Terrorized By Love [ON HOLD]

Chapter 41: I Still Love You

"Your name isn't Dev?" she repeated, asking it like it was a question, then she started to shiver fearfully, and her hand on his cheek dropped. "H - how can you not be Dev?"

Aditya looked at Mahima deep in her eyes and grabbed her shoulders, pulling her close to him.

He hated seeing her so fearful. She always had been like that, ever since she was a child. She hardly yelled, she rarely screamed. She was strangely calm in even the most dire circumstances.

Perhaps it was because she had been used to suffering ever since she was young. She was exposed to the harsh reality of this world, and she accepted it as her fate to the extent where it didn't even surprise her anymore.

Perhaps nothing phased her now. Nothing... except for love, which momentarily blinded her from this truth.

"I am that man you once wanted to be with," he told her, "But my name was never Dev."

Mahima looked angry for a moment, before she took a deep breath and calmed herself down. She reached towards him and touched his cheek gently with her warm hand.

"You used a fake name for our protection," she deduced. "That was all. I understand."

How would he tell her that his name wasn't fake to protect her, but it was all done to murder her?

"Yes, I used a fake name, but you were blinded by love. You were so blind that you couldn't even see what was in front of you," he told her harshly, shaking her gently. "Why couldn't you see the truth? Why were you so obsessed with the lies that were presented to you?"

Her lips started to tremble, and it finally seemed to sink in that the truth would be way worse than she had ever imagined it to be.

"D - Dev..." Mahima whispered, calling him by the only name she knew to address him as. "I - I always l - loved you a - and y - you lied to me?"

She didn't even know what the lie was yet, and she was already heartbroken that she had been lied to.

"And how about you?" he asked her coldly. "How could you marry someone else? How could you have a child? How could you be with someone who wasn't me?"

Tears flooded Mahima's eyes and she grabbed the collar of his kurta top, before she shook him.

"Where were you?" she asked, her voice cracking. "Where were you all these years? When I would cry to be with you, why weren't you here to comfort me? Why did Ajay have to be here and not you?"

Aditya grabbed her hands and pulled them off his collar.

"I was alone too," he told her. "The moment I let you go, I was looking for ways to get back to you, to find you... but I was in a place where I couldn't escape. I thought that one day, when everything would be okay, I would find you, and we could be together."

"How could you even think I could compete with time? Time passed Dev! Time passed, the world changed, people came and went, but you were never there. My life was going on, and - and Ishaan too... how could I not accept Ajay? He loved me! He was always there for me! He stood by me through thick and thin when you weren't around. Do I not have the right to move on?" she asked him tearfully. "Am I supposed to stay rooted against time, be miserable, and not be happy? I was happy Dev. I was so happy. I am so happy. With Ajay, with Ishaan, with this village. I don't need anything more. It is a simple life, but a very fulfilling one."

His heart shattered into many pieces when he heard her confession.

"So I don't matter to you now?" he asked her hoarsely.

"You matter. You matter so much to me... but I'm not allowed to have you matter to me in the way you once did. Yes, I love you. I can't ever stop loving you... but there's so much more to this world than love. Be realistic Dev. We have to be!" she told him, her heart breaking into many pieces too. "Love isn't all we need. We need protection. We need comfort. We need so many things to survive. Love is not enough!"

Aditya reached forward and touched the bottom of her chin.

"You're happy with Ajay?" he asked her.

She looked down and she nodded.

"Very happy," she answered.

"Look into my eyes and tell me that you're happy with Ajay," he repeated.

Mahima looked up in his eyes and her lips quivered as she whispered, "I am happy with him."

"So you don't need me?" he asked her.

Mahima sniffled.

"If I could survive twelve years without you, then I guess it shows that I don't need you," she confessed. "I may want you, but I don't need you..."

She was having a hard time controlling her tears now. They were flowing down her cheeks, seeming to have no end. Aditya touched her cheeks and wiped her tears away with his thumbs.

"But I still love you," he whispered to her.

She clutched the top of his kurta tightly and her chest heaved up and down, as she felt all the emotion she thought she could possibly feel clog her up.

"I still love you too," she confessed. "But I can't run away from my responsibility. I can't run away Dev."

"Then hear the truth that I've been holding from you for twelve years," a man's voice said from the doorway, and they both turned around to look into Ajay Bhatnagar's fierce looking eyes. "Mahima, it's time for you to learn the truth about who this man is and why he has come here."