Love Amidst The Chaos

46. A Shadow

~ Esha ~

I can't sleep.

I haven't slept properly for the past weeks.

Since the day I heard them talk of it, Liana said that.

It was a murder.

That phrase hunts me like a ghost in the white air. A surge of tingles runs through my bones and emits in my blood each time. Pious, it feels. I don't know what to do at this point. If I should just shut it all down and be unbothered or dig deep inside and find peace to this chaos. For one, everything you hear isn't true. But then, it's not every time someone talks about a murder, my family's murder at that.

I have thought of it each night and day after. Pondered upon it. Wondered about it. And my overthinking brain has created zillions of scenarios in it. But I have never taken it to anything forward. I had no courage in me to find out what it is or would be. The truth that they aren't here among us today is already so painful for me– a person who's never really met them– and another truth that they were killed, robbed from living their lives, will only worsen the pain in the heart.

The worst of all of this is, I haven't yet told Vidyut about what I've heard. I haven't yet got the courage to do it. I have never been brave, emotionally. And ooh so satirically the day I took a step towards being emotionally brave is also the same day I heard this, and that moment all of the courage I thought I had in me came crashing down, like a castle built on sand.

That night has been one of the worst nights I've ever had. The confusion, the dilemma and the utter shock of it all still had to reeled in me. It loomed around for days before I found a hold of myself. I had walked out of that restroom looking so numb and pale that Vidyut thought I was going to have an attack. He'd in a second took my wrist to assess and walked me out of the room. He blamed the overload of work I've been assisting.

Only if he knew.

Or better, only if I knew.

How do I tell this beautiful man who's made peace with everything in his life without a complaint that everything he's believed or made to believe until the day maybe isn't true and rather a lie built on the blood of his loved ones? How do I tell the little boy in him who even today adores his mother like it's living that his mother might have been coldly murdered? How do I tell the man who sits in his father's study every time he has a bad day that his best friend was robbed from him? How do I tell the man that his youth might have been snatched from him not by fate but by cruel inhumane hands?

How? How and Ooh how?

I'd be the cruelest person to do this.

And being cruel to the person you love like breathing is robbing yourself of air.

My eyes sting with hot tears, I shut them tight and turn around on the bed making the sheets rustle in protest. Vidyut's arm around me tightens, he tugs me closer to his body and buries his face into my neck. I bite on my trembling lips and try to bring my breathing that has skyrocketed at some point, back to normal.

"Esha," His bed voice– so deep, hoarse and breathy– vibrates through my body. I gulp quickly and wet my lips. The other hand comes over mine and threads through my fingers. "Why aren't you asleep?"

I take a soft breath and slowly open my eyes. "It's so hot, I woke up from the heat."

"Chal jhooti," He chuckles, the voice so deep it feels like I'm beneath the ocean. One of his silky-rough palms slips beneath the inside of my t-shirt and strokes the skin of my belly. "You're literally cold."