? She couldn't comprehend it at that moment at all.

"Get up and eat something, Aahana. You haven't eaten anything since morning. It will affect your health, my baby," her mother said to her, worriedly as the last thing Aahana had eaten was her breakfast this morning and it was already evening but she had not eaten anything throughout the day and this could harm her health, especially when Aahana already had some stomach issues. She could not and should not stay hungry for long as per her doctors.

Aahana snuggled her face more in her mother's lap, hearing her which made her mother sigh.

"Aahana....." her mother's voice halted with the sound of the doorbell ringing.

"I think your papa is home," her mother said, making Aahana get up and sit on the bed. Unlike every other day when Aahana used to jump like a kid, knowing her papa had come back home from work, today she was sitting on the bed like a statue and this thing was enough to make her mother understand that today's incident had affected Aahana mentally a lot.

Exhaling a sharp breath, her mother went out of her room to open the door.

Aahana was sitting on her bed while staring at the blank wall when she heard someone walking in. Tilting her head, she saw her father coming inside the room with a smile on his face and it hurt her even more because she knew he was smiling for her but what she had done? Bringing tears in his eyes in her childishness?

Aahana teared up more, seeing her father which made him hurriedly walk towards her. Her father immediately engulfed her in his arms.

"Aahana, everything is fine, my child. Please don't hurt yourself by thinking about it over and over again," her father said to her, caressing her back who had now started whimpering against his chest.