Terrorized By Love [ON HOLD]

Chapter 21: One Day, She Would Know

For Aditya, his childhood was a long lost memory. Then where did the dreams of Mahima come from? Over the years, as he grew up, he learned that the past that he had been so attached to, was just the cause of his misery. His mother killed his father. His mom was not the one that he always thought she was. She had been a Goddess for him. He worshipped her. He loved her.

How was it that the mom who he thought could do no wrong, was the one who committed the biggest crime? The crime of killing her own husband? Every time when a young Aditya would ask where dad was, she would just say that he was no more, and Aditya would believe it. He was naive, young, he didn't know any better.

When Mahima came to stay with them, he had been jealous at first, because she was now a part of his mom's attention. He didn't want to share his mom. Over time though, he didn't know how his jealousy subsided. He remembered that she had been mute, completely silent. She wouldn't speak at all. His mom told him that she had seen a lot of harsh things, and that it was better to not bring up her parents.

Aditya would ignore her for days, and when she finally spoke, was when he asked her to.

He still remembered how the first word she uttered had been his name.

"Aditya," she had said, and it sounded so perfect that he asked her to say it again.

Mahima had been an important part of his life. They would play together, they would talk a lot... so much in fact, that it drove his mom crazy at night when she was trying to sleep. She would tickle him and make him laugh, even though he didn't like laughing. Then she would laugh even harder, like it was she who was being tickled. How was it that a bond that seemed so pure, broke so easily?

If there was someone he cared about a lot in his life after his mom, it had been Mahima.

Now, ironically, Mahima was with him, but not the one he knew when he was a child. This was the President's daughter. This was a different Mahima. Through his years of hating his past, Mahima had been a faint memory, and now she was here in front of him, with the same name, but she was a different person. How could it be though, that he was so drawn to her from the beginning? Did he really love the girl in front of him, or was it the name that attracted him? When he cared for the President's daughter, was it because she had an innocence to her that reminded him of the childhood Mahima?

So who did he really love then?

When he dreamed about Mahima that night, it was his childhood friend. She never left him. Technically, he left her. Yet, he was hurt, broken beyond repair for having to lose the two women who he cared most about in his life in just one night.

He couldn't stop himself from leaving her, so in his dreams, he wished that she would stop him.

"Dev," he heard the familiar soft voice call out, disturbing his sleep and waking him up.

"Mahima," he mumbled groggily, and opened his eyes to see that Mahima was sitting on the bed next to him. "Is everything okay?"

"Are you okay?" she asked and placed her hand on his forehead where beads of sweat had formed.

"I'm fine," he mumbled and was about to sit up, when she placed her hands on his shoulders and stopped him from getting up.

"Rest," she ordered. "I just wanted to make sure that you were okay. You were telling me not to leave you again in your sleep... and holding my hand."

"Oh... I was?" he asked.

How could he tell her that there had been another Mahima before her? He didn't want to break her heart. Sure, it was a childhood friendship, but he didn't want her to doubt for a second that he was with her because she reminded him of someone else... even if it was true.

"Yes, it was kind of nice actually," she breathed out and turned a faint shade of pink. "I mean... you holding my hand in your sleep. It was cute."

Cute? Aditya frowned. In his practice, there was no such word as cute. Now that he was in a relationship, he supposed that it was normal.

"Oh," he just said. "Are you not tired?"

"I'm fine," she answered. "I slept well last night. Do you want to go back to sleep?"

Aditya shook his head and managed to finally sit up on the bed.

"I think that we should do something couplish," Mahima then said, causing Aditya to look at her with shock.

"What do you mean?" he asked.

Couplish? What did that even mean?

"I mean... we aren't doing anything like a couple," she replied.

"What does a couple do?" Aditya asked, sounding completely clueless.

"I don't know," Mahima answered and then reached out and held his hand. "I guess they do this."

He intertwined his fingers with hers, an electric shock shooting up his spine. It nearly made him shiver.

"I'm sick. I don't want you to catch what I have," he told her.

Mahima grinned at him.

"I don't think there's a greater sickness than being love sick," she told him, blushing slightly. "I think that I can take any other sickness in comparison."

He looked at her with awe.

"Love sick?" he repeated after her.

"Yes," she answered, still blushing. "I don't know what it is... but you won't leave me alone even in my thoughts."

"But you seem to know that it's love," he pointed out.

"Well yes, what else could it be?" she asked him, sounding completely serious. "Actually, who knows, it could be hate. I hear when you hate people, your focus on them becomes stronger too."

Aditya couldn't help but smile at her.

"So you hate me?" he asked her.

"No," she answered. "I can't ever hate you."

He looked down at their intertwined hands. For how long would they hold hands like this? One day, he would have to let go. One day, her words of never hating him would have to break apart, just like their hands. Their fingers felt sewn together, yet sometime soon, these same fingers that felt like they would never leave each other, were going to unravel and go their separate ways.

He was a terrorist. He was not a lover.

One day, she would know that.